Visiting Someone at the Bowie County Jail. What the County Publishes

The Form Comes Before the Visit

Bowie County publishes one document about visiting its jail, and it is the one that matters most: the Inmate Visitation Request Form, linked from the sheriff’s office page.

The heading on it is “Bi-State/Bowie County Detention Center”, which settles something the rest of the county’s website leaves open. One form covers both buildings. You are not applying to a building, you are applying to the jail.

What the form establishes is the order of things. Visitors have to be on the inmate’s approved visiting list, and this form is how somebody gets on it. It is filled in by the visitor, not by the inmate, and the form says so in capitals. So the first step is not calling about hours. It is getting the form in.

It goes to the jail by mail or by hand:

Bowie County Detention Center
C/O Control
105 W. Front St.
Texarkana, TX 75501

The county publishes no processing time for it, and no way to check whether an application has been approved. That is the first thing worth asking about on the phone.

What the Form Asks You For

More than most county jails ask, and it is worth knowing before you sit down with it.

About the inmate, the form wants the name, an SO number and a housing unit. The county roster is where the housing location comes from, and it carries both an inmate number and a booking number, so check the record first and confirm which of the two the jail wants in the SO field.

About you, it asks for full legal name, current address, telephone, date of birth, sex, race, Social Security number, driver’s license number and issuing state, and your relationship to the inmate. It then asks whether you have been convicted of a crime other than a traffic violation, and for the date and the offense if so.

The form states plainly that the information may be used to complete a National Crime Information Center background check, and that falsifying it can get visitation privileges denied. Both are on the form itself, above the signature line.

None of that is unusual for a county jail. It is worth flagging anyway, because it means a visitation request here is a background check application, and it takes real documents rather than a phone call.

Visitors Under 18

The form is explicit about this, and it is stricter than it first looks.

Anyone under eighteen has to be on the approved visiting list in their own right, and has to be accompanied by a parent or legal guardian who is also approved on that list. Both conditions, not either one. An approved grandparent bringing an approved child does not satisfy it as written, unless that person is the child’s legal guardian.

What the county does not publish is what documents prove any of that at the door, whether a birth certificate is wanted for the child, or whether a guardianship order is needed where the adult is not a parent. Those are worth settling before the trip rather than at the desk.

What the County Still Does Not Publish

The form answers who can visit. It answers nothing about when.

There is no visiting schedule on any Bowie County source: no days, no hours, no visit length, no cap on how many visits a week, and no statement about whether visits are in person or through a video terminal. There is no dress code and no list of what you can carry in. There is no inmate handbook or family guide for this jail, which at most facilities is where all of that would live.

So the honest position is split. The approval process is published and specific. The visit itself is not documented at all.

Why the Schedules You Find Online Do Not Agree

Search for visiting hours here and you will find them stated confidently. Several directory sites list Monday to Friday, 7:30 AM to 9:00 PM, and weekends, 7:30 AM to 2:30 PM, with one thirty minute visit three times a week.

Those pages get one thing right. They describe a request form that is mailed or hand delivered, and that form is real, published by the county, and reproduced above. The hours are a different matter: no county source states them, and we could not confirm any part of them.

There is a second reason to be careful with those pages. Many of them still describe this jail as run by LaSalle Corrections and still name James Prince as sheriff. LaSalle’s contract ended on February 12, 2021, and Prince left office that January. The current sheriff is Jeff Neal. A page five years behind on who runs the building is not a page to trust on what time the doors open.

Which Building Changes the Trip

Bowie County holds people in two places. The Bowie County Detention Center is at 105 West Front Street. The Bi-State Justice Center, known locally as the Bi-State Jail, is at 100 North State Line. Both are Bowie County Sheriff’s Office facilities under one jail license, and one county roster covers both.

The visitation form covers both too, but the housing unit field on it means you need to know which building applies before you fill it in. The roster’s housing location is what tells you. On September 1, 2026 there were 433 people at the Detention Center and 79 at the Bi-State building, so most visits point to West Front Street, but not all of them.

Confirm the building before the trip, not after. The two addresses are a few blocks apart downtown, close enough that some listings use them interchangeably and far enough that arriving at the wrong one costs you the visit.

Five Questions Worth Asking on the Phone

The form covers approval. These five cover everything the county leaves out, and the sheriff’s office answers on (903) 798-3149.

1. How long does the visitation request take to process, and how will I know whether I have been approved?
2. What are the current days and times, and how long is a visit?
3. Is visiting in person or through a video terminal, and does that differ between the Detention Center and the Bi-State building?
4. What identification does an approved adult bring on the day, and what documents are needed for an approved child?
5. Is there anything that will turn a visitor away at the door, such as clothing, bags or phones?

Write down the date you called. Jail rules change without announcement, and where nothing is published, the date of your call is the only version stamp you get.