Instead of finding ways to lower populations in their county jails, central Texas judicial systems and district attorneys appear to be frozen, resulting in packed jails. In this story from Waco’s KWTX news, TJP’s communications director speaks about some of the issues involved—and how dangerous it is for prisoners held pretrial during the spread of a highly contagious disease.

In 2020 we rose to the challenge – taking on the colliding pandemics of COVID-19 and inhumane jailing, while undergoing our own internal transformation. We’re proud to have taken on big fights in our pursuit of depopulating county jails and demonstrating community based alternatives to incarceration. Texas county jails were the frontlines for this year’s crisis, foregrounding systemic inequities and corruption, from rural county jails with unreported outbreaks to metropolitan superspreader facilities. And we didn’t back down.