More police won't help with Austin's biggest public-safety threats

Let's talk for a moment about public safety in Austin.

The argument for Prop A - the GOP-backed initiative to force the city of Austin to hire 500+ more police officers - is premised on the notion that Texas' capital has become uniquely dangerous as a result of the city council's anti-law enforcement policies. Local media have doubled down on this meme, touting Austin's "record" number of homicides while downplaying the fact that we're now a city of a million people and the record was set 40 years ago. 

How journalists present this information tells us more about them than whether Austin is a safe town. You can run with the scary headline, "Austin hits all-time murder record," or the equally accurate, "Austin has slightly more murders than when it was a much smaller town 40 years ago." The former may work better as clickbait (which is why they do it - hi, Tony Plohetski!) but the latter, contextualized account gives a more accurate sense of the threat.

Though you wouldn't know it from the local media's framing, the murder spike in Austin last year tracked nationwide trends and other Texas cities - including Republican-led communities like Fort Worth and Lubbock - saw even greater increases. So the notion that the murder spike resulted from Austin-specific policies or local attitudes toward police are dubious at best: Nobody thinks Lubbock's city council is anti-police, and they saw a 105% increase in homicides last year.

Even if you think crime is a problem, there's strong evidence hiring more police won't help. The question of whether hiring more police reduces crime has been intensively studied for decades with consistent findings, according to a 2013 metastudy analyzing hundreds of research findings over 40 years. Those researchers concluded, "This line of research has exhausted its utility. Changing policing strategy is likely to have a greater impact on crime than adding more police."

Prof. Bill Spelman, a criminologist and former Austin city council member, now retired from UT's LBJ School, made similar assertions on local Fox news this week. He pointed to the lack of correlation between police staffing size and homicide increases last year, noting that departments of all sizes saw murder spikes, including agencies with high and low staffing ratios alike.

Indeed, Prop A arises from a fundamental misunderstanding of the safety risks faced by the public. Murders are a scary way to die, but in Austin they're an incredibly uncommon one. By comparison, more than one thousand Austinites have died from COVID in the past year and a half. Prof. Spelman analyzed the various death risks in Austin and compared them to national averages. Here's what he found:

Austinites are far less likely to die from murders than other Americans, but we're not doing nearly so well on drug overdoses and suicide. In fact, former Austin Police Chief Brian Manley refused to allow police officers to carry donated Narcan to prevent overdose deaths, declaring that providing medical care was EMS's job. His successor, Joe Chacon, reversed that policy earlier this year, but police in Austin have not until VERY recently considered drug overdoses their problem.

Austin PD has also resisted efforts to send mental-health workers to suicide calls. The city funded a pilot to have teams led by medical professionals handle most of these cases, but after the first year, few real-world calls had been diverted.

Suicides and drug overdoses aren't areas where police play a meaningful role and increasing their number won't prevent deaths by those causes.

Similarly, there's little evidence increased policing will reduce traffic deaths. Statewide in Texas, traffic enforcement decreased by more than half since 2008, during a period when the population and miles driven boomed. And yet, accidents-per-mile driven fluctuated over this period then declined: There's been no apparent public-safety detriment from most traffic tickets going away.

Indeed, in Austin, in particular, the biggest sources of traffic deaths stem from flaws in traffic engineering. This city has until recently prioritized automobile traffic over bikes and pedestrians, so when those groups interact with cars, it often doesn't end well. Public-works improvement like segregated bike lanes and pedestrian tunnels will do more to prevent these deaths than hiring extra cops. But ironically, Prop A would prevent such spending by forcing the city to prioritize hiring police.

For that reason, on traffic, Prop A arguably makes Austin less safe.

Spelman's research re-frames the public-safety question more broadly to include ALL the threats people face, not just scary murderers. And as soon as one considers that broader question, the murders don't seem so scary. They're terrible events happening to small numbers of folks, but their existence shouldn't cause us to de-prioritize responses to threats that pose equally grave danger to far more people.

TX county jails seek to avoid, fail to cooperate with investigations into medical deaths, says Jail Standards Commission's Sunset 'self evaluation'

Grits took time this morning to read through the Texas Commission on Jail Standards' self evaluation created as part of the "Sunset" process, through which the Texas Legislature evaluates agencies' functions every few years. For my own purposes, I took a few notes. Here are the highlights:

For starters, jail capacity in Texas has increased more than five-fold over the last 36 years, during which time the state's population didn't quite double: "From 1983 to date, the number of county jail beds has increased from 19,000 to 96,578." About 2/3 of those beds are full at any point in time.

Evading death investigations through creative, post-hoc dismissals
TCJS identified a recurring pattern where some counties claim someone who died in their custody had been released in order to avoid an outside investigation. The problem arises when:

the county claims they have released from custody because a judge has dismissed the charges. While the inmate technically may no longer be in custody, there is a very real possibility that the events that contributed to their death occurred while they were in custody and preceded their PR Bond or transfer to the hospital. By not reporting the death, the jail avoids the required criminal investigation. This could be viewed as circumventing the intent of the legislature and existing statutes.

The agency has requested an Attorney General's opinion to clarify the issue, but that "does not guarantee a solution."

'Several times per year' jails seek to conceal medical records from TCJS death investigators
Some local jails, particularly those who contract out medical care, have sought to prevent TCJS from accessing inmate medical records as part of death investigations. Because part of their role is determining whether jail staff followed physician's orders, this would keep them from providing meaningful oversight in such cases. From the report:

Several times per year, the agency will encounter opposition when requesting inmate medical records. This most often occurs when dealing with a facility that utilizes a contract medical provider. Other situations in which this has been an issue is when a facility is using a contract provider for mental health services. When this occurs, the provider most often cites HIPAA as the reason for their reluctance or refusal to provide access. In other cases, the provider will claim that the creation of these records are “proprietary” and not subject to disclosure. When either of these situations is encountered, it slows down the process of trying to determine if there were any violations of minimum standards in an extremely important area. Failure to provide adequate healthcare can have dire consequences, up to and including death. Unfortunately, we have determined on several occasions that jails have failed to follow physician’s orders, and being able to identify and correct this issue is extremely important. Current state law and the federal act regarding disclosure of medical records provides an exemption that we have been able to utilize in the past when this issue arises. However, there is still opposition as entities misinterpret (intentionally or due to lack of knowledge) this exemption and slow down the resolution of complaints and investigations. (emphasis added)

Dealing with rulebreakers more quickly
The agency tends to focus on administering technical assistance to jails that violate rules as opposed to using punishments to provide incentives. "Over the past decade, the agency has expanded the amount of technical assistance provided to jails to reduce potential areas of non‐compliance. This approach has been well received by county officials and has allowed staff to focus on larger issues while correcting minor ones at the time of inspection." (See here for examples of inspection reports.) But as a result of recent legislation, counties will be expected to regain compliance more quickly following rules violations:

When first created, the agency’s enabling statute allowed a county up to one year to regain compliance. This provision has recently come under criticism as being too long. One of the bills from the 86th Legislative session now requires facilities that are operated by a private vendor and fail an inspection to appear before our board at the next regularly scheduled meeting. These meetings take place on a quarterly basis, which significantly reduces the amount of time we would expect a facility to remain in non‐compliance.

How other states handle jail oversight
The report includes an excellent, three-page table (pp. 6-8 in the paginated document; pp. 8-10 of the pdf) describing how other states handle oversight of local jails. It's a very nice little compendium of the agencies, enabling statutes, and basic jail oversight functions across states.

