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Smith County, Texas · from holding to building

From holding to building

Holding people with nothing to do is expensive, and it can be deadly. This page lays out what works — here and around the world — to give people in jail something real to do: learn a trade, grow and cook food, build for the community. Every figure is sourced; proposals are labeled as proposals. Updated 2026-09-26.

Why it matters

Suicide was the leading single cause of death in U.S. jails in 2019, at 49 deaths per 100,000 people held. Bureau of Justice Statistics
Release is the most dangerous moment: in Washington State, people's risk of death in their first two weeks out was 12.7 times that of other residents — and 129 times for drug overdose. New England Journal of Medicine, 2007
Holding people with nothing to do costs money and hope. In Clark and Garland counties, Arkansas, and Smith County, Texas, the jail runs about $75 to $79 a bed a day.

The Smith County jail — the facts

The jail is the single largest line in Smith County’s General Fund — and it already runs one of the region’s best-known jail gardens.

Cost	$32,878,761 for FY2026-27 — about 27 cents of every General Fund dollar, up from $30,987,936 the year before. Smith County FY2026-27 Budget (posted as “FY 2027 Proposed Budget”), p. 83
Beds	1,139: Central Jail 660, Low/Medium Risk 432, Courthouse 5th floor 47 — about $79 a bed a day. Smith County FY2025-26 Adopted Budget, jail facilities section
Overflow	The county has contracted with other Texas counties to house inmates beyond its capacity, to stay in compliance with state jail standards (Docket #12). Smith County FY2025-26 Adopted Budget, jail facilities section
Garden	Jail inmates run a garden on Highway 155 and give all of the produce to the East Texas Food Bank — in excess of 160,000 pounds, the food bank’s CEO estimated. The sheriff says people line up wanting to work in it. KETK, June 2023
Standards	Not on the Texas Commission on Jail Standards’ list of non-compliant jails as of Sept 26, 2026. TCJS
Classes	No education or trade-credential program inside the jail was found documented on a primary source (Docket #11).

The closest state prisons — the nearest by distance (the state assigns prisons by classification, not distance)

Moore, B. Unit Overton · Prison	19 miles
Bradshaw Unit Henderson · Prison/ISF	31 miles
Skyview Unit Rusk · Prison	41 miles

Straight-line miles from the county’s Census center point to each TDCJ unit’s city (Census place point); Beto, Coffield, and Michael are placed at Anderson County’s center. Sources: TDCJ unit directory · Census Gazetteer 2024

Our proposals — proposed by County Commons

Turn the garden into a credential

The garden already works and people ask to join it. Add what makes it last: a Tyler Junior College certificate in horticulture, food safety, or equipment operation, earned in the garden and the kitchen and continued after release.

Why here: At $32.9 million a year, even a small drop in people coming back is real money — and the county’s own college is right here.

First step: Ask the sheriff and commissioners court to pilot one short certificate with Tyler Junior College for garden and kitchen crews, tracked by who comes back and who gets hired.

KETK, June 2023 · RAND, 2013 · Office of Justice Programs

Weigh in on the open question →

An offered work crew that builds homes

Every morning the crew is offered: wake up, eat, and go build — or stay in the cell. Crew members earn pay and real credentials working alongside a licensed builder on homes for local families, through a partner like Habitat for Humanity or a community land trust. Some will stick with it after release; either way, the community gets stronger.

People in the jail	1,139 beds (population not published)
If 40% choose the crew	depends on who is eligible and chooses it
Labor per modest 1,200 sq ft house (trainee crew, ordinary construction)	2,000–3,000 hours
Houses a year the crew could build	scales with the crew — dozens a year are possible if funded

The honest limits:

Labor isn’t the limit — money is. At the national average of about $162 a square foot, a 1,200 sq ft house costs roughly $190,000 to build; materials, licensed electricians and plumbers, permits, and land still need funding.
Most people are held for weeks, so the crew is always partly new; it needs paid, trained crew leads — often people who stayed on after release.
Houses given to families work best through a nonprofit or land trust; what a county itself may give away is a question for a lawyer.

BLS Bulletin 1755 — labor per house · NAHB, 2024 construction cost survey

A door you can walk in

Some people know they need structure before a crime ever happens. Offer a voluntary live-in program — housing, work, training, recovery — that a person can choose to enter and is free to leave. Choosing structure without a record is honor preserved.

The honest limits:

Nobody can be locked up without a crime or a court order, so it must stay a door that opens both ways.
“Voluntary” can be bent by desperation or a judge’s pressure; the design must guard against both.
Residents’ work must be paid and for their own growth — never unpaid labor for a company.

Bexar County diversion · Job Corps (CrimeSolutions)

These are proposals, labeled as ones. The facts above stand on their own; what to do is for residents and the people they elect to decide.

