Boost Texas prisoner food budgets 39 cents per prisoner/day

If your annual food budget was $800 per person and that money had to last all year, how would you spend it?

I'll give you a moment: Try to imagine what that would look like.

Having recently spent >$250 at my big, post-SNOVID trip to HEB, Grits can hardly fathom eating for a year on that amount. But that's the dilemma facing cafeteria cooks and nutritionists at TDCJ, where prisoners have been receiving food during COVID more suitable for pig slop than human consumption.

This is what Texas feeds prisoners
on an $800/year food budget

That said, in Texas prisons the pigs are air conditioned while the prisoners and guards are not, so it's likely the pigs eat better than this.

With the Texas Department of Criminal Justice poised to realize nine figures in budget saving thanks to newly closed prison units, the Legislative Budget Board had suggested the agency reduce its budget by $148 million and send that money back to the General Revenue pot. The group I lead, Just Liberty, is requesting they spend that money instead on two items: 1) Expanded treatment funding to move paroled prisoners out of lockups sooner, and 2) increasing prisoner food budgets by $17 million per year.

We discussed the treatment funding in the last post; let's delve deeper into TDCJ food budgets.

Food spending at TDCJ peaked at $106,601,431 paying for food for 155,076 inmates as of 8/31/09. That comes out to $687.41 per inmate spent on groceries in 2009, if you can imagine! 

If that amount had risen with inflation, food spending at TDCJ would currently be at $854.51 per prisoner.

Today, Texas incarcerates fewer people than we did back then - 119,541 as of January 2021 -  but only spends ~$810.56 per prisoner on food.*

Just Liberty is recommending boosting the food budget by 39 cents per day, per prisoner. That comes out to $17 million per year total, or roughly $952.77 per inmate. That's still an insanely small sum to eat on for a year, but it should give the agency enough leeway to improve prisoners' fare.

A final note: We only know how bad prison food is thanks to photos sent to reporters from contraband cell phones. Staff portray cell phones as dangerous contraband, but IRL they're the most important innovation in carceral accountability we've witnessed in the 21st century. Similar to bystander video of police brutality, cell phones in prisons have documented treatment long-alleged but difficult to prove.

Now, thanks to documented, firsthand examples across many units, we know complaints about Texas prison food aren't just whining from criminals: No one would feed this slop to anyone related to them.

With only a few exceptions, most Texas legislators consider themselves Christians. Well, this is one of those moments implicated in Matthew 25:40, wherein the disciples protested that they'd never visited Jesus in prison or fed him when he was hungry, as he'd described. Christ replied that, "whatever you did for one of the least of these brothers and sisters of mine, you did for me." Grits wants to ask state budget writers directly how they'd answer that question at the Pearly Gates: Is 39 cents per day too much to ask for the "least of these"?

Texas doesn't pay prisoners for their labor and, thanks to widespread guard understaffing, the truth is at this point they're largely who's keeping the prisons running. A decent meal isn't too much to ask.

For Keri Blakinger and thousands of hungry Texas prisoners.

*Prison populations have been dropping during COVID; when they budgeted for this fiscal year, the Legislature had been told to expect a much higher prison population, so these per-prisoner numbers look much better than they could have.

New TDCJ visitation/mail policies punitive and arbitrary

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice is changing its visitation, mail and commissary policies for Texas prison inmates in ways which seem arbitrary and unnecessary.

Let's start with visitation. TDCJ will begin running a drug-sniffing dog past all potential visitors, even children, and deny entry if the dogs alert. If a dog alerts twice, that person will be denied entry permanently.

The move is being billed as preventing contraband smuggling, but that doesn't justify it. For starters, nearly all the contraband smuggling is done by guards, and the biggest problem is the agency can't fire them because they wouldn't have enough people to staff the prisons.

Consider this example from the French Robertson Unit in Abilene last year:

A list obtained by KTXS from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) said that 51 French Robertson Unit staff members were disciplined and one of those staff members was fired for bringing in contraband between January 1, 2013 to July 3, 2019, a six-and-a-half-year span.

Moreover,

The TDCJ also said that out of the 400 staff members at the French Robertson Unit, the number of contraband disciplines "are below average for disciplinary action and contraband issues as compared to the other 103 state prisons in Texas." 

So one staffer out of 400 was fired for bringing in contraband to the prison, while 51 were allowed to continue working there. And that's "below average" for other units. So it takes a lot of chutzpah for TDCJ to blame families for contraband! That's absurd.

Anyway, why not just run the drug dog past inmates before they go back to their cell, or search them, for that matter, if need be. If you're trying to find contraband, the policy makes no sense.

For that matter, if a drug dog hits on a family member, why not search them for drugs instead of just sending them home? If they don't have drugs, let them visit. Narcotics dogs have very low hit rates (especially compared to, say, explosives-detecting dogs) and in general are about as reliable as a coin flip. But to just send folks away when they hit? It's like they want to discourage visitation more than they want to discover contraband.

Which brings me to another point, if TDCJ is going to use drug dogs in this way, they should record every alert and gather data on false positives. If dogs are alerting when there are no drugs, then you're not preventing contraband smuggling by using them and the whole ordeal is just a waste of time that discourages legitimate visitors.

Changes to mail policy were equally unreasonable and untethered to actual safety concerns. No greeting cards? Really?

And this part seems directly aimed at discouraging letters from children: No stickers or "artwork using paint, glitter, glue, or tape."

In general, "Offenders will only be allowed to receive mail from general correspondents on standard white paper. Mail received on colored, decorated, card stock, construction, linen, or cotton paper will be denied."

Part of this is aimed at getting inmates and families to use their JPay system, but that costs more and bleeds inmates and families financially. Phone rates were finally reduced in Texas, but JPay renews the practice of mulcting incarcerated people's families for the privilege of staying in communication with their loved ones.

If public safety were in any way a concern, maintenance of family ties being a key predictor of success after people leave prison, the agency would do everything in its power to encourage family members to stay in touch with inmates. But they're understaffed and see those communications as a chore they'd like to cut down on, not a central pillar of successful prisoner reentry.

Part of me wonders if this is a ham-handed public relations move, getting in front of major problems with guards smuggling contraband by making a big show of publicly blaming inmate families for it. But that assumes more sophistication and forethought than the agency, whose institutional culture remains stuck in the '90s, generally demonstrates.

Regardless, these changes seem punitive, ill-considered, and even a little mean-spirited. Either TDCJ should reconsider them or the Legislature should change them next year.

UPDATE: Our pal Keri Blakinger with the Marshall Project was in the room when these new policies were announced and forwarded me her notes from the event:

When I first heard about the greeting card ban a few weeks ago, I called the spokesman to confirm and he would not confirm even though officials had already begun telling people. TIFA had known, prisoners themselves had known for weeks, and people kept asking me questions yet - absurdly - TDCJ would not confirm to me. So I showed up at the conference on Saturday in hopes of getting on-the-record confirmation. Here's a sampling of what was said:

The announcement formed the bulk of an hour-long presentation by CID Director Lorie Davis, who kicked off by telling the pretty-full room, "We gotta keep people safe and we gotta help people change."