Agency as 'referee'
State government regulates jail conditions, but local Sheriffs operate the jails and county commissioners courts provide their funding. This disconnect among responsibilities can inject the jail standards commission into local political fights:

County jails are rarely a priority for local government but represent one of the largest liabilities for them. This can create friction at the local level and prevent effective and constructive communication between the sheriff, who is responsible for the jail’s operation, and the Commissioner’s court, which is responsible for funding it. These are local issues created by local decisions, but they directly impact the effectiveness of the program. With a goal of having all jails operate in compliance, the agency is sometimes placed in the unenviable position of referee in our attempts to meet our goal.

Training new Sheriffs a particular problem
From the agency's perspective, every newly elected Sheriff amounts to a role of the dice. They all run on a "keep us safe" political platform that pretends they're out leading posses chasing bad guys and barely mentions the jail management function which, for most of them, is the most significant and time consuming part of their job. From the report:

Every four years, there is approximately 33% turnover of the sheriffs from the previous cycle who are taking office for the first time. Depending upon their background and previous experience, their understanding of jail operations and the role of the agency varies greatly. Early outreach and education occasionally alleviate some of the issues but not always and not with all the issues.

Shift to electronic reporting despite county opposition
The agency will finally stop receiving paper reports that have to be re-typed into spreadsheets and have counties begin providing statutorily required data electronically.

With the passage of HB3440 (86R) by Caprigilone, over the next two‐year cycle, the agency will be phasing in electronic reporting. This will consist of counties submitting to the agency each month a “locked” excel spreadsheet containing the statutorily mandated data. Prior attempts had been met with resistance from counties, but it is no longer feasible or even responsible to have one FTE assigned to nothing but data entry in 2019. By having the counties submit this data electronically, the FTE previously assigned will now perform quality control checks and simply import the data into the agency database. From there, the data can be used to run multiple reports that we are required to create. It is anticipated that the FTE previously assigned can now assist with other duties and functions of the agency as assigned.

Disconnected county computer networks prevent real-time data analysis
The agency is frustrated that legislators expect them to be more closely tracking data from local jails than they are technically able to at the moment, not just because of statutory reasons but because of technical issues related to linking disparate computer networks:

Efforts to educate members of the legislature about our ability to carry out certain tasks they would like accomplished are sometimes met with “dismissiveness.” Most of this is related to data collection and information submitted by the counties. At this time, there is no central database or portal into which counties can enter and submit information “real time.” The monthly population reports are simply a snap‐shot of the inmate population on the first of the month. The other reports required by statute are daily counts but deal with specific segments of the inmate population not the entire population. Part of the issue with this inability to tie the 240 county jails into a network is that each county has purchased or developed their own software with varying levels of compatibility and capability.

Low jailer pay degrades professionalism
The report directly linked a lack of professionalism among county jail guards to low pay.

With each county jail owned, funded, and operated by local government, they are the ones that decide how much to allocate for jail staff salaries. In an overwhelming majority of counties, the starting pay is a major drawback and jails have a difficult time recruiting and retaining qualified staff. This is an underlying factor in almost every instance of non‐compliance and makes it difficult for Jail Administrators to manage and operate a jail. This results in a wide range of professionalism amongst the jails that we regulate. This in turn requires agency staff to provide additional technical assistance to county jails to assist them in operating safe and secure facilities.

How 'jails have become mental hospitals, and jailers have become social workers'
The agency suggests additional training for local jailers on mental health, especially in rural counties, but they recognize the mental-health problem is bigger, more structural, and fundamentally budget-based than a training-only response can solve:

One area that we are exploring for possible expansion is mental health training. Interaction with an individual with mental illness is challenging even in the best of circumstances. Once a person with a mental illness enters the criminal justice system, that challenge is exacerbated by a factor that is simply hard to quantify. With insufficient mental health providers to service the general public, the need in jails is even greater. With an estimated 30% of the inmate population either diagnosed or exhibiting signs of mental illness, the demand far exceeds supply. By default, the result is that our county jails have become mental hospitals, and jailers have become social workers. Neither the facilities nor the staff that operate them are properly equipped to handle this continuing issue, and no long‐term solution is in sight.

"Difficult and unpopular would be the two most accurate words to describe any possible solution" to overuse of jails for mental health purposes, the report opined.

Administering "Prisoner Safety Fund" now a key agency function
In addition to its traditional functions, the agency now lists as one of its six key functions the administration of the "Prisoner Safety Fund," which state Rep. Garnet Coleman created under the Sandra Bland Act in 2017. That fund had its authority expanded earlier this year. Here's what it does:

Prisoner Safety Fund. The 85th Legislature created the Prisoner Safety Fund as part of SB1849(85R). The original purpose of the fund was to assist counties that operate a jail with a capacity of 96 beds or less with meeting the technology requirements set forth in the bill. There were two areas specifically targeted. The first was the ability to verify observation checks of the inmates by staff in high‐risk areas by an electronic means. This can be accomplished via camera or electronic sensor. The second was the provision to allow access to mental health services 24 hours a day via tele‐mental health services. The 86th Legislature amended the criteria in HB4468(86R) and increased the number of counties eligible to those that operate a facility with a capacity of 288 beds or less.

So the Legislature has created a fund specifically to prevent jail suicides and facilitate provision of mental health services. That could afford some interesting opportunities going forward, although each new funding battle will be a struggle. Certainly the problem hasn't been solved yet, as an AP report emphasized recently. See a detailed discussion of the (relatively modest) grant program beginning on page 71 of the pdf.) Most of the money in the fund has not been spent yet.

Records maintained by the Jail Commission
For those seeking records from the agency, here's a good description of what they have:

The Assistant Director authenticates the reports and data submitted. The following is authenticated to ensure accurate reporting of measures:

(1) Agency Calendar. Each entry is  required to have an associated memorandum prepared by the staff member involved in the activity. The staff member submits these memorandums to the Assistant Director, who reviews each entry on the calendar to ensure that a memorandum is available.  

(2) Inspector Activity Log. Each inspector is required to submit a monthly activity report. The Assistant Director compiles these reports into the Inspector Activity Log and verifies them for accuracy by reviewing a master log maintained by the Assistant Director. Any discrepancies are checked against the county’s inspection files, which are maintained in the agency file room. 

(3) Planning and Construction Log. The planner submits a log. Any activity that is designated as a key measure is reviewed by the Assistant Director to verify that the activity is denoted on the calendar or monthly activity report and that a memorandum is available. 

The Planning and Construction Log is maintained by the Planning and Construction Division and provided to the Assistant Director no later than the fifth day of the following month. The Planning and Construction Division notes the following:

1. Technical Assistance provided to counties on site. 
2. Occupancy Inspections conducted (pass or fail should be noted).
3. Special Inspections conducted. 
4. Training Attended/Conducted. 

Memorandums are submitted in order to document activities designated as key measures.

On pages 16-17 of the pdf is a list of all the datasets maintained by the agency. (Many of these are available on their website.)

Also, some researchers may find it useful to see the information commissioners are given at their meetings:

For each Commission meeting, a reference book is created that includes information on any issue that comes before them. In addition, this book contains current financial statements, copies of any audits or reviews that are periodically conducted by outside entities, and a listing of staff activities during the previous three months. There is also a section that contains the compliance status of all jails under our purview, number of complaints received against jails under our purview, population trends, and construction projects.

Forgotten history
Texas law has mandated safe and suitable jails since the 1920s, but the state didn't begin inspecting jails until 1969. That year, the federal court intervened in "almost 20" local Texas jails because of poor conditions. The Legislature changed the law to allow inspections. (Really, they removed a prohibition on inspections.) After that, "inspections were conducted of all 254 county jails, [and] all but six were found to be in violation of state law."

