<\/p>\n
The Lew Sterrett Justice Center, which includes the county jail. More than 70 inmates have died in the Dallas County Jail since 2018. Photo taken in October 2025.<\/p>\n
El\u00edas Valverde II\/Staff Photographer<\/p>\n
Dallas County has struggled for years to release people from jail<\/a> on time, leaving them behind bars for weeks and months past the end of their sentences. Texas is now testing a new technology aimed at fixing part of the problem.\u00a0<\/p>\n Instead of emailing paperwork to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to initiate a person\u2019s release from jail or transfer to a state facility, an electronic portal launched Friday allows the sheriff\u2019s office to upload documents to a shared system and track the processing in real time. \u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n The portal may help those whose release documents, called pen packets, get stuck in limbo after the sheriff\u2019s office sends them to the state. But the technology won\u2019t prevent overstays caused by operational problems within Dallas County that have led to people remaining behind bars well past their sentences.\u00a0<\/p>\n On Feb. 12, Kenneth Offutt walked out of the Dallas County jail 108 days after he completed his sentence<\/a> because the sheriff\u2019s office failed to send his pen packet to the state months earlier. Sheriff spokesperson Doug Sisk said at the time the department\u2019s \u201ccheck and balance procedure did not occur and is being addressed.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n TDCJ spokesperson Amanda Hernandez confirmed the portal requires the sheriff\u2019s office to take the first step of uploading a pen packet because that is how the state is alerted to act on a case. Sisk did not respond to questions on Wednesday asking what Sheriff Marian Brown is doing to prevent staff from failing to timely send documentation to the state. \u00a0<\/p>\n Dallas County Sheriff Marian Brown speaks during a press conference at Dallas Police Headquarters on Thursday, Oct. 21, 2021, in Dallas. The Dallas Police Department, Dallas County Sheriff\u2019s Department and Dallas County Constable\u2019s office announced a collaboration to help provide victims of domestic violence with information and resources to escape their abusers. (Elias Valverde II\/The Dallas Morning News)<\/p>\n Elias Valverde II\/Staff Photographer<\/p>\n Cases of overstays spiked after May 2023 when the county\u2019s criminal courts began using case management software called Odyssey. Technical blunders prevented attorneys from accessing their clients\u2019 cases. Court clerks couldn\u2019t send critical paperwork to the jail<\/a>. And people who were supposed to be free were stuck behind bars.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n Make Dallas News a preferred source so your search results prioritize writing by actual people, not AI.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Add Preferred Source<\/p>\n <\/a><\/p>\n Attorney Jim Spangler, who has represented numerous clients in over-detention lawsuits against the county, said he has seen improvements at the district clerk\u2019s office. He said he is reviewing 12 cases of people released weeks late from jail in 2026 and late 2025 \u2013 most of which, he said, were due to the sheriff\u2019s office not sending pen packets to the state in time. \u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cI really find it just disappointing that the sheriff still hasn’t addressed this,\u201d Spangler said. \u201cIf you had asked me a year ago if this still would be happening, I\u2019d say no way.\u201d \u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Since 2023, Dallas County has paid more than a quarter-million dollars to settle at least six jail over-detention claims. There are at least three federal lawsuits pending from four plaintiffs alleging they were held in jail 21, 30, 76 and 183 days too long.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n In some of those lawsuits, plaintiffs alleged the district clerk failed to send court documents to the sheriff\u2019s office so the jail could get the pen packet to the state.\u00a0<\/p>\n After the criminal courts switched to the Odyssey software, the jail remained on its separate network called Adult Information Systems. The two systems cannot communicate, prompting the district clerk\u2019s office to rely on hand-delivering paperwork to the sheriff\u2019s office within the same building after a sentencing. \u00a0<\/p>\n District Clerk Felicia Pitre said she\u2019s working with the county IT to develop a way to move documents between the district clerk and sheriff\u2019s offices electronically. She has said email proved unreliable, which is why she requires jail staff to sign off on receipt of the hand-deliveries. \u00a0<\/p>\n Last fall, Brown, the sheriff, told the Commissioners Court she wanted to upgrade the jail\u2019s current software rather than transition the jail to Odyssey after witnessing the painful\u00a0rollout in the courts. But representatives of Odyssey\u2019s vendor have told county officials its software won\u2019t be compatible with the one preferred by the sheriff even after an upgrade. \u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n In some cases, the state has returned pen packets to the county for corrections before a release could happen after clerks inserted errors on a judgment, such as the wrong degree of an offense or wrong penal code. In one pending lawsuit, a plaintiff alleges the district clerk\u2019s office in 2023 miscalculated his time-served credit on a judgment, causing him to stay in jail six months too long. \u00a0<\/p>\n District Attorney John Creuzot added safeguards to help prevent such processing delays. \u00a0<\/p>\n In eight of the 17 felony courts, Creuzot said prosecutors instead of clerks are now creating judgment paperwork. He said that helps prevent errors and eliminates delays in getting the judge to sign the paperwork so it can be moved to the jail.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWhat we\u2019re trying to do is put our eyes on it and get it done correctly to give it to the judge to sign immediately,\u201d Creuzot said. \u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n But delays in the jail appear to continue, according to Dallas defense attorney Tom Cox. \u00a0<\/p>\n Cox said a client was sentenced in October to five years in a state facility with two years of credit for time served. Instead of being transferred immediately, he remained in the Dallas County jail for six more months because the sheriff\u2019s office did not send his pen packet to the state until late March, according to Cox.\u00a0<\/p>\n A person becomes a candidate for parole from a state facility after serving \u00a0\u00bc of their sentence, meaning Cox\u2019s client would have been eligible for release upon arriving in state custody. But because he was not picked up by TDCJ for six months, that process could not be initiated until he arrived at a state facility in April.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cHis freedom was directly being restricted, hampered, reduced by this delay,\u201d said Cox, noting he called the sheriff\u2019s office a dozen times to inquire about the case with no response.\u00a0<\/p>\n Article continues below this ad<\/p>\n By signing up, you agree to our Terms Of Use<\/a> and acknowledge that your information will be used as described in our Privacy Policy<\/a>.<\/p>\n Hernandez, the spokesperson for\u00a0TDCJ, said the portal will give counties and the state \u201cfull transparency\u201d to track where each pen packet stands in the review and scheduling process. \u00a0<\/p>\n She said attorneys will not have access to the portal, meaning representatives of incarcerated people still in jail past their sentence will not be able to tell what\u2019s causing the delay after pen packets are transmitted.\u00a0<\/p>\n After a 60-day trial, Hernandez said TDCJ plans to extend the tool to other counties currently using hand delivery, email or the postal service for sending paperwork to the state.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Lew Sterrett Justice Center, which includes the county jail. More than 70 inmates have died in the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":282703,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[27,29,28],"class_list":["post-282702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-texas","tag-texas","tag-texas-headlines","tag-texas-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282702","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=282702"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/282702\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/282703"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=282702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=282702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=282702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
![\"image\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-tx\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/04\/1775016909_917_rawImage.jpg\" "\\"#\\"")
<\/p>\n