(This seems to me often at odds with what actually happens but ok.)

"It’s no secret that drugs are bad choices, drugs are one of the reasons why we have the population that we do," she said. "It’s a bad choice to do drugs in the penitentiary."

She said, "We’re committed to fighting this battle," and added, "It’s great that the recidivism rate has come down 10 percent in 10 years that’s great that’s cool but it’s not enough." (unclear not enough what, recidvism decrease or positive action from the agency) 

One of the drugs she railed against coming in was suboxone, which is used to treat opioid addiction. It is easy to dose mail with the water-soluble strips - but it is not something people overdose on and is considered the "gold standard of care."

Despite banning glitter, colored paper and various other things, Davis specified that crayons are still allowed: "I don’t wanna take away a kid’s ability to use crayons and color their mom and dad a picture. That’s important." She stressed the value of staying in touch through mail, saying, "Let's put down our telephones and let's write some cards together." (She meant collectively, not literally offering to chill out with families and write cards, of course.*)

She detailed the creation of a new security precaution indicator (CD) for anyone who catches a disciplinary case relating to contraband (including simply refusing a UA). She says that this won't affect good time, just housing assignments and job assignments - like, those accused of smuggling won't be given janitor jobs.

Anecdotally, what I'm hearing is that the SSIs (porter/janitor-type jobs) are just moving these things around the unit, not necessarily the ones bringing them in - that is, according to all the jail mail I get, largely the guards.

She closed by freaking people out with news of the addition of video visitation at some units. Plans for this add-on were announced in 2018 when they lowered the phone rates. She reassured everyone it would not replace in-person visitation, and was just part of the phone deal. These are the units that will have it: Clements Connally Crain Michael Stiles Wynne Jester Garza Hutchins Montford Travis and Sanchez.

TBH, families still seemed freaked out about visitation - and generally - despite those assurances. She fielded a peppering of worried questions and by the time she closed with a very emotion-laden "drugs are bad," everyone seemed quite concerned.

* Grits' note: She also didn't mean writing cards, which she just announced were banned.

Ban on surrogate social media for inmates a bad idea on many levels

Leave it to TDCJ to do exactly the wrong thing on inmate social media accounts. The Texas Tribune reported today that:

Texas prison inmates shouldn't be allowed to have active social media accounts, even if friends or family on the outside actually run them, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice has decided.

Earlier this month, the department updated its criminal handbook to prohibit prisoners from having personal pages on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram run in their name by others. When pages violating the policy are discovered, the department plans to report the violations to the appropriate social network.

"What really prompted the rule was that social media companies now require some sort of specific rule in place that's going to prohibit offenders from maintaining their social media accounts," said department spokesman Jason Clark. "I can tell you increasingly it has become more difficult to ask those companies to take it down. They would come back to us and say, 'You don't have a specific policy that says they can't have it.'"

But the new rule is eliciting free-speech concerns from civil liberties groups and raising questions about how friends or family can advocate for inmates.

Besides the fact that the new policy will almost certainly prove impossible to enforce, and that it was enacted without legislative authorization or even soliciting stakeholder input, this decision was wrongheaded on multiple levels.

Invites First Amendment kerfuffle
First, it invites litigation. It almost feels like they're trying to pick a legal fight. TDCJ just had to change their policy banning beards for Muslim prisoners because of a recent Supreme Court ruling, so we know SCOTUS thinks inmates don't comprehensively lose their First Amendment rights. And in this case, the rights involved aren't limited to the inmate.

Wayne Krause Yang, an attorney for the Texas Civil Rights Project, suggested "the prison system's reach exceeds its legal grasp" with this rule, reported the Trib. "Typically, prisons control the things inside the prisons. they don't traditionally get to pass prison policies that extend far beyond the bars, and it seems like that's what they're trying to do here," he said. "Those types of policies have a name – they're called laws. They should be considered by the representatives of the people, too, because this policy doesn't just affect the people behind the bars."

IANAL, much less a First Amendment expert. But it's not hard to imagine that maintaining a website in the name of another person, with their permission, is protected speech. In February a district judge ruled Texas' online impersonation statute - outlawing the use of another person's name without their permission - is unconstitutional. How much more protected might the courts consider these consensual arrangements?

Incarceration affects more people than just the person incarcerated and those other folks have free speech rights. TDCJ can't by rule take those away. And it raises serious constitutional concerns to threaten to punish an inmate if someone in the free world exercises their right to free speech by posting excerpts from inmate communications on social media.

Grits expects this to be litigated nearly instantly. I have no inside knowledge, but there are too many examples of inmates' social media sites being maintained by friends or loved ones for this not to be quickly and aggressively challenged, if I had to guess.

Misses reintegration opportunity: Should encourage inmates to connect to family, friends
Beyond civil libertarian concerns, though, TDCJ's ham-handed policy misses an opportunity for rehabilitation and reintegration of offenders into the community.

One often hears the estimate that Texas prisons incarcerate around 150,000 inmates, give or take, but that number is not static. Texas releases more than 70,000 prisoners per year, with local law enforcement sending them a roughly like amount to fill the beds they're emptying. That enormous number remained steady over the prior decade, even as crime dramatically declined, for reasons this blog has frequently discussed..

Most offenders aren't in prison that long and when they get out, having retained connections to friends and family facilitates rehabilitation. Average time served for people leaving TDCJ in 2014 was 2.8 years (0.8 years for those in state jails; 4.2 years for those in regular prison units). And they have to keep releasing that many because, despite the crime decline, county prosecutors keep convicting as many or more people of felony offenses than ever, boosting the ratio of convictions-per-arrest in ways that John Pfaff has shown are part of a national trend.

So the typical offender headed to TDCJ will get out four years hence. If they return having no connection to the folks most likely to help them succeed (TDCJ only gives them $100 and a bus ticket when they get out), how is that helping anybody?

These days, people stay connected to one another over distance through the internet, to which Texas inmates don't have access. To me, the solution here is simple and the opposite of what TDCJ has suggested: Allow inmates limited, regulated internet access and the ability to maintain social media accounts. Establish rules making them private except for approved contacts and monitor (by algorithm and, upon suspicion, by staff) and regulate the content of interactions. Give TDCJ back-end access, a kill switch if inmates don't follow the rules, and give inmates an appeals process if TDCJ abuses its authority.

Recently, following up on last year's coverage on Vice and our pal Maurice Chammah's good work for the Marshall Project, CBS' 60 Minutes had a feature on German prisons. The recurring mantra in that piece was that the overarching goal of Deutchland prisons - beyond retribution or incapacitation - was "being reintegrated into a normal life" as a rehabilitated individual. Here's an exchange between the 60 Minutes correspondent and a German prison official:

Joerg Jesse: The real goal is reintegration into society, train them to find a different way to handle their situation outside, life without further crimes, life without creating new victims, things like that.

