Tarrant County seeking exit from contract with private prison used to house inmates

Tarrant County plans to exit its deal with a private jail that the county has used to house prisoners since 2022.

The decision comes after a state review found the Giles W. Dalby Correctional Facility in Garza County didn’t meet Texas jail standards, and Tarrant County leaders say they weren’t told about the discrepancies.

Located four hours west of Fort Worth, the Dalby private prison run by Utah-based Management and Training Corporation has been used to house Tarrant inmates since August 2022.

Since that time, the county has allocated $40 million to send overflow inmate populations to the Dalby facility.

“We found out that they were not in compliance with minimum jail standards,” said Tarrant County Judge Tim O’Hare.

A December review by the Texas Commission on Jail Standards found the Dalby jail was deficient in six categories, including Life Safety, Health Services, and Supervision.

Tarrant County leaders told NBC 5 that the Dalby facility didn’t alert the county about the report, in violation of the contract between Management and Training Corporation and the county.

In its meeting on Feb. 6, the Tarrant County Board of Commissioners voted to send notice to MTC that Tarrant County plans to leave its contract to house prisoners at Dalby.

“They didn’t notify me, they didn’t notify the sheriff, they didn’t notify the county administrator,” O’Hare said of MTC. “We found out from the media, which as you can probably guess is unacceptable.”

NBC 5 asked the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office for a response to the planned move.

“There is no place in Tarrant County Jail to house the inmates that are currently in the Dalby unit,” TCSO responded in a statement. “To bring them back immediately would put our jail out of compliance with state standards.”

“The commissioners likely would not want to force their county jail into a compliance issue with the state,” TCSO continued.

Last week the Tarrant County Board of Commissioners also voted to seek alternative detention options for prisoners.

But reform advocates told NBC 5 that instead of pursuing that avenue, the county should take steps to reduce the number of prisoners at the Tarrant County jail.

Advocates cited the fact that there have been 60 in-custody deaths reported at the Tarrant County Jail since 2018 and said that many inmates are low-level offenders who can’t afford to pay bail.

“We are criminalizing poverty in Tarrant County,” said Katherine Godby, chair of the Justice Network of Tarrant County. “And I’m talking about people in the jail now who are charged with low-level, non-violent crime.”

Some county leaders said that strategy wouldn’t be considered.

“Neither my office nor a majority of the commissioners are looking at this to see what we can do to reduce the jail population just for the purpose of reducing the jail population,” O’Hare said.

The Tarrant County Judge told NBC 5 there would be multiple options the county could take.

Those included keeping the Dalby contract active until December, when renovations are set to finish at another county jail facility on Cold Springs Road in Fort Worth, then using that building to house overflow inmates.

“I anticipate next Wednesday at our next commissioner's court meeting there will be a pretty lengthy discussion about what to do, what the options are and which way we want to go,” O’Hare said.

NBC 5 reached out repeatedly to MTC, the company that owns the Dalby Correctional Facility, for a response to Tarrant County sending notice that it plans to leave the jail contract. The company has not responded.