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We are beyond thrilled and inspired by the recent historic legal win secured by Lioness JIWA and Texas Prison Community Advocates to mandate air conditioning in all Texas prisons (TDCJ). Huge congratulations to the scores of formerly incarcerated women who organized and mobilized for years and the dozens of community advocates, impacted families, attorneys, researchers, and others who supported them!
Incredible wins at times like these are exactly what our communities need to keep organizing and growing the movement against mass incarceration.
Thanks to your unflinching support here are three of our recent advocacy wins that are powering systemic change…
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 DR, a young man with Intellectual and Developmental Disability(IDD), was barely 20 years old when the Fort Bend County Sheriffs arrested him from his group home — where he was placed by the state of TX — during a behavioral health crisis.
DR was incarcerated by Fort Bend County Jail for three and a half years. His low cognitive functioning due to his IDD, complex medical issues, and an inoperable brain tumor made him particularly vulnerable in a jail environment. By the time DR’s court appointed attorney reached out to us, he had lost over 50 pounds and had never even been taken to a neurologist despite constant seizures. The Local Intellectual Developmental Disability Authority (LIDDA) — which is contracted by the state to provide services to Texans with IDD — was responsible for his care in the community and also involved in the court hearings. But the LIDDA had never even bothered to have DR’s medical records sent to the jail despite being the same agency that placed him in the group home from where he was arrested. This lack of continuity of care, which is mandated by law, led to DR’s severe decompensation.
Not only that, DR was being held in limbo— presumptively but not legally found ‘incompetent to stand trial’ and yet no court order for civil commitment. Our executive director Krish Gundu approached the court in July and asked the court to issue a civil commitment order so DR could be transferred out of Fort Bend County Jail and into a State Supported Living Center(SSLC) which is an entitlement for people with IDD. TJP coordinated with HHSC and the court to facilitate the order leading to his transfer to an SSLC within weeks of our testimony. Can you help with funds for his family to be able to travel to visit DR at the SSLC? Please send to CashApp: $DavidandhisGoliath
DR’s case informed Texas’ IDD Advisory Committee in real time about the gaps and barriers in the criminal punishment system for people with extremely low cognitive abilities and high acuity of behaviors due to their developmental disability.
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DR’s case and other IDD cases were instrumental in our three+ year fight to promulgate minimum standards in jails to protect vulnerable people who have court appointed guardians. There are mostly Texans with disabilities including IDD and serious mental illness. We drafted and shepherded the new rules through the legislatively mandated IDD Advisory Committee (IDDAC) and the TX Jail Commission’s Administrative Rules Advisory Committee (ARAC) on which Krish and our 2024-25 public health fellow Caroline Crain, are voting members.
These commonsense and long-overdue rules mandate coordination with their court appointed guardian to ensure the wellbeing of their incarcerated ward. They were officially adopted by the Texas Commission on Jail Standards (TCJS) into jail minimum standards to be followed by all county jails starting Sept 3, 2026.
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After years of our advocacy, organizing, and storytelling, the board of TCJS passed our landmark guardianship rules at their May 2026 quarterly meeting. Read more about how we led the charge to draft these rules starting in 2024.
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 DY, a young pregnant woman and recent transplant from California, wrote us a heartbreaking letter in May detailing the absurdity of her arrest and charges, and the deplorable conditions in Dallas County Jail.
After months of advocacy, in early September we succeeded in getting her charges reduced, securing her release on a cashless bond, and facilitating travel back to her home in Sacramento so her baby can be born free!
Along every step it was evident this level of personal aid is only possible with dedicated community networks. Thank you to TJP Dallas volunteer Jennifer McNabb who took so much time and care for DY. Jennifer picked up DY when she was finally released from Dallas County Jail, bought her food, got DY a phone, even set up the phone for her and sent DY’s new phone number to relevant contacts like her lawyer, and gave DY a ride to her bus station with snacks packed for her three day trip back home to California.
Over the past two decades of our work, wins like DY’s have helped us build an entire body of policy and legal protection for pregnant people in pretrial detention including an unprecedented pregnancy outcomes study legislatively mandated for TCJS to conduct and publish data. The mere act of observing, collecting data and having to publish it has significantly shifted the culture and practice within county jails.
Looking for resources for pregnant people in Texas county jails? Visit our website for information, support, and guidance.