Bill Whitaker: Where does punishment come in?

Joerg Jesse: The incarceration, the imprisonment itself is punishment. The loss of freedom, that's it.

Bill Whitaker: I think Americans think crime and punishment. You say punishment is not even part of the goal of the German prison.

Joerg Jesse: No.

Bill Whitaker: At all?

Joerg Jesse: Not at all.

Now, I'm not going to suggest for a moment Texas should model its prisons on Germany. We're about as far away from that as Grits is from a hiking route to Berlin. But would it kill us to pay homage to that "reintegration" goal where it can be done in a reasonable, secure fashion? And must prisons be the ONLY institution in society utterly unaffected by the advent of 21st century technology? Are Texans really so unimaginative that the only thing officials can think to do with the new social media phenomenon is close their eyes and wish it would go away?

We're missing an opportunity here to allow inmates to maintain greater connections to the outside world, connections they're going to need to succeed when they get out. Without them, there's a greater likelihood that, alienated and isolated, they fall back into a life of criminality after their incarceration ends.

19th century thinking bad for 21st century security

Let's be frank. Despite Sen. John Whitmire declaring a "zero tolerance" policy on contraband cell phones in Texas prisons, they're still smuggled in fairly routinely and inmates find ways to rent them if they want them. So right now inmates with sufficient resources can get online, create an account, and say or do whatever they want. Happens all the time.

If motivated inmates can access social media, anyway, then Lyndon Johnson's famous quote about J. Edgar Hoover comes to mind: "It's probably better to have him inside the tent pissing out than outside the tent pissing in." Having been unsuccessful at banning internet access, why not allow it, regulate it, and use it for public-spirited goals instead of relegating it to the black market?

Wouldn't it be a better approach if prison units all had a computer lab where inmates could a) learn skills with which they might support themselves in modern service economy and which b) allowed inmates to have email and social media accounts through which the agency could monitor and regulate their content and connections? If TDCJ allowed inmates email and basic social media access - say a Facebook account - and imposed similar content rules to what it does on outgoing mail, most offenders would just use that service and the market for contraband phones might just dry up. Federal prisons allow inmates limited email access, which is a start. but social media is how a lot of people stay connected, particularly among families.

Heck, one could see cell phones with limited access - the way parents can control contents for kids - that inmates could check out or keep in their cell. Keystroke logging could keep track of how it's used. And restricting access would become a probably-very-effective behavior management tool. (Long-time readers may recall Grits has been calling for some version of this change since at least 2011.)

If phones or computers are being used for criminality, harassing victims, etc., this way you know about them and can easily secure evidence. If they're plotting crimes or harassing victims on a contraband phone, what can you really do? Anyway, TDCJ can't know comprehensively who has a social media presence out in the world, especially if they use pseudonyms. So it's hard to stop that behavior on a contraband phone unless someone informs on them. If inmates are communicating using the agency's tech, by contrast, those sorts of things are a lot easier to monitor.

* * *

Bottom line, TDCJ treats inmate connectivity as something to fear and banish, but in cyberspace as with visits, letters, and phone calls, contact with the outside world is something prisons must manage. Positive communications that support goals of reintegration and maintenance of healthy relationships should be encouraged while negative interactions must be identified and stopped. TDCJ may have justified its new social media policy based on security. But by promoting greater demand for contraband and eschewing avenues for monitoring and regulating social media access, not to mention trampling on the free speech rights of free-world folk in probably-unconstitutional ways, in the medium to long run my guess is that this decision caused more problems than it solved.

MORE: From Maurice Chammah at the Marshall Project.

Crime and violence data from Texas prisons

New data out on Texas prison crime and violence from the TDCJ office of inspector general: Mike Ward at the Houston Chronicle reported last month ("Prison crime not dropping with the population," June 20) that, "New statistics obtained by the Chronicle show that 3,001 criminal charges have been referred against imprisoned felons since 2009. Another 584 charges have been referred against correctional officers. Those numbers generally appear to be holding steady so far this year, even as the number of inmates housed in Texas prisons has dropped during the same period."

Also, "93 correctional officers faced criminal charges last year for crimes inside prisons, ranging from bribery to theft to sexual assault to official oppression. That is down from a high of 154 in 2009, according to the statistics made available under the Texas Public Information Act." Also, Ward suggested:

If the rate of prison crimes is staying roughly the same, other statistics underscore that cell block conditions are not improving much – and may be getting tougher. In April, officers reported using chemical agents on unruly felons 403 times, compared with an average of 262 times a month last year. Some 104 offender assaults were reported in March, compared with an average of 85 a month last year.

Despite the currently lower population of Texas convicts – just under 151,000 were housed in the 109 state prisons this week, about 9,000 fewer than roughly a decade ago – [TDCJ inspector general Bruce] Toney and other prison officials said they do not expect the number of prison crimes to decline much.

In addition to the stats, Ward supplied this remarkable anecdote as evidence of increased violence in Texas prisons, in this case instigated by staff:

Officials and guards acknowledge that the new numbers underscore that the Lone Star State's maximum-security lockups are living up to their long-standing tough reputation.

A March 17 beating at the Gib Lewis Unit near Woodville, in deep East Texas, highlights that.

There, shortly after 11 p.m., seven men stormed into a prison cell and began punching the inmate inside, a convicted Tarrant County burglar serving a two-year sentence. "Beat his a--," the attackers shouted over and over, as they held the inmate by throat, according to an internal report of the incident obtained by the Chronicle.

This, however, was no usual prison beat-down: The attackers were uniformed prison guards, led by a veteran lieutenant and a sergeant.

Investigators said both supervisors have been fired, and all seven guards now face charges of official oppression. The reason for the attack was that the convict, who had a history of harassing jailers, earlier had threatened a female guard.

As for the convict, he was paroled last week after serving about nine months, they said.

Good report (read the whole thing), but I'd be cautious in interpreting any one year increase or decrease too strictly; these are relatively small numbers and changes could result from a variety of factors. E.g., TDCJ has cracked down on contraband cases but that doesn't mean more contraband is coming in than before, only that the agency is now making a greater effort to enforce the rules.

And as an aside, God bless Mike Ward. If anything ever happens to him, there won't be one reporter left in the state consistently covering agency-level issues at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

Few guards face charges in cell-phone contraband cases

The Texas Tribune's Edgar Walters today revisited the question of why Texas prison guards are rarely charged in cell-phone contraband cases. Here's a notable excerpt:

A Texas Tribune investigation has found that few inmates or correctional officers face legal consequences for smuggling cellphones even as prison officials have intensified efforts to keep the devices out of prisons. Just 5 percent of cellphone smuggling cases investigated by the Criminal Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General from 2009 to 2013 resulted in a criminal sentence, according to documents obtained from the office through a public information request. 

