The U.S. Department of Justice issued a scathing report this month about deplorable conditions in the Harris County jail that violate the requirements of the U.S. Constitution. DOJ found an “alarming” number of prisoners’ deaths, caused by inadequate medical care.
Scandalous jail conditions are nothing new in Texas.
The investigation into conditions in the Harris County jail began during the Bush Administration. DOJ not long ago similarly criticized Dallas County for failing to provide prisoners medical care, and condemned the Texas Youth Commission for violent conditions at the Evins TYC facility in Hidalgo County. DOJ also has investigated guards using excessive force at the Bexar County jail. In Montague County, which DOJ hasn’t yet visited, corrupt deputies smuggled a barcalounger into a cell and had sex with inmates.
And the list goes on – all across Texas.
In jails around the state, most of the prisoners have not been convicted of any crime, but are there awaiting trial because they cannot afford to post bond or are awaiting someone to post bond for them. The law presumes them not guilty, until a trial proves otherwise. In Harris County, 130,000 people passed through the jail each year, the majority of whom make bail and are released fairly quickly.
Most Texans in jail haven’t committed serious crimes, and many of us know someone who was pulled over and spent a night in jail. DOJ’s findings in Harris and Dallas Counties should be disturbing to all Texans because a diabetic arrested after a traffic stop shouldn’t suffer a death sentence simply because the jail wouldn’t timely provide insulin.
Due to cutbacks to mental health budgets, county jails double as psychiatric “hospitals” for low-income people. All too often suicidal prisoners are ignored and allowed to take their own life. Jasper County jailers failed to take basic steps like confiscating the shoelaces of a mentally ill prisoner who was in the jail because no hospital beds were available. (After his death, the jail changed its policies to try to prevent future suicides.). Many prisoners’ only “crime” is their mental illness. Despite this knowledge, the suicide rate in Texas jails remains at unacceptably high levels.
Another needless problematic area is placing younger, smaller people in cells with others who brutalize and sometimes rape them. There are policies, procedures, and training to prevent this – and prevent suicides; but jail officials ignore them, with disastrous consequences.
There is a high monetary cost to taxpayers when prisoners are mistreated. The U.S. Constitution requires jails to provide basic, essential health care. Failure to do so is cruel and unusual punishment that violates the Eighth Amendment of the Bill of Rights.
Federal judges have repeatedly called the conditions in the Dallas County jail “shockingly inadequate.” In one case, a jury required the county to pay almost $900,000 to a prisoner who suffered a stroke because he wasn’t given his blood pressure medication. Dallas County has paid more than $2 million to prisoners, who suffered permanent injuries – much more than what it would spent providing basic health care in the first place.
Texas has a bad history with respect to its jails. In the long run, it’s a costly history for taxpayers. It’s also a steep cost for the community when prisoners return to society, embittered, rather than rehabilitated. DOJ has its eye on Texas for good reason.
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Scott Medlock is director of the Prisoners’ Rights Program of the Texas Civil Rights Project, a nonprofit foundation that promotes civil rights and economic and racial justice throughout Texas.
