WHY IT’S GETTING HARDER TO BUST INTO THE COMAL COUNTY JAIL It’s getting harder to get into the Comal County Jail. For the past few weeks, the Comal County Jail has gone back and forth between having, and suspending, its weekend jail program due to overcrowding. Many defendants who receive jail sentences in misdemeanor cases wind up serving those sentences as part of the weekend jail program. Weekend jail is just what the name implies.
It’s a jail sentence that you knock out on the weekends, leaving the rest of the week to go to back to work. But due to jail overcrowding, many weekenders are now showing up at the jail on Friday evening, only to be turned away after being told that there are no available cells for them. They are then instructed to keep showing up every weekend until a bed becomes open. This situation is not likely to improve much any time soon.
The Comal County Jail was constructed approximately a quarter of a century ago, in large part in response to a (wait for it...) jail overcrowding lawsuit. Now that the population of the county has grown, and prisoners are backed up waiting to be processed into the equally overcrowded Texas prison system, the cells are once more stuffed to capacity. Inmates are constantly filing suit trying to get out of jail. Perhaps someone wanting to get their weekend time done sometime this decade will sue in order to get in.