In 1974,  a survey revealed that 68 percent of jails did not provide 24-hour supervision; 121 left prisoners alone at night; 40 percent "slept prisoners on the floor."

The Legislature formally established the commission in 1975. By 1978, "The Commission became mired in controversy regarding funding, conflict of interest, and agency abolishment." However, 1979 witnessed, "Acceptance of Texas Minimum Jail Standards by Federal Courts and drastic reduction in federal court intervention. The Commission issued the first notices of non‐compliance [later that year], marking the beginning of enforcement efforts."

Inmates from outside Texas
A few county jails house contract prisoners from other states, in particular, "New Mexico, Arkansas and Idaho." New Mexico and Arkansas Grits can perhaps understand as a function of convenience,  proximity, and the logic of rural resources. The Idaho inmates, though, constitute their own mostly forgotten story; they're housed in a privately run facility down in Eagle Pass and the contract has caused lots of problems.

In addition, a few counties contract with private-prison companies to manage immigration-and-other-federal cases:

several federal agencies such as the Bureau of Prisons, Bureau of Immigration and Customs Enforcement, and the United States Marshal’s Service, all contract for bed space that falls under the Commission’s regulatory authority and is subject to inspection. Included in this number are seven (7) privately operated facilities and the companies that operate them through inter‐governmental agreements between county and municipal governments.

Inmate and family complaint procedures
Starting at the bottom of page 47 of the pdf is a detailed discussions of procedures related to inmate an family complaints which may be useful to those who, you know, want to complain. However, one can't file a complaint with TCJS before first going through the local jail's grievance process. They're an oversight agency, not the first point of contact. (If you're going through this process, Grits would recommend contacting Diana Claitor at the Texas Jail Project, who has forgotten more about the subject of jail-grievance processes than Grits has ever known.)

AG punted authority to approve contract-inmate schemes to TCJS
Here's a weird tidbit about jail construction/finance I didn't know. Grits has covered numerous Texas county jails seeking to expand to house immigration detainees and other contract prisoners. But I was unaware that, in the early '90s, the Attorney General's Public Finance Division struggled with this question of

whether the financing of jails or detention facilities of substantial capacity intended to house inmates of governmental entities other than or in addition to those of the sponsoring entity meets the public purpose requirement for the issuance of bonds and other securities.

They decided to punt the issue to TCJS, requiring that the executive director provide a formal letter recommending construction. The commission grants these "if appropriate," but the report doesn't say how appropriateness is judged. It'd be an interesting project to gather all of these through open records to figure out how often speculative contract jails have been recommended and on what basis.

Reasons Texas county jails failed their state inspections

When I saw that an inmate recently hanged himself in the Waller County Jail - the same jail in which Sandra Bland died - on a hunch, I checked to see if Waller has failed its last jail inspection. It had. But that also made me notice the list of other jails currently out of compliance with Texas Commission on Jail Standards regulations. So I looked through all of them and made a few notes. Here are the highlights:

In Waller County, jailers failed to check the detox cells in a timely fashion, misclassified several inmates at intake, failed to undertake required custody reassessments, and failed to make regular rounds as often as state regulations require. Required every-30-minute observations of inmates who are assaultive, suicidal, mentally ill, or displaying bizarre behavior were often exceeded, by from 1-74 minutes, according to jailer logs. MORE: This followup story from the Houston Chronicle goes into more detail on failures from the jail inspection.

In Victoria County, mold issues are a "serious health and safety concern for both inmates and staff."

In Tyler County, jailers were not properly filling out suicide screening forms or notifying the magistrate when an inmate was suicidal.

In Sutton County, jailers were not notifying magistrates of the results of suicide screening, and inmate menus have not been approved by a dietician since 2016.

In Shelby County, an un-monitored inmate was allowed to leave his work assignment for up to 2.5 hours at a stretch, during which time he engaged in illegal activity.

In San Saba, jailers are not giving the required suicide screening form to magistrates, and numerous maintenance problems were cited.

In Robertson County, jailers hadn't been trained in suicide prevention and observation logs showed they were exceeding the times they were required to check on inmates.

Red River County wasn't training jailers after they were hired and were not conducting welfare checks on inmates in detox.

In McLennan County, the jail failed to comply with the mandatory 1:48 staffing:inmate ratio, and failed to make timely checks on suicidal inmates.

In Limestone County, jailers failed to conduct daily cell inspections and were not checking on suicidal inmates as often as required.

In Liberty County, jailers were not notifying magistrates when inmates were suicidal, and contraband was found in inmate housing areas.

In Kinney County, the doors are open and shut via a control panel in the dispatch room, which is kept unlocked and accessible to inmates. In one instance, "an inmate opened doors for jail staff to access a cell area during a fight. It was also determined that the inmate, using jail keys, opened the gate to the west side of the jail to allow a jailer into the booking area." Also, jailers weren't notifying magistrates when inmates were suicidal.

In Jim Hogg County, jailers weren't filling out suicide screening forms and lunches did not match dietician-approved menus.

In Hunt County, jailers didn't receive suicide prevention training, were sometimes short-staffed, and weren't monitoring suicidal inmates often enough.

In Harris County, the jail was "not being kept at an acceptable level of cleanliness" and food being served failed to meet health code standards.

In Goliad County, jailers weren't filling out the mental health screening properly and the facility suffered from cleanliness issues.

In Frio County, the jail was short staffed, jailers aren't always notifying magistrates when inmates are suicidal, menus weren't approved by a dietician, and the facility was "unclean and unsanitary."

In Fisher County, jailers hadn't received suicide training and failed to check on the detox cells often enough.

In Fannin County, following an inmate's death it was determined jailers had exceeded check-in times by up to 49 minutes.

In Crockett County, the jail had no hot water in inmate living areas.

In Comanche County, jailers hadn't received suicide prevention training and the facility suffered from numerous maintenance issues.

In Bowie County, four jailers failed to meet licensing requirements and the jail failed to meet required staffing ratios.

The good news: at most jails, TCJS inspectors found jailers were making suicide rounds as required, weren't unsanitary or unclean, fed inmates dietician-approved meals, etc..  But when they find problems, this gives you a sense of what they look like. And it's little surprise that Waller County - a small jail with a history of suicide-prevention failure and documented, ongoing lack of observation of suicidal inmates - would see another suicide when they're not following proper protocols.

Perhaps, if the deceased Waller-County inmate had been monitored as often as state regulations require, he could have been found sooner and saved. Jail rules have reasons, even if they can seem bureaucratic and cumbersome. They are almost always created with the benefit of hindsight, which is why they can seem prescient when failure to follow them leads to a tragedy.

TDCJ suicide record argues against state takeover of Harris County Jail

In a roundup post over the weekend, Grits pointed to an odd story emerging when "Sen. John Whitmire suggested the state should take over the Harris County Jail after its fifth suicide in two years. If the Texas Department of Criminal Justice did a better job, Grits might agree. Suicide attempts at TDCJ are quite high."

Then, on cue, yesterday Keri Blakinger published a story in the Houston Chronicle titled, "Mother sues Texas prisons after 'egregious' failure to prevent son's suicide." So TDCJ has its own suicide prevention problem.

When I made that passing comment, I didn't have the data on TDCJ suicides close to hand, but Keri did. From the story: "In 2017, the Texas prison system saw 34 suicides, the second-highest number in a decade. At the same time, suicide attempts have been on the rise, though previously officials chalked that up to a change in data recording."

The Harris County Jail, whose inmate population is about 1/15th of the state prison system, has had five suicides since January 2017, Blakinger reported last week. So TDCJ's suicide situation isn't notably better than the Harris County Jail. Why would a state government bureaucracy that can't stop suicides do a better job at suicide prevention than a county-jail bureaucracy that struggles with the same problem?