Prison officials said one challenge was linking the smuggled phones to prisoners or correctional officers for prosecution, because the devices were secreted away in spots that were hard to find, or found in common areas. And it falls to prosecutors in the rural, cash-strapped regions where prisons are typically located to decide whether to spend resources on criminals who are already in prison or on local law enforcement officers. Critics say that without serious consequences, there is little to stanch the flow of illicit cellphones — and the cash that goes with them — into Texas prisons.

“Phones can be hard to find, and there’s a lot of money in introducing contraband,” said Terry Pelz, a prison consultant and former warden who advocates tougher punishments for guards caught with contraband. ...

Records obtained by the Tribune show that cellphones accounted for the greatest number of contraband cases investigated by the Criminal Justice Department’s inspector general from 2009 to 2013. Yet cases involving other contraband — like alcohol and tobacco — are prosecuted at a higher rate.

Of the 3,687 cellphone cases the inspector general’s office examined during that time, prosecutors secured sentences in only 190 cases; 2,142 resulted in no charge. ...

Some criminal justice observers say leaving that decision to local prosecutors benefits the guards because prisons are typically in rural counties with small prosecution budgets.

“Local prosecutors don’t put the full force of their office up against cases involving officers,” said Brian McGiverin, a prisoners’ rights attorney for the Texas Civil Rights Project.

Pelz added, “These smaller counties don’t necessarily have the money for the wholesale prosecution of these officers, so that’s not much of a deterrent for those who get caught.”

Five Harris County jailers accused of contraband smuggling

More problems with guards smuggling contraband into the Harris County Jail. Reported James Pinkerton at the Houston Chronicle ("Firing of 5th jail guard raises alarm," April 23):

On Wednesday, Harris County Sheriff Adrian Garcia announced charges against [Branden] Paez, 20, of Spring, the fifth civilian jailer charged in recent months with bringing a variety of contraband into the Harris County jail system. Paez, charged with bringing contraband into a correctional facility, had been on the job 13 months when Garcia fired him in September.

The charges against Paez and the other four jailers raise questions about the screening process used by Garcia to hire the 1,300 full-time and part-time civilian jailers, who along with 165 deputies guard nearly 9,000 inmates in the county's jails. ...

In addition to Paez, The four Harris County civilian jailers recently arrested were:

• Lauren N. Sandefer, 25, charged April 14 with smuggling tobacco and vodka into the jail and allowing an inmate to use her cellphone.
• Dominique Duncan, 23, charged Feb. 12 with possession of controlled substance with intent to deliver prescription painkillers to inmates.
• Gertudis A. Reyes, 21, also charged in February with smuggling tobacco into the jail.
• Tamara Bundage, 26, of Brookshire, sentenced in March to 15 days in jail and probation for smuggling tobacco and two cellphones into the jail.

The arrests of county jailers are not the only recent embarrassing charges brought against Garcia's employees.

In March, a veteran deputy on a game room task force was fired, accused of stealing money he seized during a raid.

The deputies union blames the trend on low pay, with union president Robert Goerlitz declaring, "I hate to say it but we're kind of getting what we pay for." But low pay doesn't automatically equate to sub-par ethics. Perhaps bigger issues are failed employment screening and inadequate supervision. One does notice the corrupted jailers are mostly young folks - aged 20-26 - though the deputy on the game room task force who allegedly stole seized money was described as a "veteran."

Also, the sentences described were relatively light compared to some handed down to family members accused of conspiring to smuggle contraband into correctional facilities. But at least they were fired and not put on probationary status as sometimes happens with COs at Texas' adult prisons.

Roundup: Too crazy to drive? ... and other stories

Here are a few odds and ends that haven't made it into their own, individual posts but deserve Grits readers' attention:

Drivers license application includes pointless, invasive mental health question
The Houston Chronicle today reported on criticism of a question on the Texas Department of Public Safety driver's license application asking, "Within the past two years, have you been diagnosed with, been hospitalized for or are you now receiving treatment for a psychiatric disorder?" The question has been on the application since the 1970s, but "Gyl Switzer, public policy director for Mental Health America of Texas, said the mental health questioning should be purged from applications." In 2012, 242 applications were flagged for review by an advisory board at the Department of State Health Services. Of those, 102 "did not forward information from their doctor so their applications were tossed out. The board recommended 32 people be denied a license."

Travis jail eliminates in-person visitation, profits from video contract
The Travis County Jail has switched exclusively to video visitation, eliminating face-to-face visits with inmates by friends and family, reported the Austin Statesman. Now, only attorneys can meet in person with inmates. Notably, the jail is making money off the deal. "Securus Technologies Inc. installed the system at no cost to the county last year. Securus charges outside callers $20 for a 20-minute conversation with an inmate and gives the county $4.60 from each call." County commissioners, though, weren't told when the deal was approved that face-to-face visits would be eliminated. Notably, the Prison Policy Initiative last month called on the FCC to regulate charges for video visitation, complaining that the elimination of in-person visits often resulted from "perverse incentives" created by such contracts.

Metal detectors installed to prevent cell-phone smuggling in Bexar Jail
The Bexar County Jail has installed metal detectors that all staff are now required to pass through in order to combat contraband smuggling after they found a smuggled cell phone, reported the SA Express-News. "In October, inmate Paul Reyes was caught with a cellphone after photos of him in jail surfaced on Facebook."

'The Real Victims of Satanic Ritual Abuse'
An article from Slate with the same title as this subhed explored the Fran and Dan Keller case out of Travis County.

Frisco man arrested for sign warning drivers of speed trap
Another arrest for contempt of cop.

SAPD may test "feasibility" of body cameras
San Antonio is considering a pilot program to test the "feasibility" of police officers wearing body cams, reported the Express-News. I'm a big fan of this idea. A New York Times story on the topic last year said departments using body cams saw dramatic reductions both in citizen complaints and use of force incidents. (Note to Adafruit and other wearable tech producers: Don't let Taser International corner this market!)

Border Patrol lending drones to local law enforcement
The Border Patrol has been using drones on behalf of local law enforcement agencies, including along the Mexican border, though they won't say which ones. Reported the Washington Post, "there is a huge, unfed appetite among police agencies for drones and their powerful surveillance tools, which include infrared cameras and specialized radar."

How to corrupt a prison guard

From the Houston Chronicle's Dane Schiller, see an interesting post detailing how members of the Raza Unida prison gang allegedly wormed their way in with a Texas prison guard. This is one of thirteen guards "charged last February [in] a corruption scheme that involved 32 people, including the guard, some civilians and some inmates."

Privatized Liberty County jail going bust, enmeshed in scandal

After a drug smuggling Liberty County jailer pled guilty to federal charges last year and the jail had to release local criminals to make room for contract inmates from out of town, one would have thought things at the southeast Texas jail couldn't get much worse, but the bad news keeps rolling in. Here are the latest tales of small-town woe:

• Texas Prison Bidness, "Private prison contract draining Liberty County coffers even as jail population declines"
• Conroe Courier, "Liberty County jail warden, chief fired"
• KTRK-TV, "Texas Rangers investigating a claim of inmate-jailer relationship inside Liberty County Jail"

Liberty County's entire local economy is centered on incarceration, but the jail, which was full last year, has now lost most of its contract inmates in the wake of scandals and as of September 1st was just 39% occupied. But the empty jail hasn't just cost them contract income, they actually must pay the private prison contractor a 15% premium because the jail population fell below 150 inmates.

