Since 2023, the county has invested almost $6.6 million for court improvements at the Fort Bend County Justice Center in Richmond. The efforts will address rising case numbers by creating space for additional case judges, said outgoing 400th District Court Judge Tameika Carter, who serves as local administrative district judge.
Other court changes are possible in 2025, with lawmakers to consider creating two more district courts for the county in the 89th Texas Legislature. Ed Krenek, a Republican attorney who won the general election, will also replace Carter in January.
Krenek didn't respond to requests for comment.
What's happening?
Fort Bend County’s investments came after the courts’ case numbers rose with the county’s population and accessibility was limited during the COVID-19 pandemic, Carter said.
Census data shows the county’s population grew more than 41% between the American Community Survey’s 2013 and 2023 five-year estimates. Officials predict the county’s population will soon break 1 million.
In September, county commissioners approved the fiscal year 2024-25 budget including a new magistrate court—where preliminary hearings are held in criminal cases after defendants are arrested. Carter said court staff are working to launch the new court, which will streamline the notification of charges and bail processes.
“If you [look at] counties our size, everyone has some form of a magistrate, a professional magistrate, and we were just out here without one,” Carter said. “This will help kind of start building on the court.”
The new court will appoint a singular judge to act as the magistrate leader on weekdays, allowing for consistency, and two part-time court coordinators at a cost of over $275,00 in annual salaries, said Pamela Gubbels, the county’s director of finance and investments.
Additionally, Carter led the approximately $5 million initiative to build out three more courtrooms and upgrade the audiovisual technology in all courtrooms at a cost of nearly $1.32 million.
Carter said the courtrooms will alleviate the use of temporary rooms without proper setups. The improvements, set to be completed in October, will outfit the courtrooms and add holdover cells for criminal cases as well as an office suite and courtroom technology.
After hearing numerous complaints about the AV technology, Carter said she sought to improve the system due to its lack of usability to display evidence and stream cases to the public.
“To say it was outdated was an understatement,” she said. “We did an assessment of every courtroom, and every single courtroom needed an upgrade. We were way behind in technology.”
By the numbers
The county has improved its clearance rate of cases since before the pandemic despite rising caseloads over that time. Clearance rates are the number of cases completed divided by the number of cases added, according to the Texas Office of Court Administration.
Fort Bend County isn’t the only county investing in its court system following a rise in cases in recent years.
At its height in 2022, the Harris County court system had 352,705 criminal, civil and family cases pending, according to data from the Texas Office of Court Administration. As of October, the county still had 163,792 cases pending.
However, Nathan Beedle, Harris County’s deputy chief of courts, said the backlog is “largely gone,” with the remaining pending cases considered the “new status quo.”
“We’ve gone to what I call more of a status quo after [the pandemic] ... and a new status quo with the population size,” he said.
The District Attorney’s office implemented a triage program in August 2021 to move through the county’s oldest cases first, and marijuana and mental health diversion programs added in 2017 and 2018 help prevent system overload, said David Mitcham, first assistant district attorney for Harris County.
Other court investments in the system since 2022 have included:
- Three additional district courts approved by the state legislature
- Adding more staff to the DA’s office
Ahead of the state’s 89th legislative session starting in January, Sen. Joan Huffman, R-Houston, filed two bills aimed at creating two additional district courts in both Fort Bend and Brazoria counties, as populations climb and cause shifts in caseloads.
“As the state’s population grows in some areas while declining in others, the judicial needs of various regions change,” Huffman said.
As lawmakers consider creating new courts next session, they will analyze factors such as increased caseloads, case backlogs, population growth and county support, Huffman said in an emailed statement.
“Ensuring that we have adequate judicial resources in Senate District 17 available to address the workload is critical to ensuring the proper administration of our judiciary,” she said. “This is why I am working closely with both Fort Bend and Brazoria [counties] to establish new district courts.”
The new districts would allow Fort Bend County to separate the criminal and civil courts, which are housed under five general jurisdiction courts, to allow civil cases to go through the judicial process faster, Carter said. Often, civil cases are delayed due to the number of criminal cases, which must be tried first by law.
“[Residents] don’t know how important the courts are until they end up here,” Carter said.
If the bills go into effect, the county could see the new courts by late 2025.
