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At each Hays County Commissioners Court meeting, Hays County Judge Ruben Becerra updates the community on the Hays County Jail population and outsourcing costs.
The most recent report covered April 28 through May 4.
“The Sheriff’s Office sends my office a report of our inmate population,” Becerra said at last week’s meeting. “Our jail capacity currently has a 410 [inmate] capacity. Jail standards recommend us holding approximately 10% of that capacity open, which lowers our capacity to 368.”
Becerra said the jail's daily average was 534 inmates, and the peak was 545 inmates on May 2.
“The estimated cost for outsourcing inmates this week is $161,399,” Becerra said. “Paper ready inmates - we have a total of 37 that have gone through our court system, our judicial system, have had their day in court, have been found guilty and are now state inmates.”
According to the Hays County website, the Hays County Jail Dashboard is a result of the partnership be- tween Hays County and the Vera Institute of Justice and was launched in Spring 2020. The dashboard has various additional jail population information and was updated on May 12.
The dashboard stated that 496 people or 92.9% of the jail population had a felony as the most severe charge, 6.9% had a misdemeanor as the most severe charge and 0.2% had a hybrid or unspecified charge. It stated that 408 people or 76% of the jail population was held pretrial, 15% were sentenced, 7.9% were pretrial U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement inmates, 8.4% had parole violations and 0.2% were sentenced ICE cases. The pretrial length of stay for inmates is as follows: 7.8% were held less than a week, 21.8% were held from one week to under a month, 15% were held six months to a year, 7.6% were held one year to three years and 0.2% were held for more than three years. The length of stay for sentenced inmates was also listed: 7.1% were held less than a week, 12.7% were held one week to under a month, 57.1% were held from one month to under six months, 18.3% were held from six months to under a year, 4% were held from one year to under three years and 0.8% were held for three or more years.
The dashboard also lists information about race, ethnicity and gender of the inmate population. The majority of the jail population is men with 87.6%, and there are 12.4% women. Hispanic men make up 47.8% of the population (18.8% of the resident population), white men are 24.7% (25.8% of the resident population), Black men are 13.1% (2% of the resident population), Hispanic women are 5.8% (18.7% of the resident population), white women are 4.7% (26.7% of the resident population), Black women are 1.5% (1.8% of the resident population), Hispanic Black men are 1.1% (0.4% of the resident population) and Hispanic men of other races are 0.6% of the jail population (1% of the resident population).
The dashboard can be found at hayscountytx. com/jaildashboard.
