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Virus concerns reduce jail outsourcing options

Hays County inmate outsourcing reduced with termination of Travis County agreement
Thursday, May 28, 2020

Hays County released roughly a third of its inmates to reduce the spread of COVID-19 and prior to the termination of its outsourcing contract with the Travis County Jail on April 30.

Jails across the state and country including Hays and Travis counties have been working to release low-level offenders to reduce spreading of the virus. In taking these measures, Travis County Sheriff Sally Hernandez let Hays County Judge Ruben Becerra and Hays County Sheriff Gary Cutler know on April 14 that it was no longer feasible to house inmates from other counties as Travis County tries to keep COVID-19 out of its jail. The contract ended on April 30. 

Travis County began housing Hays County inmates in October 2019 to ease overcrowding until the new Hays County Jail opened, which was meant to happen this month. 

Reflecting the exponential population growth in Hays County, the county inmate population grew 74%, faster than the county’s population as a whole which grew at 42% according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Hays County has been outsourcing inmates for more than a decade, a cost that has exponentially increased since then. There was a 7,000% increase from $68,000 in 2014 to $4.3 million in 2017.

In 2020, the weekly cost of outsourcing inmates hovers around the annual cost for 2014 and the daily cost is somewhere between $9,000 to $12,000.

Under the agreement, Hays County was paying Travis County $2,000 a day to hold up to 50 of its inmates at a time or $40 per inmate per day.

Hays County still has outsourcing agreements with Burnett, Caldwell, Fort Bend, Guadalupe and Walker counties to outsource its 130 inmates that tip the population count over capacity. This figure is down from more than 200 inmates it was outsourcing in early March. 

San Marcos Record

(512) 392-2458
P.O. Box 1109, San Marcos, TX 78666