Houston County Jail Inmate Roster Lookup

Houston County Jail Overview

Houston County Jail is operated by the Houston County Sheriff's Office at 700A South 4th Street in Crockett. The sheriff's office is the agency behind the official current inmate list, the jail contact number, the open-records request route, and the IVSS custody-notification link published for Houston County. The county source identifies Zak Benge as Sheriff and lists Donavan Mahan as Jail Administrator, with the jail located at the same South 4th Street address as the sheriff's office.

The facility is a county jail, not a state prison. Its population includes adult pretrial detainees, people held on felony or misdemeanor charges, people serving local sentences, inmates held on warrants or detainers, federal inmates reported in the county jail population, and people waiting for transfer. A person housed here may have an active county booking card, bond line, and jail location label. A person who has already been sentenced and moved to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice should be searched through TDCJ instead, especially if they are at J. Dale Wainwright Unit.

Houston County Jail Capacity and Population

The Texas Commission on Jail Standards current inmate population workbook is the strongest source for Houston County Jail population figures. The Houston County row for June 1, 2026 lists a rated capacity of 144 beds and a total jail population of 131. That is about 91.0 percent of rated capacity. TCJS treats this as a first-of-month point-in-time report, so it should not be read as annual bookings, a monthly total, or a daily average.

The June 2026 row also separates some custody categories. Extracted figures include local male pretrial Class A/B misdemeanants, local pretrial felons by sex, and a federal-inmate category. That matters because the total jail count is mixed. It is not just a list of people arrested by local deputies, and it is not the same thing as the state-prison population at Wainwright. Earlier 2026 TCJS point-in-time totals moved from 121 on January 1 to 111 on February 1, 114 on March 1, 105 on April 1, 114 on May 1, and 131 on June 1, all against the same 144-bed capacity.

How to Look Up an Inmate at Houston County Jail

Use the official Houston County Inmate List for current county jail custody. The roster is free and does not require a login. It uses one search box for name, booking number, or inmate number, and it lets users sort by name, booking number, arrest date, or bond amount. The live cards inspected from the county system showed booking photos, booking numbers, inmate numbers, custody status, public jail location labels, arrest dates, and charge-by-charge bond lines.

1. Open the official Houston County Inmate List from the sheriff's current-inmates link.
2. Start with a last name, then narrow with a first name, booking number, or inmate number if too many cards appear.
3. Check the status and location fields to confirm that the record is a current Houston County Jail entry.
4. Read the charge and bond lines carefully; a zero-dollar bond line may need confirmation from the jail or court.
5. If no record appears, call the sheriff's office, use the open-records channel, check IVSS for notifications, or search TDCJ, BOP, or ICE if custody may have moved.

Houston County Jail Address and Contact

For jail custody questions, call the Houston County Sheriff's Office at the published jail/sheriff phone number. No separate booking-desk line, public lobby schedule, visitor parking map, or ADA entrance instruction was located in the inspected county sources, so time-sensitive questions should be confirmed before travel. For written public-information requests, the sheriff page directs requesters to the sheriff's office by mail, hand delivery, or email.

Visiting Someone at Houston County Jail

The inspected Houston County sheriff pages did not publish a public visitation schedule, video-visitation vendor, visitor ID rule, dress code, attorney-visitation schedule, or lobby hours. Because those details were not located in official text, do not rely on third-party schedules or commercial directory listings. Call 936-544-2862 before traveling, ask whether the person is still eligible for visits, and follow posted jail-security instructions at the facility.

Mail, Phone, and Money at Houston County Jail

The sheriff page links an official 2024 Inmate Mail Correspondence Procedures PDF. The research notes did not extract readable rule text from that PDF, so the safest wording is to cite the PDF as the official local mail source without restating unverified details. The inspected sheriff page did not publish a phone provider, video provider, commissary vendor, deposit fee table, or accepted payment methods. Tiger Commissary appeared in broader web results, but no Houston County fee data was captured in official text for this build.

Booking and Intake at Houston County Jail

Houston County does not publish a step-by-step jail intake manual in the inspected sheriff pages, but the roster shows the public record produced by intake. A local arrest typically results in identification, a booking number, an inmate number, arrest date entry, a booking photograph if available, charge and bond lines, status, and a public location or block label. Live roster examples included labels such as hold-2, f-1, f-2, e-2, h-1, d-1, and violent cell; those should be treated as public roster labels rather than a complete housing map.

Bond and court action may change after booking. Texas initial-appearance rules require an arrested person to be taken before a magistrate for warnings and related decisions, and formal charges may later differ from roster charge language. For a deeper jail-record search after a person is no longer visible on the current roster, the practical path is to start with Houston County jail inmate records, then use the sheriff's open-records request route if the current roster no longer answers the question.

Records Requests and IVSS Notifications

The sheriff page gives a specific open-records route under Texas Government Code Chapter 552. Requesters can send Public Information Act requests to Zak Benge, Houston County Sheriff's Office, 700A South 4th Street, Crockett, Texas 75835, or email hcso@co.houston.tx.us. A request should identify the person and the record type as clearly as possible, such as a booking record, arrest report, jail roster entry, bond record, or booking photograph. No sheriff records fee schedule or processing timeline was located in the inspected county source.

Houston County also links Texas IVSS Counties for custody-status notifications. The county describes IVSS as a victim-notification service that updates offender status changes 24 hours a day and provides the toll-free number 866-268-8959. IVSS is useful for notice of major custody changes, but it is not a substitute for the live roster, a jail phone call, a clerk record, or a Public Information Act request.

About Houston County Jail

Houston County Jail is part of the sheriff's office rather than a separate county corrections department. It sits at the South 4th Street law-enforcement address in Crockett, while many court records after arrest route to courthouse offices on East Houston Avenue. The jail's public-facing record environment is narrow but useful: a current roster, a sheriff contact page, an IVSS link, a mail-procedure PDF, and state TCJS population reports. The official pages inspected did not publish a local jail construction history, education or treatment program list, detailed medical procedure, grievance procedure, or work-release program description.

For population context, TCJS reporting shows Houston County Jail as a 144-bed facility with a June 1, 2026 point-in-time population of 131. For individual lookup, the county roster remains the first source while the person is currently in local custody. For historical or missing records, use the sheriff's Public Information Act channel. For sentenced state prisoners, use TDCJ. Keeping those systems separate prevents the most common lookup mistake: searching a current county jail roster for someone who has already left local custody.