Tarrant County commissioners could cancel a contract on Wednesday with the private jail company that it has used to house its overflow inmate population.
That private jail, located about four hours west of Fort Worth in Garza County, failed to meet multiple Texas jail standards during a recent review, and its administrators also failed to inform Tarrant County of the concerns, according to Tarrant County Judge Tim O’Hare.
“They didn’t notify me, they didn’t notify the sheriff, they didn’t notify the county administrator,” O’Hare said of Utah-based Management and Training Corporation (MTC), which runs the Giles W. Dalby Correctional Facility in Garza County. “We found out from the media, which as you can probably guess is unacceptable.”
In its meeting on February 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.
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Tarrant County paid MTC around $40 million to send overflow inmate populations to the Dalby facility since August 2022.
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.
If commissioners do not cancel the contract outright, they may opt to extend the contract only until December of this year, at which point renovations are set to be finished at another county jail facility on Cold Springs Road in Fort Worth. That building would then be used to house overflow inmates.