Perhaps the solution has nothing to do with who manages the facilities, but reducing unnecessary incarceration and vastly expanding mental health services outside of the justice system?

Grits believes that expanding TDCJ's jurisdiction isn't the answer to anything; that agency's footprint needs to contract. The institutional division should incarcerate fewer people. The probation division should supervise people for shorter periods. Understaffed, rural prison units should close and the property beneath them should be sold on the open market.

Anyway, if the state wants to take over the jail, will they pay for it? That's the reason it's incredibly unlikely such a thing will happen in 2019.

If legislators have that much extra money to throw around, there are better ways to improve the justice system. To prevent suicides in county jails, legislators would be better off reducing incarceration levels across the board through bail reform and sentence reduction, and financing outpatient competency restoration so fewer mentally ill people are incarcerated there.

Bail litigation updates across Texas, and other stories

A bit of personal news: After Just Liberty's Executive Director, Shakira Pumphrey, left to join the new Texas House Speaker's staff to work on criminal-justice policy, your correspondent was elevated to her old post on an interim basis. Many thanks to Shakira for all her hard work for Just Liberty over the last two years, and good luck at the new gig! Meanwhile, as Grits struggles to fulfill his new admin duties, here are a few odds and ends that merit readers' attention.

New Harris judges propose bail-reform framework
Just-elected judges in Harris County proposed a new bail framework that will become the basis for a settlement offer in the county's ongoing bail litigation. Reported the Houston Chronicle:

Under the new administrative rule, 85 percent of people arrested on misdemeanors automatically qualify for release on no-cash bonds, according to the county’s pretrial services division. People arrested for bond violations, repeat drunken driving and family violence are the only exceptions. These defendants must appear before a magistrate or judge within 48 hours, at which time they may also qualify for personal recognizance bonds.

DA may be liable in Galveston bail litigation
Federal bail litigation in Galveston survived a motion for summary judgement and may now go forward, a District Judge George Hanks, Jr. ruled this week. Hanks said defendants must be provided counsel at their bail hearing, a provision which tracks rulings in Houston and Dallas. (Most Texas counties do not provide attorneys at the bail-hearing stage, so this litigation result could be replicated nearly everywhere in the state.) Interestingly, Hanks also found that Galveston District Attorney Jack Roady, "who controls the county's bail schedule, was liable for his role in perpetuating a wealth-based detention system. Magistrate Edison had ruled that magistrate judges 'always strictly adhere' to the bail amounts recommended by Roady."

Chaos surrounds Dallas County bail-reform proposal
Despite having months to put together a proposal, in federal court this week, Dallas County officials appeared confused and unprepared, reported the Dallas Morning News. County officials wanted to put lawyers from the Public Defender Office at bail hearings, but judges appoint attorneys and some have told the county, "We're not going to participate," the paper reported. That's foolish. Providing defendants counsel at bail hearings is the one, crystal clear requirement that we can already tell will apply to all Texas counties based on bail litigation thus far (including the 5th Circuit's reaction to the Harris Co. bail suit). The Legislature should simply require it in a statute, or else federal courts will require it one county/lawsuit at a time. MORE.

Tea-leaf reading on execution-stay vote
The Court of Criminal Appeals stayed an execution in a case involving bite-mark evidence and Texas evolving, SCOTUS-dictated developmental-disability standard in death cases. On Twitter, your correspondent engaged in some tea-leaf reading over the vote count. I'm worried the Government Always Wins faction may have gained a new member. In other, related, news, I already miss Judge Elsa Alcala's voice on the court.

'Dead Suspect Loophole' in Public Information Act decried
In Austin, several recent cases have brought to light what local media are calling the "Dead Suspect Loophole" in the Texas Public Information Act. The Legislature changed the law in 1997 to say only information about cases that result in a conviction must be made public, and when a suspect dies (say, because they're shot by a cop or die mysteriously in jail), they're never prosecuted. The problems with the law-enforcement exception to Texas Public Information Act go much deeper than that, and the Legislature should address them, but I'm glad this aspect is being highlighted. That said, the loophole is discretionary. Local officials don't have to use it. This is a transparency issue that should be re-raised when the various pols' primaries roll around.

Which crappy, failing bureaucracy should run the Harris County Jail?
Sen. John Whitmire suggested the state should take over the Harris County Jail after its fifth suicide in two years. If the Texas Department of Criminal Justice did a better job, Grits might agree. Suicide attempts at TDCJ are quite high. Weird that the Governor wants the state to take over Houston ISD, now Whitmire wants the state to take over the jail ... there's a theme being developed around the capitol that local officials' autonomy in Harris County should be restricted. The recent blue-wave election there could exacerbate that dynamic in the still-red-as-roses Texas Lege.

Convict leasing history, victims unearthed
The Houston Chronicle has been providing good coverage of the discovery of dozens of black prisoners bodies buried in unmarked graves near Sugar Land. They were inmates leased to the Imperial Sugar Company, for which the town is named. For more on Imperial Sugar and the convict leasing system, check out Texas Tough by Robert Perkinson.

Rangers pulled off LaSalle Corrections investigations for alleged conflict of interest
The Sandra Bland Act required counties to have a separate agency investigate all deaths in county jails, and may have used the Texas Rangers, including at 7 jails run by LaSalle Corrections, a private prison contractor with a problematic history. The Dallas News reported alleged conflicts of interest, with the company hiring a former Ranger who's son presently oversees the Rangers at DPS. While not alleging misconduct, the Commission on Jail Standards has decided to pick a different agency to investigate LaSalle-run facilities.

Inmate outsourcing caused by judges resisting bail reform

As mentioned earlier, the Harris County Jail, with more than 10,000 inmates, is larger than the prison systems in 19 states. But not all of those people are housed in Harris County! The Sheriff is mulling spending more per inmate to house people in Fort Bend County instead of in Louisiana.

To be clear: The entire cost of contracts to house inmates out of county may be attributed to failures in pretrial detention policy. Harris County judges pressed the county to spend millions of dollars fighting bail reform rather than issue personal bonds to low-risk defendants, a point attorney Pat McCann made at the end of the story.

Notably, the Texas Commission on Jail Standards recent found the Harris County Jail out of compliance after two suicides in a month's time.

Reduction in jail suicides welcome, but not yet a 'trend'

The MSM should be careful labeling the 2016 reduction in Texas jail suicides a "trend," as this Dallas News editorial did. One year's data does not a "trend" make. I realize that, in 21st century internet culture, everyone wants answers now. But when it comes to criminal-justice data, there's still a lag before enough data exists over a long enough period to distinguish "trends" from noise.

Roundup: Jean Valjean at Christmastime and other stories

Here are a few odds and ends which haven't made it into individual Grits posts during a busy week but which merit readers' attention:

Draconian enhancements based on decades-old offenses
Thanks to "enhancements" based on felonies committed two decades ago, a Hays County man received a six-year sentence for stealing $45 worth of ground beef and toys for his children from a Walmart just before Christmas last year. The kicker: Texas Supreme Court Justice Jeff Brown was foreman of the jury who convicted this latter-day Jean Valjean. Les Miserables similes aside, there needs to be some statute of limitations on how long old convictions can be used to enhance new misdemeanors into lengthy prison sentences. Nothing about what this guy did 20 years ago predicts that he's a danger today; in fact, the nature of this latest trumped-up "felony" indicates his priorities have shifted. The fellow committed what otherwise would have been a Class C misdemeanor theft so he could give his kids a modest Christmas, and "To love another person is to see the face of God."