Add this episode to the growing body of evidence that the private prison bubble in Texas is bursting, and add Liberty County to the list of empty, speculative jails scattered across Texas. County commissioners commissioned a graduate student from Texas State to conduct "a deprivatization study ... on the feasibility of Liberty County possibly taking over control of the jail" to get out from under the onerous contract terms.

Prison cell phones used to rescue guard: What's a prosecutor to do?

In South Carolina, we learn at the TDCAA website, "Inmates used their illegal cellphones to guide rescue of guard held by armed inmates." (See the story here.) Asks John Stride, "Confiscate their phones and give them good time credit? What would you do?" Good question. Leave your answers in the comments.

Guards jailed in Estelle Unit contraband sting

Grits has sometimes complained that prison guards and staff caught smuggling contraband aren't punished as harshly as family members they conspire with in the deed, with few TDCJ staffers even fired, much less prosecuted, for the offense. So I was interested to see a report from the Huntsville Item about two guards from the Estelle Unit who've been charged with felonies for taking bribes:

Two Texas Department of Criminal Justice employees were arrested at the Estelle Unit over the weekend in connection with an investigation concerning contraband being smuggled in to inmates.

Mary Elizabeth Walker and Yosennia Carolina Dejoie were both booked into the Walker County Jail on Saturday.

Walker is being held on two counts of bribery and remains in custody on a pair of $50,000 bonds. Dejoie has been charged with having prohibited substances and items in a correctional facility. Dejoie was released Sunday from the Walker County Jail on a $20,000 bond. ...

Walker and Dejoie were correctional officers at the Estelle Unit, which is located 10 miles north of Huntsville on FM 3478. Walker had been employed by TDCJ for two years, and Dejoie had 10 months of service.

It's one thing to charge them, of course, another to secure convictions. But for whatever reason, these are more serious charges than we're used to seeing brought against contraband-smuggling guards.

Bribe taking guard gets less punishment than inmate's mom in contraband caper

Checking Grits' news feeds upon returning from Mexico, I noticed a couple of stories related to prosecuting TDCJ prison guards that merit readers' attention. For starters, a 21-year old guard at the Eastham unit was nabbed in a federal sting allegedly distributing a kilo of heroin in Huntsville. (That's a lot of smack for a 21-year old entrepreneur!)

Even more interesting to me, the mother of an inmate was convicted and sentenced to 19 years for paying several TDCJ guards to smuggle cellphones into the Stiles unit in Beaumont. I find the case particularly notable because I've never heard of a prison guard receiving such a long sentence, and indeed the guard who received most of the money was sentenced to a few months in prison and "shock probation." Reported KFDM-TV:

Over 134 money grams totaling over $16,000 came into Watt’s possession during 2007, most of them traced to friends and family of inmates in the Stiles Unit in Beaumont. Watts, in turn, paid out almost 40 money grams totaling over $13,000 to former TDCJ correctional Davisha Martin, and numerous other money grams to several correctional officers employed at the Stiles Unit.

Martin was caught attempting to smuggle in three cell phones on October 1, 2007. Receipts indicating that Martin received money from Watts were found in Watt’s car, and an investigation by the TDCJ Office of the Investigator General uncovered the extent of the scheme. Martin was prosecuted and served a short prison term before being granted “shock probation” in February of 2009 due to her pregnancy.

Not only did Ms. Martin receive a relatively light sentence, the other guards implicated apparently weren't prosecuted at all.

Certainly there's nothing wrong with prosecuting civilian sources of contraband, but surely prison guards engaged in smuggling deserve even steeper penalties. After all, many family members on the outside may want their loved ones in prison to have access to a cell phone for a variety of reasons, both criminal and benign. But it's smuggling by prison guards that allows those desires to be realized. Taken together, these sentences reiterate the message that prosecutors will throw the book at prisoners' families over contraband, but only slap wrists of those in uniform who accept bribes and smuggle in illegal items. That pattern all but encourages smuggling by prison staff, who pretty much know up front they're unlikely to face significant penalties besides losing their jobs.

See related Grits posts:

• TDCJ units with most cell phone contraband discovered
• Sound staffing policies, lower inmate numbers, not high-tech gadgetry best solution to contraband problems
• On the relationship between high employee turnover and contraband smuggling at TDCJ
• 'Outlawed, cell phones are thriving in prison'
• Breakup of contraband smuggling ring implicates prison guards
• Unusually stiff sentence for contraband smuggling in small-town Panhandle jail
• Zero tolerance on TDCJ contraband hasn't worked. What now?
• NIJ: Solutions to cell phone contraband mostly "expensive and labor intensive"
• Chasing illegal cell phone use in TDCJ
• Cell phone trafficking in Texas prisons
• Guards and contraband smuggling in prisons and jails
• Texas prison guards smuggle cell phones to inmates
• Even death row not immune to contraband smuggling
• Has TDCJ learned the right lessons from death-row cell-phone scandal?
• Few prison guards fired, prosecuted for contraband smuggling

TDCJ units with most cell phone contraband discovered

The website Texas Watchdog asked the Department of Criminal Justice for a unit-by-unit breakdown of contraband cell phones found, and published the results in a spreadsheet here. The ten TDCJ units with the most contraband cell phone discovered, reports the site, are:

NEAL
COFFIELD
MCCONNELL
STILES
FERGUSON
TELFORD
CLEMENS
CLEMENTS
RAMSEY
ESTELLE

Sound staffing policies, lower inmate numbers, not high-tech gadgetry best solution to contraband problems

A combination of underfunding and ineptitude allowed a recent escape from solitary confinement at the Stiles Unit in Beaumont, according to Lindsay Wise writing in the Houston Chronicle ("Prison in need of security updates," March 27). The article opens:

A half an hour without direct supervision was all it took for felon David Puckett to escape from solitary confinement at a maximum security prison in Beaumont, unseen by guards.

The breakout wasn't even caught on surveillance video.

Now Puckett is back under lock and key, but his escape earlier this month put a spotlight on security shortcomings in Texas' 97 state-run prisons, particularly the lack of comprehensive video surveillance systems.

Just one prison — Death Row — has such a system, according to statistics obtained from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. Only 32 units have walk-through metal detectors, 34 have body orifice security scanners, and a total of 23 are equipped with parcel scanners, the statistics show.

Wise correctly points out that, thanks to the state budget crunch, expanding high-tech solutions like cameras, metal detectors, parcel scanners, etc., seems unlikely in the near-term:

In 2009 the Texas Legislature allocated $10 million for TDCJ to purchase contraband screening equipment — walk-through metal detectors, parcel scanners, and body orifice security scanners — at maximum security units and comprehensive video surveillance systems at several targeted facilities, including the Stiles unit, where Puckett staged his escape.

