This is the Dallas facility where Chiefs’ Rashee Rice is serving jail time
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- Rashee Rice tested positive for THC, triggering a 30-day Dallas County Jail detention.
- Rice is serving his sentence at Lew Sterrett Justice Center’s North Tower Jail facility.
- The jail handbook mandates inmates clean tanks daily and limits visitors by schedule.
There were 18 conditions placed on Chiefs receiver Rashee Rice when he received community supervision as part of his sentencing last July for the multi-vehicle crash in 2024 that occurred after he raced a luxury car down a Dallas freeway.
No. 2 on the list: “Avoid injurious and vicious habits, and do not use marijuana, narcotics, dangerous drugs, inhalants or prescription medication with first obtaining a prescription for said substances from a licensed physician.”
Dallas County officials said last week that Rice tested positive for THC — and that triggered No. 18 on the list: a 30-day detention in Dallas County Jail.
Before the probation violation, Rice had been allowed to choose when he would serve the jail sentence. Now he’s serving that time and will miss the Chiefs’ organized team activities (OTAs) and June’s mandatory minicamp.
The four jail facilities in Dallas County hold slightly more than 7,100 people. Records show Rice is serving his sentence at the North Tower Jail at the Lew Sterrett Justice Center.
That building opened in 1993 and the Dallas County website notes the “facility holds 3,292 maximum security inmates with 188 single cells, as well as 3 floors of medical space.”
Rice had right-knee surgery earlier this month to “remove loose debris that was causing inflammation,” ESPN’s Adam Schefter reported. It’s not known whether Rice is able to take advantage of those three floors of medical space.
But Dallas County records show Rice has been assigned to a specific “tank,” which is a large cellblock that holds dozens of inmates, according to Southern Bail Bonds. That site says inmates with a last name that begins with M to Z are allowed visitors on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday and Sunday, but can have no more than two visits a week.
Rice would have been issued a shirt/pants, towel, shoes, socks, sheets, mattress, a wash cloth, underwear, blanket, spoon and a cup, according to the Dallas Jail Inmate Handbook.
While his teammates will be getting meals designed for them at the Chiefs’ facility in Kansas City, Rice will eat three meals a day in jail: Breakfast at 5 a.m., lunch at 11 a.m. and dinner at 4:30 p.m.
Rice and others in the jail are required to clean their living areas daily.
This is from the handbook: “Every day, all tanks and cells will be completely cleaned by the inmates assigned to each tank and cell. The Jail Officer will inspect each floor to determine if each tank and cell has been cleaned. Inspections by staff members will be taken at regular intervals to ensure that living areas are kept clean. Television access or luxury commissary items may be restricted for locations that have not yet completed necessary tank cleaning to keep the location in compliance with TCJS standards.”
Dallas County Jail in the news
Overcrowding at Dallas County Jails made headlines last year.
In September, records showed there were 7,124 inmates in the facilities, 20 more than the jail is currently authorized for, WFAA-TV reported. Officials at that time considered shipping prisoners to another jail.
In 2024, a man sued a former Dallas County corrections officer after being slammed to the ground, according to a Dallas Morning News story. That report says the corrections officer was fired not long after the alleged incident.
A decade ago, Dallas County Jail was featured on the show, “Behind Bars: The World’s Toughest Prisons.” It painted an ugly picture of the facility, but that was from 2016.
The jail also has been the subject of Reddit questions, and some shared their experiences — or the experiences of those close to them.
“My brother served 5 years at DCJ and they’re not that great at supervision bc he was involved in two riots, got multiple tattoos in there, was able to acquire drugs and make alcohol,” one person wrote. “So they’re not monitoring the inmates that well.”
In another discussion about the Dallas County jail, a person wrote of their displeasure about the Suzanne L. Kays facility.
That generated this response: “It’s adult day care compared to North Tower.”
KTVT-TV in Dallas ran this story on the Dallas County Jail facing a shortage of workers at the facility. It gives you a look inside the jail.
