Stories from inmates

Mother-to-be Needs Better Care

We cannot name the person or the county in this report because we need to protect the privacy and safety of the inmate and her family who shared her story with TJP.

Earlier this month, 18 year-old Jessica B. was arrested for violating her probation, resulting in a six-month sentence. At the time of her arrest she was three months pregnant, and she told the guards that. The jail was also aware that Jessica B. was diagnosed as a person with bi-polar disorder and schizophrenia. Jessica asked to see an obstetrician, but jail staff told her no.

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The Dallas County Jail medical maze

Dallas, 2008: I would like to thank the Texas Jail Project for their help and support with getting my nephew medical care while in the Lew Sterett Justice Center in Dallas. He was having some medical problems and I did not know where to turn. I had called repeatedly to get him medical attention and they would see him but not treat the condition he was having problems with. They would just call him down to the nurse station and check his blood pressure and send him back.

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Chaplain Challenges Citizens of Brownsville

I have been a chaplain at the Cameron County Women’s Jail for nearly seven years. All that really means is that once a week I go for an hour to pray for anyone who wants prayer. Sometimes I meet with women privately for counseling and monthly I bring some of my students from Valley Christian High School to pray with me. My girls love the women and often end up singing to them and writing to them later.

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My Son Survived a GEO Jail

My son was barely out of high school and it was a non-violent offense. He was in a private jail in Spur Texas owned by the Geo Group out of Florida. This was my first experience with jails of any kind and I couldn’t believe some of the things they pulled. It was like being in a foreign country where no one was accountable to you.

Their beds were dirty and there were no pillows. They were given no soap, toothpaste , shampoo or razors. All of that they had to buy at high prices. Same thing with clean underwear. And supposedly they had a library but no one was ever allowed to go to it. They brought a book cart around once in 3 months! it said in the handbook (which only inmates have...not relatives) that they could receive books via mail but they said that this privilege had been taken away after I sent books. The worst thing: My son never got his medicine for his stomach ulcer in the 3 months he was there.

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Chaplain exposes Taylor County Jail

Since Mr. Voorhees wrote this letter last year, two young inmates have died in custody in this same jail just hours after being arrested, and he suspects ill treatment in those cases as well. Here he carefully documents the reports of brutal physical attacks, pepper spray and other illegal actions against Abilene inmates.

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Bell County Treatment

The names in the following article have been changed to protect the privacy of both the inmate it is about and the woman who shared it with Texas Jail Project.

Last fall, Mary T. was temporarily jailed in Bell County on a charge related to her military service. Mary shared a cell with Jane, a woman Mary described as “healthy and vivacious.” Mary’s stay in the Bell County Jail was fortunately a short one, but Jane was serving an 18-month sentence and had been incarcerated since March 2006.

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A Mother's Story of the Dallas County Jail

November 28, 2006 Margie Snider: I was put in the Dallas County Jail on May 1st for Civil Contempt—for missing child support payments the previous year to my angry, rich ex-husband. Even though I was paying, with the money coming out of my payroll checks, the fact that I had missed some earlier payments gave him a loophole and a way to sue me. He found a way to once again use/abuse the system put in place for our children to cause me suffering. When I went to court, I had no lawyer—couldn’t afford one—and I thought we would be talking about a payment plan for the missed payments since I was making steady payments at the time. I was on meds for depression and anxiety like I’ve been ever since our divorce nine years ago. Instead I was taken in shackles from the courthouse. I went into shock.
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Diane Wilson's Letter

At the time of her arrest, Diane was wanted in Texas on Crimial Trespassing charges from 2002, when she had climbed a tower at Dow Chemical to protest the company's continued irresponsibility following its 1984 chemical disaster in Bhopal, India, where 150,000 people were poisoned. The following is a January 2006 letter Diane wrote to the Sheriff of Victoria county, T. Michael O’Connor.

Dear Sheriff O’Connor: I am a female inmate in the Victoria County Jail, TX, though I was arrested on criminal trespass charges in Calhoun County. I was given a sentence of 150 days plus a $2,000 fine for protesting Dow Chemical Company’s refusal to appear in Indian courts in response to charges against its wholly-owned subsidiary, Union Carbide, and its treatment of the survivors of the toxic-leak disaster in Bhopal, India, where a catastrophic pesticide release has killed over 20,000 people to date.

I am a fairly new inmate and have only been here since December 10, 2005, yet I have a number of grievances. Many of these come from other inmates and you may ask why they don’t report them themselves. Well, it’s pretty simple: there is absolutely no effective avenue to raise issues and if there is, the inmates have certainly not been made aware of it. There is a standard form that inmates can use to make an attempt at communication, but the response can take anywhere between a week to never. There is no information available, no pamphlet explaining the procedures or the rights of the inmates or even something as simple as “when is commissary.” I asked to see the law library since the inmates rarely see legal counsel, but was told that there is not one available. If inmates ask for legal counsel they are told, “You’ll see one when your trial comes up,” and usually that’s ten minutes before one goes to trial.

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