Amid a growing conversation on diversion, Bexar County officials say keeping people out of jail will take more than any single solution — as a wide-ranging discussion this week made clear there is no single “silver bullet” for the region’s growing mental health and criminal justice challenges.
During a lengthy Commissioners Court briefing on Tuesday, county leaders pointed to years of investment in diversion and deflection programs designed to steer people away from jail and into treatment.
But they also highlighted persistent gaps — from expiring federal funding and underused treatment beds to delays in the booking process that continue to limit how far those strategies can go.
“There is no one building, no one program. There is no one shot silver bullet solution. This is a complicated multifaceted problem,” said County Judge Peter Sakai. “It is going to take collaboration, a policy program, facilities … and a good discussion about where do we go.”
The system in place
Diversion and deflection are often used interchangeably, but county officials spent much of the briefing drawing a distinction.
By definition, deflection happens before an arrest, when law enforcement directs someone in crisis to services instead of jail. Diversion happens after an arrest, offering alternatives like treatment or supervision instead of continued incarceration.
Both are meant to reduce jail populations and connect people with care, particularly those struggling with mental illness or substance use. County officials say those efforts are working, at least in part.
Programs like the Specialized Multidisciplinary Alternate Response Team, known as SMART — which pairs sheriff’s deputies with paramedics and mental health clinicians — responded to roughly 2,500 mental health calls last year without making arrests, said Eric Epley, CEO of the Southwest Texas Regional Advisory Council (STRAC), which leads the initiative.
Other initiatives, including cite-and-release policies and treatment-based programs, which have helped divert hundreds of people from jail annually.
Officials say those efforts have had a measurable impact, preventing the jail population from growing even larger. In fiscal year 2025, data presented by county officials shows an average jail population of 5,132 inmates, but officials say without diversion and deflection initiatives the average population could have reached 6,121 inmates that year.
One of the most significant issues is the county’s dual magistration system, where some individuals are first processed by the city before being transferred to the county jail to undergo processing again — a delay that can take six to eight hours according to a study commissioned by the county.
During that time, officials say, opportunities to divert individuals into treatment can be missed. A proposal for a joint city-county ad hoc committee to address the need for a diversion center and a solution to dual magistration has been moving forward through government channels in recent months.
A feasibility study led by the region’s mental health authority, the Center for Health Care Services, is underway ahead of upcoming budget discussions for fiscal year 2027.
Elsewhere in the county, at the Applewhite Recovery Center, a campus designed to host a dual-diagnosis residential program that diverts people with substance use and mental health needs out of jail, there is a newly-opened wing with 130 beds, but those beds have yet to be filled.
A gap in funding for medications has slowed the process and has left about 105 individuals who are eligible for release to Applewhite for treatment waiting in the county jail, according to Jarvis Anderson, director of the Bexar County Community Supervision and Corrections Department, who oversees the facility.
County staff said resolving the issue could cost roughly $60,000 for the next three months and would allow those individuals currently in jail to be transferred into treatment while a permanent funding solution with the state plays out. The facility is funded by the state but was built using pandemic-era federal funding from the county.
That funding request is expected to come to the commissioners court in a future meeting from the county’s public health department through its opioid settlement funds — roughly $14.5 million as a part of nationwide legal settlements with drug manufacturers, distributors and retailers for their role in the decades-long opioid crisis across the U.S..
But the public health department will also face its own set of challenges in the coming years as much of the county’s investment in diversion and behavioral health programs are in the department’s budget — roughly $45 million — and have been funded through federal American Rescue Plan Act dollars and opioid settlement funds. Those funding streams are temporary, and officials acknowledged there is no clear plan yet to replace them once they’ve sunset.
“That is currently under evaluation,” Thomas Guerva, deputy county manager told commissioners on Tuesday.
Mounting Pressures in the jail
While officials focused heavily on an overview of diversion, the discussion was driven by mounting pressure inside the jail system itself.
Bexar County has increasingly relied on contracts with other counties to house inmates when local capacity is strained. Last fiscal year, the county spent $4 million housing inmates out of county and budgeted $4.5 million for the practice this year.
Last month, sheriff’s office officials brought forward a request to release some of that funding out of the non-departmental budgetary funds, as Kerr County moved to increase its daily rate from $65 a day to $85 a day per inmate.
In Bexar County, what’s called “paper-ready” inmates — those convicted and awaiting transfer to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice — are often housed out of county while they wait, a process that can take up to 45 days without state reimbursement.
Officials say the practice is becoming more expensive and harder to sustain as more counties compete for limited bed space.
“We see counties get into bidding wars against each other for those available beds,” said Brandon Wood, former executive director of the Texas Commission on Jail Standards. “The reduction in excess capacity across the state has finally reached the point that you cannot simply just pick up the phone and secure 500 beds without any issue.”
Precinct 3 Commissioner Grant Moody, who has criticized the practice, warned that reliance on outside beds comes with a growing price tag and risks.
“If you do find them, there’s gonna be enough competition that the price is gonna go up, which we just saw with Kerr County, “ he said. “That’s if you’re lucky, if not, and you can’t find those beds and then you have a bigger problem.”
Wood cautions that these diversion strategies alone will not be enough to offset long-term demand on the jail system. With Bexar County’s population projected to continue growing in the coming decades, jail capacity needs are expected to rise as well — even if incarceration rates decline.
“Even if you are doing everything that you need to do, you do have to have a plan at some point in the future to provide that additional capacity,” Wood said. “Ensuring that you have proper space for those individuals that you cannot safely release back out in the public is something that we are burdened with.”