Judges call for independent crime lab
Travis County judges are calling on the city to separate its crime lab from the Austin Police Department, a move presaged by recommendations from the National Academy of Sciences in its landmark 2009 report. Grits agrees with that assessment, with one caveat: They should make the lab truly independent, as was done in Houston. What they shouldn't do is shift those functions to the county medical examiner, as some have suggested. Let's please do this right the first time. In related news, Sen. Cornyn is pushing legislation to reauthorize federal funding for crime labs and reducing rape kit backlogs.

Contempt of cop: A case study
This article from Meagan Flynn at the Houston Press depicts a class example of an arrest for "contempt of cop" by a Harris County Sheriff's deputy.

Can bureaucracy prevent jail suicides?
Despite this Texas Tribune story, Grits suspects that far too much credit is being given to a new intake form when it comes to reducing jail suicides. We'll have to see if reductions hold long-term. But it's just as likely that jails stepped up prevention efforts because the Commission on Jail Standards began making suicides a greater point of emphasis and Sheriffs didn't want to end up in the paper with the next Sandra-Blandesque death occurring in their facility. If that's the case, suicides will continue to fluctuate and may go back up as new incidents arise. I hope I'm wrong, but it seems hard to believe such a small bureaucratic change could make a huge dent in a problem rooted deep in the human psyche. My instincts say to look for a) alternative explanations and b) future increases.

Veterans courts are cool, but don't scale up
This Houston Chronicle article touts veterans courts as an intervention that works, and they do, but it's also true that they're resource intensive and don't scale up well given the volume and gaping needs of the target population. Reported the Chron, quoting the judge in charge of the project: "The common denominator of the veterans in his court is a 'very low sense of self-esteem and self-purpose,' along with self-hate." But couldn't you say that about defendants in every criminal courtroom in America? Strong probation methods work, but they require more resources than most county governments are willing to provide, and you can't place it all on the backs of defendants through expensive court fees. These courts are important experiments, but they are not yet scale-able solutions and are unavailable to most veterans who commit crimes.

Asset seizures skyrocketed since turn of century
Total assets seized by Texas law enforcement increased more than 150 percent from 2001 to 2013, according to Right on Crime. At this point, agencies have become reliant on the income in unhealthy and problematic ways. If the interdiction strategy were working, one wonders, wouldn't authorities seize LESS illicit assets over time?

LWOP for illegal immigrants makes no cost-benefit sense
Here's a legislative proposal that would cost a small fortune with little public safety benefit to show for it: Authorizing life without parole for first-degree felonies committed by illegal immigrants. Life without parole didn't exist in Texas until 2005, when death penalty abolitionists made a deal with the devil, creating the new punishment as the sole alternative available to their clients in death-penalty cases. IMO that legislation threw their clients under the bus. Since then, we've seen hundreds of people sentenced to LWOP while death sentnences dropped. But LWOP is also a death sentence, just in slow motion. Next we had people wanting LWOP for sex offenders, then for sex traffickers, and not for illegal immigrants. There's no public safety argument for this policy and the cost-benefit analysis cannot stand up to scrutiny. This is just pandering to nativist sentiments in a crass and ham-handed way. One hopes cooler, wiser, and more cost-conscious heads will prevail as the bill is considered at the Lege.

1033 program: Not as free as 'free' sounds
Lots of Texas agencies got "free" personnel carriers through the Pentagon's 1033 program, but the Texas Public Policy Foundation points out that that statement masks significant costs to locals from operating the vehicles.

CAN-DO Clemency
Grits was interested to learn of the CAN-DO Foundation, which stands for Clemency for All Nonviolent Drug Offenders. As folks push Obama to maximize his use of clemency on his way out the door,  it's worth mentioning there's still time for him to posthumously pardon the writer O. Henry, as this blog along with Pete Ruckman has long advocated.

Locked up for the holidays
In an item titled, "Locked up for the holidays," the Pew Charitable Trusts' Stateline site examined the impact of the holiday season on inmates and their families and charity work aimed at supporting both.

Inmate atttempts suicide same day as TCJS prevention training

The renewed focus on suicide prevention by the Texas Commission on Jail Standards paid off recently in my hometown, reported the Tyler Morning Telegraph ("March 17"):

Staff at Smith County Jail and others across East Texas saw their training put to the test when an inmate at the jail attempted to hang himself on the same day representatives from the Texas Commission on Jail Standards were in town teaching staff about suicide prevention.

The 34-year-old male inmate from Lindale was rushed to the hospital about 7 p.m. Tuesday night and remained in a Tyler hospital Wednesday, where he was upgraded to stable condition, while jail staff continued their two-day training at the jail. 

Smith said an investigation into the incident so far has revealed the man hanged himself using a T-shirt, not with a towel as staff first believed. The man was found by jailers about 7 p.m. Tuesday during a routine check, which are required by the the Texas Commission on Jail Standards to be conducted every 30 minutes, regardless of the inmate's mental state. 

The jail was cited for failing to make a cell check on time for a 24-year-old man who was found hanging in his cell May 16, 2015.

Here's a bit more detail regarding circumstances surrounding the latest incident:

[Sheriff Larry] Smith said the inmate was being held in a separation cell located in the original portion of the jail, because jailers felt he could be a danger to others, Smith said. Medical personnel had seen the inmate at 3 p.m. Tuesday and did not believe him to be suicidal. The inmate had been in the separation cell for about two days. 

Currently, jailers check inmates who are on suicidal watch every 10 minutes, unless they are deemed at immediate risk. Inmates who are actively attempting to harm themselves are placed on constant watch, with a jailer monitoring them at all times. 

“If an inmate claims to be suicidal, they have to do specific things, such as notify the magistrate, their supervisor and medical staff,” TCJS Executive Director Brandon Wood said. “We encourage them to be as proactive as possible.”

Inmates not on suicide watch are allowed to have personal items in cells, such as clothing and hygiene items. 

That last line makes me wonder if inmates deemed suicidal are routinely stripped naked in their cells? If inmates "not on suicide watch are allowed to have personal items ... such as clothing," that implies suicidal ones don't get clothes. I understand wanting to limit their means of harming themselves, but that's also a pretty big incentive to lie about one's mental health condition if admitting it will get you stripped naked and stuck in an isolation cell.

To his credit, this episode and the one last year that got them cited by TCJS have Sheriff Smith thinking about the issue in a more proactive fashion:

Smith said he wants to go beyond jail standards and put more safeguards in place.

During the jail’s January inspection, the sheriff’s office asked TCJS to return to host this week's training classes on suicide prevention. The instructor taught the class for four groups of law enforcement personnel from around East Texas on Tuesday and Wednesday. 

"That’s part of addressing the issue. … We’re doing everything we can do," Smith said of the training. "I’ve already given (staff) ... an assignment to think outside the box. What can we do that’s not being done anywhere else to get out in front of all possibilities and to limit suicide as much as we can?," Smith said. "Forget about what the jail commission requires us to do with minimum standards, what else can we do to do that?”

Grits tends to credit the Sandra Bland tragedy last year with a heightened focus on suicide prevention in Texas jails. Jailers are more likely now to be held accountable when something goes wrong, especially when they cover it up. And that in turn pressures administrators like Smith to take prevention much more seriously.

TX jail inspections could bump up to twice per year

Our pal Eva Ruth Moravec has a story up over at Quorum Report on jail suicides which opened:

An unexpected, sudden rise in suicides at county jails in a year that saw a record number of them – including the high-profile death of Sandra Bland in a Waller County lockup – has officials and experts in Texas scratching their heads.