Now TDCJ faces $40 million in budget cuts. One of the items to be scrapped recently was a $2.4 million video surveillance system at the McConnell unit in Beeville.

Two such systems will be completed in May at the Stiles unit in Beaumont and the Darrington unit in Rosharon, Lyons said.

TDCJ looks forward to improving on those systems in the future, provided the money is available, she said.

"The equipment's costly," she added. "It's invaluable, but it is costly."

"Invaluable," of course, is not the right word. According to Dictionary.com, "invaluable" means "beyond calculable or appraisable value; of inestimable worth; priceless." But these security systems have a price. They can put a precise dollar figure on what it would cost to upgrade security at the 97 state-owned units (plus the 15 private units where the state leases beds, most of which don't have such accouterments, either).

Further, not only do we know the price, but we know that price is higher than the value the Texas Legislature places on keeping contraband out of prisons. How do we know this? If the equipment and staffing to employ it were truly "invaluable," by definition doing so would be a bargain and they'd fork over whatever money were required. Instead, most units don't have even basic security equipment. There are more metal detectors at the Texas capitol than at the majority of Texas prisons, which tells us legislators are more interested in their own protection than preventing contraband from entering secure lockups. (IMO metal detectors at the capitol should be eliminated and donated to TDCJ.) Anyway, judging by what they spend money on as opposed to taking their pronouncements at face value, any sensible observer must conclude that reducing contraband at prisons, despite all the "zero tolerance" rhetoric, falls rather low on the list of legislative priorities for all but a few individual members like Sen. John Whitmire.

Let's face it: Even where TDCJ has such equipment, the agency lacks sufficient experienced staff at many units and suffers from such high employee turnover that they can't always trust the people running it. Exacerbating the problem, the agency will undoubtedly be asked to cut staff in the next biennium (beginning in September), and has already been ordered to eliminate hundreds of management slots, meaning front-line employees bringing in contraband will now contend with fewer layers of oversight.

To top it off, even if new equipment were purchased and installed at every unit- at a cost of tens of millions the state doesn't have - nobody is contemplating paying for the extra staffing required to monitor and use such equipment. So if there aren't enough trustworthy warm bodies to man those posts, all the technology in the world will have little effect on contraband.

This is a recurring theme when technological solutions are touted as a cure-all for security problems: An apt analogy are GPS anklets, alcohol monitors, and ignition interlocks used on probationers, all of which do little good if probation officer caseloads are so high they can't monitor the data generated. As Grits observed some years back, "People often talk about GPS tracking as though it's a replacement for probation and parole officers .... The reality: GPS generates MORE data which therefore requires more people to analyze and make it usable and more POs to act on the information. GPS as part of an integrated supervision model would actually create MORE work, not less, for government agents. Without that human component, there's nothing about a bunch of dots moving around on a computer screen that makes us inherently safer."

Murmurings bubbling up out of the TDCJ rank and file indicate understaffing at the Stiles Unit may have played a primary role in the recent escape. According to a CO who recently worked in ad seg at Stiles , "Basically, the problem is Overworked Staff and Bad Correctional Officers" [emphasis and capitalization in the original]. The Back Gate website adds, "Due to TDCJ reducing the number of Officers on unit staffing plans, some areas are drastically undermanned and unsafe. This story seems like it is on that path. It happens everyday, on nearly every unit in the state. Less staff members are required to get more work done. Administrators know the numbers and accept the fact that corners must be cut. Until something like this happens. It's not a unit level wardens issue. Its a Huntsville and regional issue."

The Legislature and TDCJ's myopic focus on technological solutions (often promoted by some campaign-contributing vendor who stands to handsomely profit) ignores the real underlying causes of contraband getting into Texas prisons: Corruption among a small but persistent minority of correctional officers; high turnover among inexperienced front-line staff; sexual relationships between female guards and prisoners; and most of all, a bloated system filled with so many prisoners they can't be adequately monitored with even the existing number of staff, much less the reduced coverage required if recommended cuts in the current House and Senate budgets are implemented.

Though I'm sure in some backroom somewhere a few legislators are getting down to brass tacks (at least, God help us, I hope they are) the public conversations on topics like prison budgets, staffing and contraband always seem to occur in a fantasy land, where everyone pretends not to recognize that the incarceration bubble has burst or how much it would cost to keep it going.

Want to reduce prison contraband? Reduce the number of inmates by 10-15,000. Consolidate prisons, closing 8-10 strategically selected ones, including those with the worst contraband problems. Reduce staffing levels so that demands for recruiting aren't so great (four out of five new-boot recruits at the CO I level wash out before reaching CO III). Employee turnover is so high among guards that the agency could accomplish staffing reductions without firing anyone; attrition would quickly reduce their numbers if recruitment were ceased or retarded.

Otherwise, pretending the TDCJ can make prisons secure using existing (or fewer) staff and a few extra cameras here and there - while maintaining or even expanding the number of prisoners - is at best unrealistic and at worst setting the agency up for more security breaches like the one at the Stiles Unit. Just declaring "zero tolerance" accomplishes nothing when the state is impotent to back it up. The big-picture solution for TDCJ's security problems lies not so much with technological gadgetry, but is essentially the same as the answer to its budget woes: Legislators and TDCJ brass must, like it or not, stop pretending the status quo can be sustained and begin to believe impossible things.

On the relationship between high employee turnover and contraband smuggling at TDCJ

The issue of contraband is back on center stage these days at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice after the latest escape was facilitated by a prisoner using an illegal cellphone and communicating through Facebook. Texas prison chief Brad Livingston has responded by calling for a test of cell-phone jamming technology, however the Attorney General has already told the agency that installing jammers on a permanent basis would require a change in federal communications law first enacted in the 1930s. Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison carried legislation to allow prisons to use such jammers last year, but it ultimately failed and there's little reason to believe its immediate prospects have changed.

The biggest source of contraband admitted into Texas prisons, sad to say, are a minority of TDCJ correctional officers and staff who facilitate such transactions with the outside world. This problem is exacerbated by a situation highlighted recently on Grits: The fact that 80% of new hires at the CO I level - that is, entrants with neither military experience nor a college degree - wash out before making CO III, and CO IIIs themselves are hemorrhaging from the agency. So at any given time at TDCJ, there are a lot of relatively inexperienced officers who pretty much already know, or strongly suspect, that they're on their way out and might be tempted by a few extra bucks before they depart. It wouldn't surprise me, in fact, if low employee retention rates turned out to be a primary driver of employee contraband smuggling.

The case also re-raises the debate regarding whether offenders should have access to social media to keep track of friends and family, and I've argued before that the existence of smart phones as contraband changes that equation. If they're going to be on Facebook anyway, as this guy was, I'd rather have such use legally facilitated, tracked and communications monitored. Perhaps someday federal communications law on the subject will change, though for now the cell phone companies oppose it and they have a lot more clout with Congress than TDCJ.