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Texas Jail Project stands as the only advocacy group working to improve conditions of confinement for Texans in county jails.
We provide financial and other material support to impacted community members like DR and DY, whose stories you just read. If you would like to donate to our accompaniment care fund, please mention “Direct Aid” in the comment box when you donate.
Your support fuels an essential statewide lifeline
empowering our community members to agitate in spaces that are historically designed to exclude them.
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Introducing our new Deputy Director Goldie VanZandt
“The incarceration of homeless veterans struggling with mental illness and substance use disorders in our county jails is a profound injustice and a travesty—both for these veterans and for their families.“
We are excited to re-introduce long time team member, Goldie VanZandt, as our Deputy Director and Director of Community Engagement!
Goldie’s invaluable experience as a United States Navy Veteran and a lifelong partner to someone sucked into the revolving door of Texas’ county jail system is critical knowledge for our community of advocates and activists to learn from. Goldie embodies TJP’s values of radical listening and compassion in a unique and emphatic manner. The fire Goldie brings to our fight is inspirational to everyone who meets her. This particular heat comes only from experiencing life altering harm from these systems.
We look to her guidance and calm demeanor during the relentless daily crises we work through. Her shoulders have been a resting place for our communities for many years and she will certainly be a force to be reckoned with as Texas Jail Project’s Deputy Director.
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Our 2026-2027 Albert Schweitzer fellows
Interrupting the criminalization of mental illness through a public health framework
For the second year in a row(!) we have been awarded the Albert Schweitzer Fellowship Program. We are excited to welcome medical students Ananya Sampathkumar and Noah Meah who will document our cases and develop educational materials for county elects, policy makers, advocates, and legislators about the complex relationship between Texas policies, jails, and the criminalization of Texans with mental illness and developmental disabilities. Read our new fellows’ bios here.
See our previous fellow Caroline Crain’s one page flyers breaking down complex mental health care issues and proposed solutions.
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Texas Jail Project in the News
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Texas Sunset Review offers chance to address the mental health crisis-to-prison pipeline | Prism
Our Executive Director Krish Gundu worked closely with author Saba Khonsari to put together this piece on the TX Health & Human Services Sunset Review, including connecting Khonsari with our cases and community members and offering hours of background and interview.
Krish worked closely with community member Tracey McManus to uncover and produce this investigative piece about uncounted custody deaths. After its publishing, the Dallas Morning News editorial board wrote an op-ed pushing for answers from Dallas County sheriff.
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Coming up for Texas Jail Project…
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Texas Jail Project TikTok
Over the next few months, expect our TikTok to be amplifying the voices of community members who have been devastated by Texas’s mental health care system (run by TX Health & Human Services), mostly families members of Texans with severe mental illness (SMI) or Intellectual or Developmental Disability (IDD) who have cycled in through the jail system because TX Health & Human Services did not provide them with the proper level of care. Stay tuned for announcements of two live TikTok sessions featuring our community members and our team. Follow us on TikTok!
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October 15: Pre Trial Justice Campus Community Conversation
Our Executive Director Krish Gundu will be part of an expert panel on Texas pretrial system policy reform hosted by Texas Southern University. She will present our perspective that one of the strongest tools to shrink mass incarceration is to end money bail.
She will share stories from our work of the generational harm caused by a wealth-based pretrial detention system which serves no one except the for-profit bail bond industry.
The event will also feature a screening of our collection of Texas Freedom Stories.
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December 3rd: Bringing Community Members to Testify at Sunset Committee Hearing at the Capitol in Austin
We are mobilizing over a dozen family members to provide oral testimony at the Sunset hearings on HHSC in Austin.
Every Texas agency is reviewed once in 12 years for relevancy and efficiency by the Texas Sunset Advisory Commission. This year Texas Health & Human Services (HHSC) is under Sunset Review.
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The Sunset process is a critical opportunity for community members to provide insight to our lawmakers on gaps and barriers in the public health system that are directly driving incarceration of people with mental illness into Texas county jails.
This is our chance to reverse the horrific trend of the county jail system being used as the largest warehouse of Texans with mental illness and IDD. If you or a loved one has been criminalized for mental illness or a developmental disability, you can provide valuable input. Please contact us at info@texasjailproject.org
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