Thirty-three people committed suicide in a Texas county jail in 2015, according to the Texas Commission on Jail Standards. Records kept since 2010 show the number of suicides in previous years was between 19 and 26 in jails where about 1 million people are held every year. Since the fiscal year ended, commission Executive Director Brandon Wood said there have been another 10 suicides.

We also get a little backstory as to how the jail intake form became the main focus of regulatory reform:

Well before Bland's death, TCJS knew there were problems with its intake form, thanks in part to Diana Claitor, executive director of the Texas Jail Project. After analyzing reports on jails found out of compliance between 2010 and 2013, Claitor found that failing to properly screen inmates resulted in more demerits than anything else.

"We set up these things, but people have to have a will, and they have to be trained to make it important enough to do something with," Claitor said. "There's been discussions over the inadequacies of this form for a while, so it's a strong strategy to try to change this."

That's encouraging. Grits has been concerned that TCJS and state officials have focused nearly exclusively on improving this form as a solution, even though clearly it's not an end unto itself. So I"m glad to learn Brandon Wood was reacting to an issue advocates had identified as a problem. Without that bit of information, it seemed odd for TCJS to hype this change so hard. That it was a known problem advocates were already trying to change makes much more sense (to me) of his response.

Moravec reported on another possible reform which would have to be mandated by the Legislature:

The committees chaired by Whitmire and Coleman both are tasked with addressing jail safety and standards during the interim, and are actively brainstorming. Wood said he's been instructed by both bodies to work into his next budget requests for enough officers to inspect county jails twice a year, instead of just once.

[Former TCJS chief Adan] Munoz said increasing inspections will "keep jails on their toes and keep them from falsifying records. If you have more inspectors to do more routine surprise inspections, you'll have everyone ready 24/7." 

That would be a big change. Notably, the suggestion to double the number of state inspections comes at a time when the Harris County Sheriff just slashed the number of jail standards compliance officers in half at the state's largest county jail.

Two calls for greater prison oversight

Today we find two important calls for prison oversight. First, in the New York Times, Grits contributing writer Michele Deitch coauthored a column with Michael Mushlin from Pace Law School titled, "What's going on in our prisons?" Though the article specifically focuses on New York State, their arguments for external oversight of prisons resonates across US jurisdictions:

The State Legislature should follow the A.B.A.’s guidance and establish a monitoring body with unfettered access to prison facilities, staff, inmates and records in announced or unannounced visits.

The monitor should be empowered to examine and report on all aspects of a facility’s operations that affect inmates, including, for example: medical and mental health care; use of force; inmate violence; conditions of confinement; staffing practices; inmate discipline and use of solitary confinement; substance abuse treatment; educational and rehabilitative programming; and re-entry planning.

There also should be an independent investigatory body that reviews complaints and allegations of wrongdoing, including inmate grievances, abuse claims, denial of access to health care and inmate deaths.

At the same time, the prison system should enhance its own internal accountability measures, such as its decision to electronically log complaints to monitor accusations of staff misconduct.

But in light of recent events, the public is unlikely to be satisfied with a prison agency’s pronouncements that everything is fine or trust the vindications of staff members accused of abusive behavior. Only independent monitoring and investigations can provide that level of public accountability.

The costs of this oversight would pale in comparison to the hundreds of millions of dollars paid out in lawsuits stemming from unconstitutional practices and the untold costs associated with ineffective programs and unnecessary use of solitary confinement.

Designed correctly, an oversight body can provide an early warning system about patterns of complaints against certain prison employees, assess the appropriateness of discipline meted out to staff members, address concerns about inadequate health care or protocols for dealing with mentally ill inmates, highlight programs that are ineffective, point to areas for improved staff training, and identify policies that need to be adjusted. A monitor could also identify practices worth replicating at other prisons.

The awareness by prison staff that a monitor could show up at any time would check employee misbehavior. The culture of a prison changes when outsiders shine a light on its operations and conditions.

Meanwhile, our pals Cate Graziani and Doug Smith have an op ed in the Houston Chronicle titled, "Better state jail oversight can prevent suicides," That article concludes:

high suicide rates cannot be attributed solely to mental health disorders. The units in TDCJ with the highest rates of suicides and suicide attempts are also some of the most populous and dangerous in the system: Darrington, Robertson and Clements have higher incidents of use of force, sexual assault, solitary confinement and violence. Furthermore, data reveal that units housing women, who represent approximately 12,000 individuals in TDCJ and the fastest-growing prison population, had some of the highest suicide rates in the entire system.

Why should the public care whether prison conditions are safe or lead to hopelessness? The vast majority of people sentenced to prison will return to the community. Hostile and traumatic conditions interfere with rehabilitation, which is a serious, long-term public safety concern. Further, the same environment that creates drastically high rates of suicide and suicide attempts also fuels high turnover rates for correctional officers. In 2013, TDCJ reported a 20.6 percent turnover rate across all positions, while correctional officers had an even higher turnover rate - 24 percent. Staffing shortages, like those experienced by the McConnell and Connelly units in South Texas, contribute to more violent environments and can inhibit suicide prevention efforts.

All too frequently, we have seen what happens when public institutions, from state agencies to public schools, lack independent, external oversight. They fail to achieve the efficiency that comes from increased transparency, and often identify abuses far too late. Texas has implemented external oversight for the state's juvenile correctional system, but TDCJ continues to operate the largest prison system of any state without independent oversight.

Texas must acknowledge its duty to protect the rights and well being of those under the supervision of its state agencies. Implementing external oversight of the adult corrections system will help policymakers and agency staff create safe environments for those who live and work in prisons and state jails, with benefits to units, Texas communities and families.

Glimpses of the Harris County Jail's dark underbelly

Several remarkable Houston Chronicle articles over the last month about problems at the HPD and Harris County jails develop some particularly unfortunate themes, and demonstrated some impressive team reporting chops:

Calls for training, better cell checks follow Harris County jail suicides (Dec. 1)

Wrote St. John Barned-Smith, "[I]n thousands of pages of autopsy reports and internal disciplinary reports, the Chronicle found 35 instances in which jailers skipped required cell checks or faked records to hide skipping them, a pattern that experts called a serious problem at county jails statewide."

The union says "the jail has never been properly staffed because both county and state leaders don't provide adequate funding. 'We just don't have enough manpower for the number of beds we have in the jail.'"

"Statewide, 154 inmates have killed themselves in county jails since Sept. 1, 2009. Suicides in county jails recently hit a five- year high: 33, up from 22 five years ago. The spike has come even as state officials have tried to shrink populations. (The total excludes municipal jails, which the state does not regulate.)"

The article also included a link to a a consultant's report on suicide prevention at the Harris County jail.

HPD jailer gets year of probation and week in jail for assault case (Dec. 15)

After an inmate allegedly spit at him, a civilian HPD jailer "attacked a mentally ill inmate, hitting him multiple times in a padded cell at the Houston Police Department's Central Jail," according to the Harris County DA, which resulted in a conviction on misdemeanor assault charges. Further, said the DA, "video surveillance helped authorities identify discrepancies" in the jailer's account of events.

"'This case illustrates the importance of having a video when complaints are made against law enforcement officials,' Julian Ramirez, chief of the District Attorney's Office Civil Rights Division, said in the release. 'We could not have proven this particular case without the video to disprove the justification given by the jailer.'"

Inmate's claims of jailer abuse fall on deaf ears (Dec. 22)

This story by Anita Hassan and James Pinkerton opened:

William Curtis Evans is serving three years in a Texas state prison for assaulting a detention officer in the Harris County Jail named Larry Poag.

