Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ)

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice has well over 100 units systemwide,ranging from small 300 person capacity substance abuse facilities, to large, modern maximum security prisons holding close to 4000 persons. As a result, many radio frequencies are in use. As recently as a few years ago, there was a standard radio channel plan in use. But due to size and the coming statewide state agency switch to P25 compliant technology, there is really no longer a standard radio channel lineup. Most every unit will have a repeater in operation, however, in building security operations such as offender movement and disturbances will be more than often on simplex, low power radio frequencies. This is not to say every unit will be like this, as some do run all traffic through a repeater (i.e. John Sealy Hospital, Michael, Polunsky). If you want to hear the traffic on these frequencies, you must be practically in the parking lot of the unit, as even the officers inside the units have trouble communicating due to the construction of prisons.

You may notice that TDCJ holds primarily VHF licenses, but does have many UHF frequencies listed in the database. These are used at larger units where VHF is not effective at breaking through many floors or walls of thick concrete and metal (i.e. John Sealy-Galveston, Coffield-Palestine). But you will find them silent at most of the facilities that they are licensed to. The reasoning is that they were mainly used by administrative and SORT team personnel and for pager alerting. Many facilities with the licenses don't even have any UHF equipment left on site.

When monitoring TDCJ, you will hear 10-codes still in use regularly. Each unit has a prefix number for their staff's radio unit numbers, and you will find most every prefix in use on the statewide common channel, 153.905 Mhz with a 100.0 PL (AKA Channel 5, or Common). "Common" is used to relay offender transportation information back and forth between sending and receiving units, and every morning at 0100 hours, certain centralized units take a 10-13 (Weather Report) from every single unit in the system.

In addition to the licensed repeaters, you may find unit traffic on any of the frequencies listed under the license KZ6245: 153.755, 153.785, 153.815, 153.905, 153.965, 154.055, 154.085, 154.115, 154.980, 154.995, 155.025. Also, select units such as maintenance or upper admin may use private channels in the business range. Common ones in use are 151.625, 151.715, 154.540, 154.570, an 154.600. Happy scanning!