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.
So, how are our politicians responding to this embarrassing problem? As you might expect, by blaming anyone other than themselves:
Calling the panel “a bunch of arrogant fools,” Precinct 3 County Commissioner Steve Radack said Friday that the Texas prison system helped cause the problem by failing to take inmates off the hands of Harris and other counties on schedule.
“The state wants to send a proctologist down here to see what the problem is. And the problem is, (state officials) are the ones that have stacked up the system,” Radack said. “If the state of Texas got its prisoners out of our jails and kept them themselves, we wouldn’t have all these problems.”
Unfortunately, there is a small problem with Commissioner Radack’s criticism of the state prison system — it isn’t true:
Under an agreement between the state and the counties, TDCJ has a 45-day window to transport prison-ready inmates to state facilities. The prison system’s Mike Viesca says the state is averaging 22 to 23 days in getting county inmates moved to state custody.
Meanwhile, Texas Governor Rick Perry is doing his part to ensure that the problem is not addressed responsibly:
State Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, expressed concern this week about a possible return to overcrowding in state prisons and county jails. . . Whitmire, chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, . . . voiced disappointment about Gov. Rick Perry’s recent veto of Whitmire’s legislation that would have lowered mandatory probation terms from 10 years to five ? a measure that Whitmire said would have reduced the prison population.
And it’s not as if the governor and legislators are uninformed about the brewing problem:
In January, Texas prison officials told state lawmakers they expected to run out of prison space this year and may need an emergency appropriation to lease space in county jails. . . The prison system was at 97 percent of capacity then, with more than 150,000 inmates.
Meanwhile, Harris County Sheriff Tommy Thomas concedes that there are serious staff shortages at the jail, but for some reason has failed to bring this issue to the attention of the Harris County Commissioners in the form of a request for increased funding of the county jail system.
It has been often observed that the state of society’s prisons are an accurate reflection of that society’s values. The horrific conditions in the Harris County Jail are an outrageous and embarrassing reflection of our community’s values. Take note of the politicians who continue to avoid addressing the problem, for they are the ones who fiddle while Rome burns. Unfortunately, they are so clueless that they do not know that they are fiddling, nor that Rome is burning.
The Chronicle has yet to report Governor Perry’s reasons for vetoing that probation-reform legislation, and this story doesn’t either. Here they are:
Whether one finds the rationale compelling or not, it is significantly different than the Chron slant that the governor simply ignored John Whitmire’s legislation that would have fixed all ills. Most issues are more complicated than the Chron “good guy/bad guy” formulation would have it.
Further, while Whitmire’s proposal at reducing probation might have the effect he says, we ought to be having a more significant public policy debate over parole/probation than simply offering a reduction in terms as a way to avoid paying for prisons. Is it good public policy to change those terms? Are we willing to pay what it takes? Is the public concerned with prison conditions? Those are all fair questions in my mind.
All that said — Harris County isn’t up against a cash crunch and ought to be willing to maintain its jail facilities at decent standards.
Kevin, you are correct that this is a complex problem, and not one that should be laid on the Governor’s shoulders alone. Heck, the Harris County Jail was in worse condition (unbelievable as it may seem) when Ann Richards was Governor and she didn’t do anything about it, either.
However, what is vexing about this problem is that it’s a lot easier for politicians to say “no” than to say “no, but let’s try this” to address the problem. From conversations with people who have worked on prison issues during Governor Perry’s administration, he has been particularly uninterested in addressing the overcrowding problem in state and local prisons.
And Radack’s reaction to the report is abominable. Why not say “This is a complicated problem, with state and local issues, but we need to make sure that our available facilities are being used in an efficient and effective manner.” Rather, Radack simply appeals to the basest instinct of man.
This is a difficult issue that requires courageous leadership to address and resolve. Suffice it to say that I am not optimistic from the current cast of characters that such leadership will emerge.
Please note that what Gov. Perry did was veto a piece of legislation passed by both houses. It was written by the three most recent Chairs of the House Corrections Committee, all Republicans. They didn’t pass it because they love coddling criminals, they passed it because something on the order of half of all probationers in Texas are absconders. This is the case not becaues our probation system is a total failure, but because it is so overloaded.
Probationers are so unlikely to be properly supervised that many judges are imposing jail sentences because they feel that their probation orders will not be adequately monitored.
The legislators who passed that bill did the right thing by trying to improve the system. Gov. Perry’s veto forced them in to the worst of both worlds by making them vote for a bill that Mr. Whited can critcize, and then not letting them get some result for it. This veto was upstaging, and the public will pay the price for it.
An Isolated Desolation doubletake
The Chronicle editorialists just can’t help themselves.
Today, they managed to take an issue that many can agree on — poor conditions at the Harris County jail — and come up with a typical editori…
Rick Perry, Ann Richards, George Bush; they have had no answers for school funding nor answers for prison overcrowding. There is a common thread running here. It is time to elect people who care about our state, our children and are proactive!
Hi-
My name is Krista Cook Henderson, and I have a story to tell. It’s about my husband, Scott Henderson, who is currently sitting in the Harris County Jail awaiting transfer to TDC. There are all sorts of twists and turns to this story.
