Over my 26 year legal career, a local issue that has been continually discussed among Houston attorneys is the horrid condition of the Harris County Jail.
This is not an easy issue. The constituency most interested in the issue — prisoners — is neither attractive nor important to politicians. Similarly, the issue brings into sharp focus a public policy conflict that governments have ducked for decades — i.e., the tendency of politicians to indulge the public demand for tougher sentencing for political purposes while attempting to avoid responsibility for most government’s booming deficits and debt. Stated simply, politicians are not particularly interested in dealing with the fact that governments either have to accept that tougher sentencing means more prisoners and more money spent on building prisons or — if government is not willing to spend the money — fewer and shorter prison terms for offenders.
With that backdrop, it’s not particularly surprising that, after noting that almost 1,300 inmates are sleeping on mattresses on the floor of the Harris County Jail while large sections of the jail are unused because of a guard shortage, the Texas Commission on Jail Standards has decertified the Harris County Jail for the second year in a row. This Steve McVicker/Bill Murphy Chronicle article reports on the Commission findings.

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