The Changes TJP Recommended for Jail Commission

         Questions asked by the Sunset Commission with our answers:

 1.      1. What changes, if any, should be made to the mission or functions of the Texas Commission on Jail Standards?

          The Commission is to “set rules and procedures… for the custody, care, and treatment of prisoners; for the number of jail supervisory personnel; and for programs and services to meet the needs of prisoners.” TCJS is not performing well in this area.

          That is because the needs of prisoners includes the all-important need of getting medical care, and jails are not providing adequate—or in some cases—ANY medical care. The number of complaints about illness and death due to inadequate medical care as well as lawsuits pertaining to that deficiency are on the increase.

          Several times a month, our organization contacts the TCJS complaints investigator to request that she call a jail about a lack of treatment or meds for a particular inmate. The jail usually responds quickly and our inmate families write us grateful letters describing how their loved one finally received an examination by a doctor, prescribed medicine, a corrected diet or help with a condition or injury—only after the complaint was conveyed by TJP and TCJS requested the jail to answer the charge. Frequently, we hear from inmates who’ve made multiple sick calls and are told by staff that the only medical care in that jail is when they are “sick enough for ER.”

  Infectious diseases are not being taken seriously enough; while a protocol for TB is being implemented, HIV-AIDS, staph infections and other diseases are increasingly common in Texas jails. Many times, inmates are released with infections they caught in jail and in other cases, the infection they had when locked up, worsens and spreads to the staff and other inmates. The jail investigators seldom, if ever, report on these unsafe aspects of the jails, but the U.S. Department of Justice makes note of it when they investigate (e.g. Dallas County and Harris County).

In our email survey of inmate families, former inmates, citizens and religious workers, we asked what was the most important issue for TCJS to address. The majority answered that the Commission needs to provide more oversight of health care and that jails must be accountable for seeing that the inmates receive their correct prescribed medications.

  An area of particular concern is the lack of health care for pregnant          Inmates. The Commission should require jails to

1. Identify pregnant inmates

2. Provide medical exams by obstetricians

3. Provide the right diet and nutritional supplements

4. Offer counseling when necessary

  TCJS staff states that TCCOMMI ensures proper health care, but this is only true in a few isolated cases; TCJS is the agency with a broad enough jurisdiction to investigate and track health care. TCJS also describes the their mission as limited to ensuring that inmates receive “medical care, not ensure what type of medical care is needed or critique what is being done or prescribed.” Unfortunately their statement ignores the all-important section of the mission statement which says TCJS is to set rules and procedures for “services to meet the needs of prisoners.”

How many more mothers with an outstanding traffic warrant need to die from an infection—as in Tarrant County— before the Jail Commission steps up and insists on better medical services for sick inmates?

2. What changes, if any, should be made to the make up of the Commission?

                  The Commission should have one Commissioner with a social services or religious background to provide balance on a commission that is dominated by people with law enforcement and business backgrounds. That member should have knowledge and experience of inmate issues and would bring fresh ideas on how jail management impacts the lives of inmates, their children and the community at large.

3.What changes, if any, should be made to the Commission's authority over jail facilities, including but not limited to county jails, municipal jails, privately-operated facilities, and facilities holding only federal inmates?

The Commission’s authority over jail facilities should be expanded to include municipal jails as well as those that hold only federal and/or ICE detainees and certainly all privately-operated facilities, no matter who the inmates are.

                  Staff and inmates are endangered when jails are allowed to operate without having to meet minimum standards and when they are not inspected; we are already seeing the results in Texas facilities where overcrowding, among other things, is resulting in riots, injuries and death.

The Commission’s authority should also be expanded in terms of its supervision of grievance procedures, medical care, drug treatment programs and rehabilitative programs. (see other questions re these topics). TCJS should also have the authority to investigate the impact of actions of the county, e.g. shipping inmates to far off facilities to save money, when those actions impact the minimum standards of treatment.

4. How effectively does the Commission:

· establish minimum standards for the construction, equipment, maintenance, and operation of county jails; classification and treatment of inmates; and jail staffing?

· review and approve jail construction plans?

· provide technical assistance and training to local officials and jail staff?

· produce population reports and other statewide information about jails?

