Hi, I'm Charlie Roadman, Austin criminal defense attorney, and today we're going to talk about looking up people on the Travis County inmate website.

Okay, so here are the things that you can find out while looking up the person on the inmate website. First, if the person is in Travis County Jail, so if they're in Travis county jail, they're going to be listed on this website. You're going to be able to find out what charge they're being held on, because it'll list it. You're going to find out whether they are in Travis County Jail downtown, which also called TCJ, or if they're being held at the jail that's out in Del Valle by the airport, which they call the Travis County Correctional Complex.

You're also going to be able to see the date and time of arrest and whether they've been magistrated. And that means whether a judge has set their bond and informed them what they're being charged with. And then if a bond has been set and how much it is. Then also you're going to be able to find out what type of bond is acceptable. And there's really only three types. There's a personal bond, a surety bond, or a cash deposit bond. And there's also paying the full amount in cash, but there's the three bonds. And usually it'll say any type of bond, which means it can be any of those, personal, surety, which is a bail bondsman or a cash deposit bond. Sometimes it'll say surety only, meaning they can't do a personal bond. And the last thing you'll see at the bottom is disposition, meaning what's happened. And that's either going to show that a bond has been posted. So for example, it might say personal bond, meaning that's already been posted. Or if their case is resolved, like a sentence, like a jail, or something like that.

So let's look at the website. Here it is. When you get there, you just put in the person's name, and you'll notice that all you really need is the last name, and actually all you need is a few letters. If you type in J O then everybody that starts with J O will be listed and then you find the person you're looking for and click on them. So here's a situation of someone who's just been arrested and you can see that they're in Travis County Jail, which means downtown. Then you can see it's a driving while intoxicated charge. And you can see that the bond is set at zero, meaning they haven't been magistrated, no bond has been set, because when a bond is set that'll be a number there, 2000, 5000, 10000, whatever. But right now he has not been magistrated and you can see the disposition that says none, meaning no bond has been posted. So he's just there. And this is fairly common for someone that's just been arrested and this look like this for 10 hours or 12 hours, depending on how long it takes the officer to turn in the probable cause affidavit and for the judge to read it and magistrate them and set the bond amount. So this is what it'll look like if they've just recently been arrested.

Now this other person here, we see that they've already been magistrated, and the bond is set at 5,000 and they put any type of bond, meaning they're eligible for a personal bond, but of course you can get a surety bond as well or someone could go down to the jail and pay that entire amount of cash, all $5,000 cash. This person, here you'll see in the facility, it says Travis County Correctional Complex. And that is what I mentioned out at Del Valle by the airport.

Now this is what you'll see if the person is not in the jail at all. It just says no information available. And that is useful to know when someone's been released, because when you search for them, they just won't show up and that means have walked out of the jail.

All right. I hope that's helpful. Good luck. Call us if you have any questions.