If it's accurate that poor employee retention contributes to contraband smuggling, then arguably the best solution to contraband smuggling may be the same as the optimal solution for budget cutting at TDCJ: Changing policies to allow the state to reduce the number of inmates, close prison units (perhaps including some of those with the worst contraband problems), and reducing the number of staff through attrition to a more stable level so we don't lose 20% of guards every year. Suggested budget cuts from the agency, though, actually go in the opposite direction, closing just one, small state-run prison, shielding guards from initial staff reductions but eliminating recent pay increases designed (ironically) to improve employee retention as well as managers whose oversight might prevent employee misconduct.

Yes, in the future technology may solve all our problems. One day we'll all live like The Jetsons. In the meantime, though, Texas runs a bloated prison system it can barely staff and its failure to stop contraband stems primarily from its own employee and facility management failures, not the federal government's tardiness in changing longstanding federal communications law.

TDCJ reduced spending on prisoner food 13.5% since 2009

Here's a little-discussed budget cut that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice has already implemented over the last couple of years which I was unaware of before seeing it in the recently released analyses of the proposed House and Senate Budgets (available from LBB):

Food for Persons - Wards of State:

Expended 2009: $106,601,431
Estimated 2010: $100,702,356
Budgeted 2011: $92,236,867

(Data from p. 552 of this enormous pdf)

If I'm reading these documents correctly, the 2011 "budgeted" amount (the current fiscal year) is the figure allocated after the agency was required to reduce its budget by state leadership last fall. In that preemptory move, TDCJ absorbed 15% of all state agency budget cuts totaling $75 million, and prisoners' food bill was apparently one source of savings. Alternatively, maybe the food money went to pay for un-budgeted security upgrades, drug testing of staff, or some of the other anti-contraband initiatives that seem to be implemented spontaneously every few months in reaction to each new crisis or negative revelation.

Texas prisons grow much of their own food, of course, but I'm aware of no upsurge in agricultural production that would explain this precipitous drop.

Whatever the case, for the upcoming biennium (2012-13), TDCJ requested a $5 million increase to $97.3 million per year to feed prisoners, but HB 1 gave them the same amount budgeted for 2011, and the Senate budget would spend just a few hundred thousand dollars more. Meanwhile, food costs are rising, so that leaves reduced quantity or quality as the only real ways to save money on that line item - unless, of course, the state decides to simply reduce the total number of people it's feeding three times per day.

'Outlawed, cell phones are thriving in prison'

The New York Times takes on one of state Sen. John Whitmire's favorite topics with a feature on cell phones in prison with the same title as this post. The article takes a different twist toward the end, however, suggesting that one solution might be to embrace the trend instead of fighting an expensive, losing battle.

The recent rise in smartphones raises larger issues for prisoners and their advocates, who say the phones are not necessarily used for criminal purposes. In some prisons, a traditional phone call is prohibitive, costing $1 per minute in many states. And cellphones can help some offenders stay better connected with their families.

Mike, the Georgia inmate who was part of the recent strike, said he used his to stay in touch with his son.

“When he gets off the school bus, I’m on the phone and I talk to him,” he said in an interview on his contraband cellphone. “When he goes to bed, I’m on the phone and I talk to him.”

Some groups are encouraging prisons to embrace new technology while managing risks. Inmates are more likely to successfully re-enter society if they maintain relationships with friends and families, said David Fathi, director of the National Prison Project at the American Civil Liberties Union.

“It shows that even if they are closed institutions, prisons are still part of the larger society,” Mr. Fathi said. “They can’t be forever walled off from technological changes.”

And in a world where hundreds of apps are introduced each day by developers hoping to tap new markets, a pool of prisoners with smartphones can seem an attractive new market, despite the implications.

“It’s a pure business opportunity,” said Hal Goldstein, the publisher of iPhone Life magazine. He predicted that games would be big, but so would the ability to download news and books.

“People outside of prison become addicted to their phones,” Mr. Goldstein said. “Can you imagine if you had nothing but time on your hands?” 

That's a prescient observation and IMO probably where many prisons may head in the future as smart phones become a more ubiquitous part of the culture, though there will be a long slog between  there and here. Most cell phone smuggling is not for nefarious purposes, it's to stay in contact with friends and family. And though it certainly helps to install landlines, as TDCJ has recently done, that's still expensive for families and doesn't include a level of functionality that increasingly young people (who are overrepresented in prisons) have grown accustomed to in ways that, in years past, the television (long a staple in prison common rooms) was the central media experience for prior generations.

It's happening, anyway. Smart phones are being smuggled into prisons in significant numbers. Staff can only catch a fraction, and that number will likely decline if the agency follows through on its plan to cut the number of staff to reduce its budget while keeping open all 112 prison units. Searching for cell phones and other contraband requires warm, uniformed bodies to perform the task. Staff reductions would in all likelihood open the floodgates to contraband smuggling.

Part of the solution could end up being to supply inmates with smart phones so that the state can control the practice - allow them to be checked out for a few hours at a time as an incentive for good behavior, with some sort of specialized, limited, interchangeable (or re-programmable) SIM chip that only allows calls or emails to the handful of people on the inmate's approved visitation list. That would also stop prisoners from passing phones around for use by others (e.g., the phone with which Richard Tabler called state Sen. John Whitmire was apparently also used by many other death row inmates). Let people do games or other Smart-Phonesque activities while the phones are checked out. The phones should record each call, text, email, etc. for downloading when they turn the unit back in.

Right now, TDCJ inmates get no internet access, and most inmate blogs you see are snail mail letters uploaded by family and friends. But I don't see a huge downside to letting prisoners update Facebook, blogs, etc., on the condition that they answer yes to a friend request from a TDCJ monitor authorized to track content (or follow up on reported leads) for improper posting. There'd probably need to be some way to disallow making Facebook friends with fellow prisoners to (rightfully) limit unauthorized prisoner-to-prisoner communication. I'm no computer whiz, but it seems likely a program could be written to track certain keywords, gang references, intra-TDCJ friend requests and other banned content. 

Certainly some people would continue to smuggle cell phones in for nefarious purposes, but reducing the volume would reduce revenue and power of the smuggling networks bringing them in. Beyond that, there would be a huge security payoff: By authorizing controlled access to Smart Phones and limiting their use by limiting their functionality, it would also limit unauthorized uses, such as those that spawned the organizing of a multi-unit prisoner strike in Georgia. Again from the Times: 

The Georgia prison strike, for instance, was about things prisoners often complain about: They are not paid for their labor. Visitation rules are too strict. Meals are bad.

But the technology they used to voice their concerns was new.

Inmates punched in text messages and assembled e-mail lists to coordinate simultaneous protests, including work stoppages, with inmates at other prisons. Under pseudonyms, they shared hour-by-hour updates with followers on Facebook and Twitter. They communicated with their advocates, conducted news media interviews and monitored coverage of the strike.