· The Commission appears to do a good job on the standards for construction, equipment, maintenance and operations of county jails, especially in terms of safety and fire prevention.

· Standards for treatment of inmates are not well established or defined and are poorly enforced. When inmates, relatives of inmates, staff and chaplains complained at one jail, for example, the TCJS investigator who examined that jail reported no complaints from inmates. The inmates and staff reported that was because they were threatened and told what to say and were under surveillance while the investigator was present.

Standards for inmate treatment need to be emphasized and investigators should test each jail’s grievance procedure, making sure that inmates and their families have a means of making complaints and reporting abuses to the right people.

· Jail staffing needs more stringent standards in terms of education and training. Poorly educated and untrained guards contribute to the dismal conditions and constant abuse in our jails. The Commission must take the lead in providing assistance and training, because many counties do not educate guards about the basics of a) mental illness b) infectious diseases and c) physical illness.  Since counties fail to train and at the same time pay the staff very low wages, the Commission needs to establish higher standards and require staff to attend workshops and training.

· TCJS responds to questions quickly and attempts to satisfy requests for information efficiently and politely. The Commission also does a good job on population reports and information with one notable exception: there is no information on the numbers of pregnant inmates, the numbers of babies born in county jails and the numbers of miscarriages and still born infants. These figures will become increasingly important as court cases and publicity involving mistreatment of pregnant inmates and shackling during delivery focus attention on these mothers and their children.

5. What changes, if any, should be made to the Commission's process for inspecting jails and enforcing compliance with minimum jail standards?

                  TCJS needs two more investigators, and one of them should be a female. The understaffing in terms of investigators is shameful—in a state with 258 jails—and this staff is to be commended for getting a lot done with so few personnel.

    Change all announced inspections to surprise inspections. Otherwise, some jails replace broken equipment, clean and provide supplies just before inspections and ignore problems the rest of the year.

    Investigators should conduct more private interviews with inmates and staff in order to gain information about treatment of inmates. For example, TCJS investigators should set some “ghost” sick calls as court-ordered jail monitors do. Those calls, arranged in secret with certain inmates, would provide the TCJS investigators with a. information on how long it takes an inmate to be seen by medical personnel after a sick call, and b. what the medical response is when certain symptoms are reported, for example, MRSA/staph symptoms.

    Inmates are prevented or discouraged from filing grievances a great percentage of the time and there seems to be no attempt by TCJS to establish better reporting mechanisms for those inmates. The guards do not do an adequate job with grievances and threats of retribution are commonplace in county jails. Unless TCJS starts insisting that jails take grievances seriously and that they develop different avenues for inmates to report, TCJS cannot be said to be enforcing compliance with the standards.

6.What key challenges does the Commission face in the next 5 to 10 years?

   TCJS must provide much more leadership:

·       Develop a message that will convince county governments to deal with the complex health, addiction and educational problems that incarcerated inmates face.

·       Address the lack of decent wages for jail guards and help counties reduce turnover in other ways; the Commission should do more than assist counties in building new facilities.

·       Promote drug programs and mental health treatment in the jails since like it or not, the local jails are now and for the foreseeable future, the repository for people with addictive diseases and mental illness.

·       Develop policies and procedures that will result in privately-run facilities being held accountable

·       Research how the moving a counties’ inmates to another faraway facility reduces their access to counsel and causes a deterioration in their mental and emotional state.

       7. Outside of additional funding, how can the Commission do a better job meeting the needs of local governments, jail staff, inmates, and the general public?

            TJP says: The Commission should be more proactive in terms of working with groups outside of law enforcement, such as the many dedicated ppeople working in the restorative justice movement and in the community. TCJS could create enormous goodwill and find new solutions by also including the public in the process, especially by allowing inmates and their families to contribute ideas and information.

TCJS should formulate an ongoing campaign—a PR effort—to influence and educate local governments, jail staff and the general public as to the value of humane and healthy jails. They can show instances where intelligent programs in the jails decreased taxes over the long run and resulted in healthier communities.

The Commission and its staff could do more, through diplomatic and persistent pressure, to change Texans’ attitudes from “if you make jail bad enough, they won’t want to come back” to “if we provide a humane environment and work towards rehabilitation, we’ll reduce recidivism and end up with fewer permanently ill people using up county tax dollars.”