Irving is putting a judge back between arrest and jail transfer, restoring a process that can determine whether someone posts bail from the city detention facility or gets swept into Dallas County’s much larger system. The move comes just before a county booking rule threatens to make the old arrangement far more expensive and difficult to maintain.
On Thursday, the Irving City Council directed staff to restart magistration hearings in the city jail for defendants facing all charges, reversing a policy that had pushed most felony and higher-level misdemeanor arrestees toward the Dallas County jail. The decision was first reported by The Dallas Morning News.
Irving municipal judges had conducted these first-appearance hearings for decades, but stopped in May 2024. Since then, many people arrested in Irving had to be transferred to the Lew Sterrett Justice Center and booked again before seeing a judge, a detour that could add time to an already consequential wait.
Irving Plans To Spend Nearly $800,000 On The Restart
The city estimates that restoring magistration will cost about $796,000. Irving plans to hire one additional full-time judge, one part-time judge and two clerks to handle the hearings, while its existing jail has capacity for 172 adult prisoners, according to the City of Irving…