Sheriffs' use of jail labor ripe for statewide investigation, legislative fix

A pair of recent headlines make me think a statewide audit could be in order regarding how Texas county jails use inmate labor.

First, in my hometown of Tyler, Lt. Gary Lile, a former Winnsboro police chief and administrator at the Smith County Jail's low-risk facility, apparently committed suicide after the Texas Rangers launched an investigation into allegations that deputies used inmate labor for personal gain, including gathering scrap metal for resale. Three other deputies may still face felony charges, and more deputies may be implicated, the Tyler Morning Telegraph has reported.

Then over the weekend, the Austin Statesman ran a feature providing details of the Bastrop County Sheriff's final conviction, in this case for turning a blind eye toward gambling operations and "using county inmates and materials to operate his own custom barbecue pit building business." Prosecutors claim the sheriff and a county commissioner "stole as much as $250,000 in money and goods while in office."

County jail trusties all over the state perform work both inside the jail and outside it, mowing lawns, cleaning up roadsides or cemeteries, etc., but nobody's supposed to be using them for personal gain.

I contacted Adan Munoz, head of the the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, to ask about the issue, and he confirmed that TCJS does not track how jails use inmate labor as part of their inspection process. Indeed, there's no agency with specific jurisdiction over such abuses except local county officials, he said, but in general he thinks they have strong incentives to behave ethically. (I wish I shared his optimism about county level oversight - in Bastrop the Sheriff was in cahoots with a county commissioner; that meant foxes were watching the henhouse, allowing the situation to go on for years.)

Munoz declared he does not believe misuse of inmate labor is a statewide problem, and thought that local officials generally provide adequate oversight. He admitted, though, having two similar incidents in the press recently puts the issue more than usual on the front burner.

Munoz agreed that it would improve accountability if jails kept logs of when and how inmate labor is used, and would give TCJS something to check during inspections to provide some external oversight. That's not the law now, though, so Texas jails keep no such logs or other documentation, making it virtually impossible to track how trusty labor is being used.

Requiring such logs might be a good reform for the Lege to consider adding to state jail standards when they get back to Austin next year, but Sheriffs who want to prevent similar problems at their own jails should preemptively create them themselves.

In the meantime, though, either the Comptroller, the state auditor, the US Justice Department, or somebody with enough resources to do the job right needs to investigate whether other Texas Sheriff's departments have misused inmate labor for personal gain.