It now costs more than $95 a day to keep someone in Dallas County's Lew Sterrett Justice Center jail.
That’s more than $650,000 per day and $20 million per month for the current 6,924 detainees.
It had been about $88 per day — about $18 million dollars a month. In 2024 the cost was $85 daily.
Now it's $20 million monthly.
Commissioner John Wiley Price says the number of people detained has gone up as well.
"We got 400 more detained individuals than we had this time last year," he said. "The daily cost has gone from $88 to $95.58, which is $7 and 11% increase over last year."
The sheriff’s department has been expediting eligible releases to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice prisons and institutions to lower the jail population.
But the jail and court computer systems still are not completely compatible, making case adjudication difficult.
In 2023 the county began migrating case files from the 40-year-old Forvis criminal case management software system (Forvis) to Tyler Technologies’ Odyssey criminal case management software system.
Forvis was retired before Odyssey was fully operational.
Inefficient Odyssey user training allegedly led to delays in releasing inmates.
Dallas County commissioners unanimously approved the new Odyssey jail and court software implementation, although some commissioners expressed concerns about rushing.
Commissioner Elba Garcia had reminded the court that she and others were hesitant.
Many say the transition has been a financial, legal and law enforcement disaster.
Jail staff have been handwriting paperwork to process inmates.
The county had spent more than $1 million dollars so far trying to untangle the snags and commissioners demanded answers from Tyler Technologies.
Now, Senate Bill 9 is also contributing to high jail populations.
The bill, passed in the most recent legislative session, requires bail reform, often making procedures and jail release on bail difficult and delayed.
Chief Public Defender Christina Dean said the county recently held its first Senate Bill 9 hearing.
"The proxy judges are handling one of the two dockets," she said. "Some of the district court judges are requiring that you go to the proxy judge docket. Some are allowing the proxy judge docket or other district court judges to hear the SB9 cases.
That's a little bit confusing not to have a uniform procedure," she said. "But we're working through it."
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