The Barry B. Telford Unit is a maximum-security state prison run by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, on State Highway 98 just outside New Boston — about 20 miles west of Texarkana. It opened in 1995 and is named for Barry B. Telford, the longtime state representative from DeKalb.

It is a men’s facility built to hold roughly 2,800 inmates, which makes it one of the larger prisons in Texas — and with a staff of several hundred, one of the largest employers in Bowie County. Many Telford inmates are serving long sentences for violent crimes, and the unit houses every custody level TDCJ has, from minimum-custody trusties to restrictive housing.

Telford holds inmates at every TDCJ classification — general population levels G1 through G5, restrictive housing (the status formerly called administrative segregation), and safekeeping for inmates who need protection from others.

In TXK Today’s reporting on the unit, the most common offenses among Telford inmates have been aggravated robbery, burglary of a habitation and murder, and more than half of the men held there were serving sentences longer than 20 years.

Because Telford takes the highest-custody classifications, inmates considered among the most dangerous in the system — including those who assault staff at other units — can end up here. That fact has shaped much of the unit’s history below.

TDCJ assigns every inmate a custody classification that controls where they sleep, whether they can work and how much supervision they need. Telford houses all of them:

The darkest chapter in the unit’s history came on July 15, 2015, when correctional officer Timothy Davison was beaten to death by inmate Billy Joel Tracy, who was serving a life sentence and was being moved from his cell in segregation when he attacked.

Tracy was convicted of capital murder in Bowie County and sentenced to death, and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the death sentence. The case remains a reference point in any conversation about staffing and safety at the unit — for correctional officers as much as anyone.

A maximum-security prison with hundreds of staff and thousands of inmates generates constant news, and TXK Today has covered Telford for more than a decade. The recurring themes:

• Contraband and staff arrests. Cellphones, drugs and bribery cases have repeatedly reached the courts — including seven correctional staff arrested in a single 2025 case and grand jury indictments of staff and inmates the same year.
• Violence inside the unit. Inmate-on-inmate killings and assaults on staff become Bowie County court cases, like the 2025 murder charge against an inmate already serving time.
• Programs and rehabilitation. It isn’t all grim — Texarkana College teaches academic and welding courses inside the unit.
• Public health. During the COVID-19 pandemic, Telford saw some of the region’s earliest outbreaks and deaths, among inmates and staff alike.

TDCJ runs a free online inmate locator for every state prison in Texas, including Telford:

• Go to the TDCJ Inmate Search.
• Search by name, TDCJ number or SID (state ID) number. Common names return many results — a birth date narrows it down.
• The record shows the inmate’s unit, offense, sentence length and parole eligibility date, and links to the parole review status.

Visits at TDCJ units generally happen on Saturdays and Sundays, and you must be on the inmate’s approved visitors list before you come — the inmate submits the list, and TDCJ approves it. The basics:

• Check the TDCJ visitation page for current rules, hours and the unit’s visitation schedule before making the drive.
• Bring a current government-issued photo ID. Dress codes are enforced — no revealing clothing, and leave bags and phones in the car.
• Contact the unit directly with questions: Barry B. Telford Unit, 3899 State Highway 98, New Boston, TX 75570, (903) 628-3171.

Rules on contact visits, visit length and scheduling vary by the inmate’s custody level — restrictive-housing visits are non-contact. When in doubt, call the unit before you go.

The Texarkana area has three very different lockups, and they get mixed up constantly:

Each has its own inmate locator: TDCJ’s search (above) for Telford, the federal Bureau of Prisons locator for FCI Texarkana, and the Bowie County sheriff’s office for the Bi-State jail.

We’ve reported on the Telford Unit since the paper’s earliest days — from the original 2015 explainer written after Officer Davison’s death to the staffing and contraband cases working through Bowie County courts today. For the latest, see our Crime and Courts sections.

This guide is part of the TXK Today Guides series — plain-language explainers on the institutions that shape life in the Texarkana region. Spot an error or an update we should make? Email [email protected].