Join Texas Jail Project for a screening of this dramatic and inspiring film Tuesday, DECEMBER 3rd, 6:30 – 9:00 p.m. at UT’s Utopia Theater, followed by Q & A with Director Deborah Esquenazi and Austin attorney Keith Hampton.

Welcome to the Collin County Jail, where it’s acceptable to harrass and threaten a person on your staff because they are gay. This great story by John Wright from the Texas Observer examines what happens when the command staff of a jail is fine with discrimination and intimidation and hatred. Officer Derek Boyd describes how officials in the sheriff’s department “threatened and interrogated him, outed him to his colleagues, prohibited him from speaking publicly about the matter, and forced him to undergo a polygraph test, which he passed. Other detention officers even refused to respond to Boyd’s radio calls, jeopardizing his safety.” Boyd says , “I got things like, I don’t belong here, God has a special place for me in hell.”

“Sharing my story might not make it more safe for myself, but I would like to make it safe for someone else,” says John Brown, who was jailed at Dallas County Jail for two and a half years while awaiting trial. His story as well as others reveal what happens to unconvicted people held in jails, mostly because they cannot afford the bail—a practice outlawed in many developed nations.
Last year, Texas Jail Project launched a website, “Jailhouse Stories: Voices from Pretrial Detention in Texas.” Collected over a two-year period, these powerful stories document a pattern of mistreatment and poor conditions experienced by those incarcerated in county jails while pretrial—innocent in the eyes of the law and awaiting their day in court.