Back in 2011, I published a story on the TJP website about the tragic death of a young man named Micah Aaron Garner who died in the Gregg County Jail--one in a string of deaths at that jail. (Gregg County appears to have since cleaned up its act.)

I said Micah was "jailed to death." It's ironic and sad to see the great WFAA reporter Tanya Eiserer using the same phrase in her in-depth investigation of the ghastly death of Greg McElvy in the Johnson County jail. Read this and note how the sheriff and jail staff falsely blamed the inmate for his medical emergency.

Thanks to the bill by Rep. Mary Gonzalez that was instigated by Texas Jail Project, pregnant inmates will receive better prenatal care and not be shackled during childbirth!

Our heart goes out to this family who was expecting their father to come home from Harris County Jail. Glad they have an experienced attorney like Randall Kallinen representing them.

The number of reported deaths in Texas county jails in 2019 alone is 36. (This is not including the three recent deaths that Texas Jail Project has heard of directly from family members.) Jails have 30 days to report custody deaths to the office of the Attorney General. Failure to report is a Class B misdemeanor. Compare the number of jail deaths in a mere 6 months, to the number of executions carried out in Texas in the past 3 years (not including 2019) - 37.

A Travis County jailer falsified records. Not good, but what's encouraging is that the jail supervisor went through video footage to see if he was really checking on people like he logged in the records and discovered he wasn't. Then they held him accountable.

New Lancet study states - Counties with increased incarceration have increased fatal overdose rates and highlights a largely neglected dimension of the US criminal justice system - local jails!

Hot off the press: an open access study published in The Lancet investigating the associations between economic decline, incarceration rates, and age-standardized mortality from drug use disorders at the county level in the U.S.

Another jail (for-profit one!) with a pattern of negligence leading to preventable deaths. "After reviewing video evidence in conjunction with self-reporting by facility administration, it was determined that eight, 60-minute, face-to-face observations, prior to the inmate being discovered, did not occur, even though the rounds were documented at least every 60 minutes on the observation logs," the April Jail Commission inspection report states.

They should’ve said, “This man keeps falling. Let’s check his blood levels, let’s see what’s going on. Let’s take him off these meds, let’s do something.” Instead, they just said, “Oh, he’s fine.”

For years, private jails in Texas run by LaSalle Corrections have been plagued by complaints of lax training and abuse. In-jail deaths at their facilities across the state have resulted in multiple lawsuits for wrongful deaths and negligence.

In this new story from WFAA, top notch reporting reveals what happened to Shaye Bear as well as poor medical care for many pregnant inmates in Texas county jails. Tanya Eiserer and her team also expose punitive attitudes and blatant lies by Ellis County. The work of Texas Jail Project and observations from TJP’s director Diana Claitor provide context. Claitor commented that one serious problem is that many officers’ first reaction to an inmate’s complaints is that anything she says is a lie. But if the case of a pregnant inmate, another life is at stake if the jailer’s wrong, she said.

“They’re not always lying,” she said, referring to pregnant women.

Claitor says she’s received at least three complaints about the Ellis County jail – all of them involving pregnant inmates. Eiserer goes on to discuss how many women suffer in jails without any accountability.