That's a worst-case security nightmare for prison managers, just a step or two from the coordination of mass escapes of the type recently seen in Nuevo Laredo.

I'm not sure it's possible to keep smart phones and other contraband out of prisons because the demand is great and prisoners have a lot of time on their hands to figure out how to circumvent any security arrangement. If giving limited, monitored smart-phone access as an incentive for good behavior reduced smuggling and the chances such technology would spawn disruption, to me that makes more sense than an enforcement-only approach that, in practice, lets the free black market provide phones in prison to seemingly just about anyone who can pay for one.

Hundreds of cell phones still used by Texas inmates

I can't tell what, exactly, is the newshook for this story by Mike Ward at the Austin Statesman about cell phones smuggled into Texas prisons, but here are the data for smuggled cell phones two years after the Texas Department of Criminal Justice declared a "zero tolerance" policy on contraband: "This year, Texas investigators estimate that more than 800 cell phones have been confiscated from inside state prisons, compared with more than 900 during the same period last year. In 2008, the total was more than 1,000." That reduction clearly isn't much to brag about, but we're doing better than many other states:

By comparison, California prison officials announced last week that they have seized more than 7,000 smuggled cell phones this year.

Last year, South Carolina found more than 2,000 handsets and accessories. And Maryland, whose prison system is only a fraction of the size of Texas' system, seized 947 last year.

Sen. John Whitmire says "Texas ought to jam cell phones in our prisons and dare the federal government to do something about it," but it's pretty clear from the opposition by deep-pocketed cell phone companies the state would face litigation if they did that, and given the current law they'd almost certainly lose. Perhaps a more likely solution is being tried in Mississippi, where:

officials recently installed a limited access system that blocks cell phone calls unless the numbers of the phones making them at a prison are approved to do so. Other states have said the technology is too costly. Mississippi officials are paying for it by increasing the cost for convicts to make legal phone calls from land lines inside prisons.

Texas is already profiting from its relatively new in-prison phone system, so maybe they should take that money and apply it for a Mississippi-style system at the handful of units where they're most frequently finding cell phones and other contraband.

Civil litigation over completely corrupt jail on OK border

An array of civil litigation has arisen related to the outrageous scandal at the Montague County jail last year, where the Sheriff and other leos allegedly took a cut from drug dealing and coerced sex from inmates. Reports the Wichita Falls Times Record News ("Four women file suit in sheriff scandal," July 28):

As a long list of criminal complaints related to the Montague County Jail scandal works out of the courts, a spate of civil cases related to the scandal are working their way in.

Four women have filed suit in federal court in Wichita Falls in July. Shelley Wrea Lemon, Lashana Dykes and Dawnita Knight filed suit jointly on Thursday. Dee Ann Green filed suit July 15.

Lemon claims former Sheriff Bill Keating came to her home in July 2008 requesting sexual favors in exchange for keeping her invalid husband out of the jail on probation violation warrants. She claims Keating told her he had a lot of power and “could be her best friend or her worst nightmare,” and if she made the wrong decision, he would “bust her entire family.” Lemon claims she had to move away from Montague County to get away from Keating.

Dykes claims within an hour of being arrested on warrants in 2008, Keating drove her to a remote location in his patrol car and suggested she perform oral sex on him. She says he told her he would make her life “a living hell” if she did not cooperate. Dykes claims she was routinely required to go to Keating’s office and display her breasts for him and on one occasion was handcuffed while Keating attempted to rape her. She said a jailer knocked on the door and interrupted the assault.

Knight claimed that while she was incarcerated, she was required to perform massages on the sheriff and view pornographic photos on his office computer. She claims on two occasions she was required to have sex with a male jailer.

In her separate suit, Green claims during her incarceration in 2008, Keating demanded she perform oral sex in exchange for medications she required and that Keating tried to persuade her to have sex with another inmate.

The July lawsuits follow a suit filed in January by former jail inmate Luke Bolton, who claims that in summer 2007 he was required by jail guard Darlene Walker to have sex with her in a shower stall. He also claims Walker sometimes recorded their sexual activities on videotape. Bolton’s suit claims sexual predation of inmates was a common custom and done with jail administrators’ knowledge and that Keating “followed a custom of sexual congress with prisoners.” His suit also describes drug dealing within the jail from which the sheriff was paid a percentage. He claims he was required to become an “enforcer” and perform “hits” on other inmates with whom Keating was dissatisfied.

In all of the civil lawsuits, the plaintiffs ask for unspecified monetary damages from Montague County.

See related Grits posts:

• Montague jail flooded with contraband, closed after FBI raid
• More border sheriff criminality, this time on the Red River
• Questions regarding a completely corrupt jail
• Inmate used as enforcer by corrupt Montague Sheriff
• When did rape become just a civil rights violation?

Expert: Bexar jail exhibits 'unexplained tolerance for potentially suicidal behavior'

According to Greg Harman at the San Antonio Current's QueBlog ("Heroin bust at jail a distraction from blistering suicide review," June 11), the recent arrest of a Bexar County jail guard for smuggling drugs into the jail is overshadowing more serious, chronic concerns about the jail's treatment of suicidal inmates:

Nationally recognized suicide-prevention expert Lindsey Hayes delivered his report to Sheriff Amadeo Ortiz back on April 8. It was provided to the Current this week under an Open Records request.

Hayes opens his report by crediting the jail staff for taking the proactive approach of contacting him after a rash of suicides began to build at the facility in 2009. Ultimately, six inmates in the jail system, one of whom had been outsourced to Crystal City because of intense overcrowding, hung themselves in a 10-month period last year, about three times the national average for county lock-ups.

Hayes then documents a long list of failures on the part of the administration (and University Health Systems, which provides mental-health professionals and medical staff at the jail) in recognizing at-risk inmates and preventing needless deaths.

For starters, Hayes calls the Suicide Prevention Unit “a misnomer.”

“The 10-cell unit only occasionally houses inmates on suicide precautions (e.g., only two inmates were on suicide precautions during the time of this writer’s visit) and, other than the posting of two detention officers and a medical staff, there were not any appreciably enhanced services,” Hayes writes. “It would appear that the jail system has an unexplained tolerance for potentially suicidal behavior that has resulted in under-utilization of the Suicide Prevention Unit, as well as other units, for the housing of suicidal inmates.”

And, yet, the most disturbing findings have to do with the jail failing to follow its own written procedures on prevention. For instance, jailers are not supposed to take away suicidal inmates’ personal items unless that inmate is aggressive toward others or themselves. Even then, jailers are supposed to get approval from the shift commander before removing an inmate from general population, after which continuous observation is called for.

Bexar County's mental health diversion program is considered a bright spot in San Antonio's justice system, but not everybody in the jail is screened in a timely fashion for mental illness, according to a recent notice of noncompliance from the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, and clearly problems remain regarding suicidal inmates who aren't diverted from the jail.