Exactly what happened when Poag fingerprinted Evans for a bicycle theft charge in March 2014 remains in dispute.

Poag claimed Evans, handcuffed and shackled, bit him on the forearm. The 67-year-old jailer later admitted hitting Evans in the face to stop the attack, disciplinary reports state.

Evans denied biting Poag and claimed the jailer assaulted him and bent his finger back so far that it broke.

But Evans would be sentenced to prison before anyone at the Harris County Sheriff's Office investigated his complaint, learning the hard way that there were few safeguards for inmates who claim to have been assaulted by guards.

The Chronicle found eight cases in which inmates were choked, punched or kicked by detention officers and then ended up facing felony charges for alleged crimes against staff members, even though jailers were later disciplined for misconduct in connection with the same incidents - either for using excessive force or failing to report the incidents. Three of the eight, including Evans, were convicted and went to prison.

The Sheriff's Office does not routinely inform prosecutors of internal investigations into jailer's actions that are directly connected to criminal allegations against an inmate, even when disciplinary action is issued against jail staff that is related to those charges, a sheriff's spokesman confirmed in an email.

Inmates accused, charged despite workers own misconduct (Dec. 22)

Another one from Anita Hassan, summarized in this passage:

a Houston Chronicle investigation has found misuse of force by staff against inmates is prevalent and hard to prove, especially when jail staff file charges against inmates in altercations during which their own actions have been called into question.

Between 2009 and May of this year, the Harris County Sheriff's office has pursued charges more than 900 times against inmates for harassment, assault and other crimes against public servants stemming from incidents within the jail, according to court records.

With the U.S. Department of Justice's Civil Rights Division continuing its review of excessive force by jail staff and pursuing an "ongoing law enforcement proceeding" in the jail, the Chronicle found that jail staff members have been disciplined in more than 120 incidents for misuse of force and other abuses of authority since 2009, records show.

Several of those disciplined have been involved in dozens of inmate prosecutions.

Tough bail policies punish the poor and the sick, critics say (Dec. 26)

This story by James Pinkerton and Lauren Caruba buried the lede, which should have been that "Fifty-five inmates died in the [Harris County] jail while awaiting adjudication since 2009. Eight were too ill to appear at initial bail hearings."

We also get this description of bail hearings in Houston, where it should be noted that indigent defendants are not represented by counsel: "Magistrates don't actually meet defendants, who are jailed across the street. Instead, faces appear on a screen. Few questions are asked. Some hearings last less than a minute."

County pretrial services employees interview most defendants, but "It's unclear whether magistrates review responses." "In recent hearings," reported Pinkerton and Caruba, "getting through the docket fast seemed to take precedence."

* * *

In summary, if you're too poor to post bond in Houston, your bail hearing will be a joke, with no lawyer to represent or speak up for you. You might get sick in jail or be beaten by a guard then convicted of a felony for assaulting him. Even if you're innocent. And if despair overtakes you and you attempt suicide, maybe no one will be there to stop you; perhaps they'll even falsify records after the fact to cover up their negligence.

That won't be everyone's experience, but these stories show it's been some people's. The Harris County Jail is so large that, among US states, it would rank as a mid-sized prison system. So when there are problems, they tend to scale up.

Houston voters sent a pretty strong message recently by failing to give former Sheriff Adrian Garcia a spot in the runoff for Mayor in a race which, at one time, some people thought was his to lose. IMO his poor showing stemmed largely from the public's recognition of problems at the Harris County Jail on his watch, some of the worst of which are cataloged in the stories above.

Perhaps that bodes well for finding solutions: If voters are going to punish politicians for these problems, maybe it will create some urgency for remaining Harris County pols with responsibility over the jail.

Robot parole boards, an All-American scofflaw, and other stories

Here are few items which haven't made it into individual posts but which merit Grits readers' attention:

• How overcharging and pretrial detention coerce plea deals: In Waco, a man spent 704 days in the county jail before pleading to a one-year misdemeanor sentence. Recently the Wall Street Journal published a column on "The Injustice of the Plea Bargain System," which Doug Berman excerpted here for non-subscribers. (See related Grits coverage.)
• The Houston Chronicle examined records surrounding suicides at the Harris County Jail: "In thousands of pages of autopsy reports and internal disciplinary reports, the Chronicle found 35 instances in which jailers skipped required cell checks or faked records to hide skipping them, a pattern that experts called a serious problem at county jails statewide." Further, "Screening and observation failures played a role in nine of the 28 jail suicides that occurred in the eight-county Houston metro area since the Texas Commission on Jail Standards began tracking those deaths in 2009."
• Not sure how I missed this, but a Houston PD officer was fired in October for pacing motorists' vehicles in his personal car and sending them tickets in the mail.
• A former Baylor football All-American and Dallas Cowboys draft pick was arrested in Waco with 22 active license suspensions: This is almost certainly a function of the Driver Responsibility surcharge. 
• Grits is unsure mentoring can solve indigent defense problems created by economics and the self-interest of institutional players. There's a robust mentoring program in Houston but Harris County courts are still essentially plea mills. Regardless, here's a new document from the Task Force on Indigent Defense touting mentoring programs for criminal defense lawyers who take appointed cases. I suppose it can't hurt.
• An SA Express-News story touts a new book, "Stolen Years: Stories of the Wrongfully Imprisoned."
• The Texas Observer on Border Patrol corruption: Who could have predicted that?
• Read a brief history of secret American prisons.
• Check out 60 Minutes coverage from Sunday on confidential informants and the drug war.
• Here's an important, seldom-asked question: Why punish drug users at all?
• While historically fears of robots taking people's jobs centered among the working class, lately automation has also begun to take over higher-skilled intellectual work that's repetitive and routine oriented. Which brings us to the question: Could robots replace judges or parole boards? This article ventures tentatively down the path of considering what that might look like, comparing decisions by the California parole board to outcomes from statistical models.

Dead in Jail: A Texas Story

When Sandra Bland died this summer in the Waller County Jail, generating international outrage at her unnecessary arrest and the failures of jailers to monitor properly for suicide, the main thing that surprised Grits was that the media and public paid attention, for once. After all, if you watch the local press, folks die needlessly all the time in Texas jails. For example, just recently I've noticed these headlines:

• Inmate dies in West Texas jail
• Inmate dies in Central Texas jail, Texas Rangers investigating
• Man dies days after hanging self in Travis County jail

And then there's this case in Waco where three jailers at a privately run county facility have been charged with evidence tampering after they changed records to make it appear they'd conducted suicide checks which had never been performed.  Reported the Waco Tribune-Herald (Nov. 13):

Three correctional officers at the Jack Harwell Detention Center were arrested Thursday after allegedly changing documents to make it appear they conducted headcounts following the investigation of a suicide that occurred in the jail.

Michael Crittenden, 24; Milton Walker, 33; and Christopher Simpson, 24, were each arrested on a charge of tampering with government documents, legal documents filed in the case show.

All three are employees of LaSalle Corrections, which operates the Harwell Center.

Surveillance video showed that Crittenden, Walker and Simpson all lied about conducting headcounts in N-Wing in the early morning hours of Nov. 1, according to affidavits filed in the case.

So, if you watch, folks are dying in Texas' jails under questionable circumstances with regularity and for the most part, it seldom makes more than a blip on the local news.

By contrast, on Sunday, the Houston Chronicle published an investigative feature detailing deaths at the states largest county jail (and, for that matter, its largest mental health facility), many of which may be attributed to inadequate health care:

The Department of Justice targeted inadequate medical care at the jail in a 2009 report, finding that poor care and failures by jail medical staff to treat chronic conditions, including diabetes, tuberculosis and mental illness, had been factors in 20 deaths.