Here is the email that I have been sending to everyone including the Mayor of Houston, Senator Tommy Williams, Senator John Cornyn, Attorney General Greg Abbott, Governor Perry, Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee, Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson, Vice President Dick Cheney and President Bush, along with all the television stations here in Houston and now you. Now there is an update to this story, It seems that Harris County sent the orders to TDC for Scott to start his time on 7/20/2006, exactly 8 years to the day of his sentence. Now I ask, is that due diligence???? My husband could of done his time day for day twice over. I have been begging for somebody to stand up and take notice, that this is an atrocity. We were never informed that the dismissal that we had received from the County Clerks Office, was actually the appeal dismissal. Nor can we find out when the “warrant” was issued for his arrest to start his time.
I’m begging for help, and the correct JUSTICE to be served.
Thank You,
Krista Henderson
19252 Oak Canyon Dr
Conroe, Texas 77385
281-419-7776
I am in need of some serious assistance. My fiance’ Scott Henderson is currently sitting in the Harris County Jail, supposedly awaiting TDC to come and pick him up. However, TDC doesn’t have him on their books, and the 263rd District Court says that he is not and has not been in their jurisdiction since 1998.
In 1988 my fiance’ wrote a check in the amount of $1500.00 to a mechanic who had done several unauthorized repairs to his vehicle. He was told by the shop that if he didn’t pay the bill he was not going to get his car back. Now I do not condone his actions back when he was 18, but as a young man, I guess he felt like he was backed into a corner. So in 1990, when he was getting his driver’s license, before going into the Navy Seals, he was picked up on a warrant for this check. He went to court, and ended up getting 6 years deferred adjudicated probation. He started his probation here in Harris County and after a couple of years, he started his own landscaping business and wanted to move to Austin. He was granted permission to transfer his probation to Travis County and continued to pay his fines and serve his time. He even worked in the evenings with his probation officer, so he was always in contact with him. He even had gotten to the point where he was on mail in for his probation. His case was transferred back to Harris County a couple of months prior to his discharge. Harris County has him as not reporting for 2 years, this is untrue and a miscommunication between these 2 counties. When I contacted the Harris County Probation officer in the 263rd District Court earlier this month, she told me that she didn’t even see where he was transferred to Travis County. This tells me this is why they have him down for missing so many reporting dates. So in 1998, when he was getting his driver’s license in Cleveland, he was picked up on a warrant for failure to complete his mandatory supervision and was in the Liberty County jail for 14 days before Harris County came and picked him up. I had obtained an attorney by the name of Paul Smith, to get him out of this mess, since he had certaintly completed his probation. Unfortunately, I had picked an attorney, who didn’t want to work that hard on this case. He had Scott sign for 4 years TDC in order to appeal, he said, that was the only way he could go forward with this case. So stupidly Scott signed in hopes that the appeal would uncover the fact that he actually did serve his probation time, and the case would be dismissed. I got him out on an appeal bond. For 2 years, he called in every week to the Allied Bonding Agency in downtown Houston, we would contact our attorney, and he would say that he was still waiting for the appeal hearing. Finally, when we called our attorney, he told us that the appeal was through and dismissed. So we were excited and went to the Harris County Clerks’ office to obatin the paperwork, and took it to the bonding agency to remove him from bond. When we took that paperwork to the Bondsman, they said that it looked like it was finally over, and they released him from bond and said have a good life. We walked out thinking this was finally all over and we were victorious. In 2005 Scott was able to obtain his driver’s license online for the first time, and DPS sent him his new driver’s license in the mail. Here we are in 2006 and on 7/8/06 Scott and I were pulled over in Oak Ridge, Texas, because our temporary registration tag on our car was expired. To our surprise he was arrested for a warrant out of Harris County on the original charge of theft by check 750-20000. We were astonished and said there is a big mistake that this was over. Oak Ridge sent him to Montgomery county for Harris county to pick him up. I called Harris County and asked them when they would be picking him up, and when I gave her the case #, the lady told me that this case was closed and over, and that anybody from Harris County who looked it up wouldn’t come and get him because they would see that the case is closed. Unfortunately that didn’t happen and on 7/11/06 he was picked up and transferred to Harris County. He is now sitting there in limbo. I emailed the 263rd district court asking when he would have a court date, and they responded back saying that he would not have a court date, as he was awaiting tranfer to TDC, and that he hasn’t been in their jurisdiction for quite some time. I called TDC, and TDC doesn’t have any records on him. So it seems that my fiance’, who hasn’t been in trouble since 1988, is now in what I would call Judicial Limbo. Nobody has jurisdiction over him, yet he is sitting in a jail cell awaiting something that isn’t going to happen. He was my sole provider, I am in danger of losing my home because I cannot make rent, I have been looking for a job, but haven’t been able to get one as of yet. And he has a job waiting for him where he can make $100.00/day doing trees. We had already lost everything back in 1998 when this had come up and we thought we finally took care of this. We lost our pizza place, and our vehicles in order to pay for an attorney. We lost everything again, when Hurricane Rita came to Texas, and now, what we have left, I am in danger of losing because of this mess. I am begging for some help and guidance. What can we do to finally clear this mess up and have my fiance’ back in the community doing good?