What works around the world — and what each is good for

Keep out people who don’t need to be there

Miami-Dade, Florida. Its court sends people in mental-health crisis to treatment instead of jail. Judge Steve Leifman says reoffending fell from 75% to 20% for misdemeanors and from 75% to 6% for felonies. WLRN, 2025
Bexar County, Texas. Its diversion center lets people choose treatment instead of jail — “a choice: jail or diversion.” San Antonio Report
Portugal. Since 2001, possessing drugs for personal use has been handled by health-focused “dissuasion commissions” instead of criminal courts. Transform Drug Policy Foundation

Keep people alive

Rhode Island. After it began offering addiction medications throughout its correctional system, overdose deaths among recently released people fell 60.5%. Treating about 11 people prevented one death. JAMA Psychiatry, 2018

Make life inside like life outside

Germany. Its prison law says life inside should resemble ordinary life as far as possible. Strafvollzugsgesetz §3
Norway. Builds its prisons on a “principle of normality” — people keep their rights, and services come from the same community services everyone uses. Justice Trends
Bastøy, Norway. An island prison reached only by ferry, where people live in wooden cottages and work the prison farm. Bastøy Prison
In the U.S.. Pennsylvania opened a “Little Scandinavia” unit at SCI Chester, and California renamed San Quentin the San Quentin Rehabilitation Center in 2023, putting rehabilitation and education first. Pennsylvania DOC · Governor of California

Let people run it themselves

Brazil’s APAC prisons. The people held there guard themselves, cook, garden, and hold the keys to the front door, with a small staff. Their low reoffending figures are self-reported. International Bridges to Justice
Amity, California. An in-prison therapeutic community: 43.3% returned to prison within two years, against 67.1% of a comparison group. CrimeSolutions (NIJ)

Repair the harm, and plan the exit

New Zealand. Restorative justice conferences bring the person who did harm together with the people harmed to agree on how to make it right. NZ Ministry of Justice
Singapore. The Yellow Ribbon Project works on employers and neighbors as much as on prisoners. Its two-year reoffending rate for people released in 2023 was 21.9%, down from about 44% two decades earlier. Singapore Prison Service

Grow it, cook it, give it — how the land pays the community back

Jails and prisons often sit on open land. Used well, that land feeds the facility, feeds families through food banks, and teaches a trade — and people ask to do the work.

Smith County, Texas. Jail inmates run a garden on Highway 155 and give all of the produce to the East Texas Food Bank — in excess of 160,000 pounds, its CEO estimated. The sheriff: people are “sitting in line at the jail, wanting to get out here and work.” KETK, June 2023
Garland County, Arkansas. The detention center sits on 57 acres and is a University of Arkansas Division of Agriculture site, donating thousands of pounds of produce to Project Hope Food Bank. Garland County — Detention Center
Washington State Penitentiary. Its gardeners donated 243,822 pounds of produce to a local food bank. Sustainability in Prisons Project
Georgia. Prison farms grow 43% of the food served to 60,000 people in 86 facilities — and all of the beef, pork, eggs, and milk — cutting what taxpayers spend on food. Nation’s Restaurant News
The Clink (UK). Training restaurants inside prisons. A UK government evaluation found graduates committed fewer reoffenses — 23 per 100 people in a year, against 37 for a matched group — though about the same share reoffended at all. UK Justice Data Lab

The evidence on education and work

People who took part in education while locked up had 43% lower odds of coming back — about 13 percentage points less risk. RAND, 2013
Trade training did the most for jobs: employment after release was 28% higher than for people with no education inside. Office of Justice Programs
Educating 100 people inside costs $140,000 to $174,400 and cuts their reincarceration costs by $870,000 to $970,000 — roughly $5 to $7 back for every $1. RAND research brief
Federal Pell Grants were restored for people in prison on July 1, 2023, through approved programs run by accredited colleges. U.S. Dept. of Education

Jails aren’t prisons: in 2023, 70% of people in U.S. jails hadn’t been convicted, and the average stay was 32 days. Degrees fit prisons; jails fit short credentials that continue at a college after release. BJS, Jail Inmates 2023

The lines that keep it honest

Offered, never forced. Work or sit in the cell — the person chooses, and most people in jail haven’t been convicted of anything.
Paid, and the credential is in the person’s own name — it travels with them.
For the community, not for private profit: food goes to food banks and the jail’s own kitchen, houses to families — no unpaid labor for companies.
Safe work: shade, water, and rest in the heat; real training before real tools.
An open door: the walk-in version keeps the right to leave.

The hard edges:

The 13th Amendment still allows forced labor as punishment for a crime. Regular prison jobs in Arkansas and Texas are unpaid; nationally, incarcerated workers average 13 to 52 cents an hour. 13th Amendment · Prison Policy Initiative · ACLU, 2022
Prison farming has an ugly history here. Arkansas’s Cummins Unit was built in 1902 on land bought from the Cummins and Maple Grove plantations. Any program has to break from that, not repeat it. Encyclopedia of Arkansas — Cummins Unit
Courts in Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas, and Missouri sent men to a “rehab” program where most worked full time at a poultry company. Training that becomes cheap labor for someone else isn’t regeneration. Reveal, 2017
Some licenses bar people with records; federal rules forbid Pell-funded programs from training for jobs state law closes to them — so training must aim at credentials people can use. 34 CFR 668.236

Related: Commonwealth · Grow-ops · Our water. This page shows facts, evidence, and labeled proposals; it doesn’t decide for anyone. Spot an error? Report it.