Texas is home to the highest number of jails and prisons and the number is increasing by the decade but it’s taking longer to build and open them.

So what’s behind a delay in opening a new detention center/sheriff’s office in Deaf Smith County? When are county leaders hoping to have the $32-million dollar facility open?

“So we're looking at August 1,” said D.J. Wagner, Deaf Smith County judge.

Judge Wagner on when the county hopes to open its new sheriff’s office and jail. A number of delays are pushing back the opening.

“With the construction boom, the lack of workers all of that has set us back,” said Wagner. We have had some supply chain issues with everyone shutting down their factories in the COVID time.”

“We also had a delay in the prison system where we're getting our furniture from,” said J. Dale Butler, Deaf Smith County Sheriff. “They had an escape and then everything was shut down so were now just starting to get our furniture pulled in which is a big delay right now.”

Sheriff Butler tells ABC 7 News that the county is farming out inmates due to capacity limits at the current jail built in the late 1950s. Each day the county spends between $45 and $75 a day per inmate to house them at other jails.

“The jail here is pretty much at capacity and we’ve got anywhere between 20 and 30 people housed at other places,” said Butler.

“The last couple of years we’ve barely met our standards to keep our existing jail open because it’s such an old facility,” said Wagner. “We would really be hamstringed to find a place for all those inmates to go and it’s overcrowded we have more inmates than we do space.”

The final step in the process is for Deaf Smith County to send off a letter to the state’s Jail Standards, once they receive the letter they will have anywhere between two and four weeks to set up an appointment and come and do an inspection on the jail.

Deaf Smith County is having to hire extra staff to run the new jail and is planning to host a job fair this summer. The new facility requires employees to become licensed and certified jailers.