In early September of this year, it was reported that the Dallas County jail reached capacity, holding over 7,000 incarcerated people, despite our District Attorney John Creuzot blaming the overcrowding on an “inefficient” software system. Overcrowding of the Dallas County jail could worsen if Proposition 3 is passed.
Of the over 200 Texas county jails in operation, nearing capacity has been a common occurrence and ongoing issue, which has caused some county jails to outsource incarcerated people to private prisons or out of state. Tarrant County jail had a contract with a private prison in West Texas to outsource incarcerated people in an attempt to resolve overcrowding, which ended in 2024 after the private prison failed its state inspection for not meeting minimum state jail standards set forth by the Texas Commission on Jail Standards. Harris County spends over $50 million per year outsourcing incarcerated people to Mississippi and Louisiana due to overcrowding and understaffing.
Outsourcing is an additional hefty cost to taxpayers in a state that has one of the largest pretrial detention populations in the U.S. In Dallas, it costs about $88 per day to house a person in Lew Sterrett Justice Center, and roughly $18 million per year based on the Dallas jail population…