Six years later, a Houston Chronicle investigation has found that serious issues remain related to inmate care. Despite reforms in staffing and procedures that have improved medical care in key areas, the Justice Department continues to focus on shortfalls in mental health treatment and on jailers' use of force against disruptive prisoners, according to John Odam, general counsel for the Harris County attorney.

Moreover:

Records show at least 75 inmates have died in jail custody since the Justice Department report, about three-quarters of whom were awaiting adjudication. The number of deaths decreased about 11 percent during [former Sheriff Adrian] Garcia's administration compared to the last five years under Garcia's predecessor, Tommy Thomas.

Most of the deaths since 2009 were attributed to natural causes. Ten died of hepatitis B or C. Ten were suicides. Eight had HIV or AIDS. Five died from the deadly "superbug" staph infection MRSA. Three were ruled homicides.

The Chronicle identified at least 19 cases in which inmates died of illnesses that were either treatable or preventable, or in which delays in care, or staff misconduct, could have played a role in their deaths.

Also:

Over the past nine months, the Chronicle also reviewed more than 1,000 disciplinary reports provided by the Sheriff's Office and found 35 failures to complete cell checks, sometimes for inmates in solitary confinement. Additionally, jailers were disciplined more than 120 times for misconduct involving abuse of authority or misuse of force since 2009, including 13 instances in which jailers failed to seek medical attention for inmates.

Tuberculosis, in particular, is a chronic problem:

"For sure I wouldn't want to be in that jail, because I have major concerns about how they are doing TB skin tests," said professor Edward A. Graviss, director of the molecular tuberculosis laboratory at the Methodist Hospital Research Institute. "It's like being in a Third World country; you have to assume everyone is infected with TB. I would screen them a little bit differently, but again, it's your tax dollars at work. Do you screen them faster, or do you put fewer people in jail?"

Deaths at smaller jails may be treated as isolated incidents, though that's really a misnomer when the same things happen at jail after state-regulated jail. But in enormous Harris County, the high volume makes patterns more easily identifiable.

The Chronicle reported that, in January, the Texas Senate Criminal Justice Committee will take a deeper dive into some of these issues in an interim hearing. So these topics will get their turn in the sun next year, and likely at the 85th Legislature in 2017.

RELATED: Dozens of inmates die in Texas jails each year.

Jail suicides, traffic stop data, on deck at TX House hearing next week

The Texas House County Affairs Committee is having another Sandra-Bland related hearing next week will also address errors in DPS racial profiling data. Here's the agenda. In particular:

• The Committee will meet to discuss how Texas Department of Public Safety codes race during traffic stops, problems with their current method, and ways to correct coding moving forward. 
• Additionally, Texas Commission on Jail Standards will present the new inmate intake screening form to the Committee and discuss recent jail suicides. 

The Dallas News previewed the jail suicide part. (See also the Texas Tribune.) And Grits' own Jennifer Laurin wrote this about the traffic data.
 
Too much has been made about this new Jail Standards Commission form, IMO. That's a fine, bureaucratic change but it's not the end-all-be-all of jail-suicide prevention; it barely scratches the surface. (Grits' new contributing writer Michele Deitch offered these more probative suggestions to the Senate Criminal Justice Committee in September, arguing for a much more comprehensive approach.)

On the racial profiling data at traffic stops, to me this would be a missed opportunity if all they look at are the codes for Hispanic vs. white. Nobody has revisited the fields on traffic stop data collected under Texas' anti-racial profiling law in 14 years, so this might be an opportunity to revisit the question. Some of the Tier II data fields, like whether contraband was found during a search, really ought to be made mandatory, even for departments with dashcams, who are now exempted.

This may be an opportunity to improve the stop data, which really can't be used to prove racist intentions but which has many other uses for police accountability advocates. What we got back in 2001 was a compromise; requiring more/better data fields could make the information a lot more probative.

Focus on suicide, traffic accidents to reduce police officer deaths

The Texas Tribune reported that Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick has "asked the Criminal Justice Committee to make recommendations to 'reduce the number of injuries and deaths to or by law enforcement officers,' by reviewing police efforts to engage their local communities as well as assess the dangers to law enforcement officers."

Patrick's suggestion responded to the murder of Deputy Darren Goforth in Houston. But when it comes to police officer injuries and deaths, that episode is an outlier. The two areas where a greater opportunity exists to minimize police deaths are to reduce a) traffic accidents and b) suicides. And methods to reduce traffic deaths among cops could have a salutary benefit of reducing bystander deaths as well.

This same senate committee had an interim charge on the same topic which resulted in a report (see interim charge 5, p. 58 of pdf) in 2009. That report pinned the largest risk to police officers on the fact that they spend so much time in cars: "Policing remains a dangerous profession and our delivery method of this public service by automobile is the largest contributor to accidental deaths in Texas and across the nation."

Grits expects the next senate review to result in similar findings as the underlying causes and rates of police deaths haven't changed much in the intervening years. It's possible the Legislature could act to reduce peace officer deaths, but not if they focus on the spectacular cases rather than the typical ones.

RELATED: Speaking of Deputy Goforth's murder, demagoguery by the Sheriff in its aftermath appears even more off base now that it's been revealed that a) Goforth was at the gas station to meet a paramour not his wife, and b) the woman with whom he allegedly engaged in an affair allegedly also engaged in "consensual sexual conduct" with the Sheriff's department investigator assigned to the case! The mind reels at such poor judgment, at least before it begins wondering whether the investigator has engaged in similar behavior in other cases.

Reported Lisa Falkenberg at the Chronicle, "From the beginning, officials at the scene told reporters that Goforth was pumping gas when he was killed. Now we find out that he may have not been pumping gas, or even on duty." Then the bit about the investigator allegedly sleeping with Goforth's mistress transforms this into a truly bizarre and disgraceful episode. Deputy Goforth's murder was a tragedy but the opportunistic way the Sheriff's Department handled the aftermath exacerbated harm instead of mitigating it.

Suicide attempts at TDCJ spiked so far in 2015

The average monthly number of suicide attempts among prisoners under TDCJ custody increased 28 percent so far in 2015, from an average of 81.7 attempts per month in 2014, to an average of 104.5 attempts per month, according to a document forwarded to Grits titled "Emergency Action Center, Select Statistics, August 2015." The number of completed suicides, however, stayed the same, at an average of 2.6 per month both years (from a low of 0 some months to a high of 5, system-wide). Thirty-one people committed suicide in TDCJ in 2014; 21 had done so as of this August 2015 report.

According to the same document, the ratio of suicide attempts in 2014 was the highest in recent history at 64.1 per 10,000 offenders, and the monthly totals are higher, even, this year. Before that, the ratio was 50.3 per 10,000 in 2013 and hadn't topped 50 the decade prior.

Use of force/assaults on staff
Major use of force by staff was slightly higher in 2015 compared to last year, and in 2014 the rate of major use of force by staff per 10,000 inmates reached a decade-long apex, at 512.6 per 10,000. The rate of serious assaults on both staff and offenders are down slightly.

Major use of force happens much more at some units than others. Some may report zero, one or two incidents per month for months on end, while others like Telford, Coffield, Stiles, Clements, Jester IV, McConnell, Connally, Montford, Smith, Hughes, Robertson, and a few others account for double-digit incidents every month.

The rate of serious assaults on staff per 10,000 prisoners in 2014 was 50 percent higher than in 2006 - 6.0 per 10,000 prisoners compared to 4.0 per 10,000. Serious assaults in this case are defined as incidents where the staff person needs medical attention beyond first aid.