The Five Most Common Reasons for Failing Inspections

Most jails in the state consistently meet jail standards, but those who have trouble staying in compliance are not alone. In 2005, there were 64 jails out of compliance with standards, and in 2006, 65 jails were out of compliance.

The top five problems jails faced last year in regards to meeting standards were:

1 Inadequate staffing (14 jails were out of compliance for this reason);

2 Noncompliance with Tuberculosis testing requirements (12 jails were cited for this, commonly because they are not keeping the proper paper work);

3 Overcrowding (10 jails failed inspections for this reason);

4 Maintenance problems regarding their smoke management systems (nine jails were cited for this, one of which was forced to close because the county was in the position where “if they had had a fire, the prisoners probably would have perished,” said Munoz); and

5 Other infrastructure and maintenance issues (eight jails).

Texas Commission on Jail Standards Executive Director Adan Munoz said overcrowding is an issue that went away for a while but is now starting to hit both rural and urban areas again.

“Jails, back when I was sheriff in the 1980s, were all antiquated. A lot of counties saw forward and built new ones at that time, but now those new jails are now overcrowded and understaffed.” he said. “If someone built a new jail 10 years ago, now they are already facing an issue of whether to build again or add again, even though they had thought they’d be good for 20 years, not 10. It has come full circle.”

Most problems, such as overcrowding, are equally likely to occur at both rural and urban jails, but urban areas tend to get the most attention, jail inspectors said.

“In concept, to me, the smaller the jail is, the easier it is to run,” said former TCJS Jail Inspector Dennis Cisneros. “The bigger your jail, the more magnified the problems are, but the bigger jails and the smaller jails still have the same problems.”

Staffing, for instance, is another problem that is common in both rural and urban settings, though for different reasons.

In rural or smaller jails, staff can be hard to keep, since larger jails tend to offer higher wages and are in areas with more excitement, both on the job and off.

On the other hand, in a rural area, there may not be much of a choice so far as hiring professions go for someone who doesn’t want to move far from home. In an urban area, jail staff may be more transient either because they are more willing to move to another urban area, or because there’s a greater number of professions hiring for the same kinds of experienced individuals, Munoz said.

Not having enough staff on hand can lead to many other problems, and Cisneros said turnover rate tends to be the difference between jails that consistently pass their inspections and jails that do not.

“The more new employees that you have, the harder it is to train them on the standards,” he said. “Some of these smaller counties are training grounds for bigger counties.”

There are other noncompliance issues that do tend to trend more toward either a rural or urban setting.

For instance, only jails with more than 100 beds are required to have a plan for tuberculosis testing. The plan must allow for all inmates to be tested by their seventh day in confinement.

The most common reasons for noncompliance with that standard, Johnson said, include difficulty coordinating with the Texas Department of Health to get a plan approved, keeping improper or insufficient records, or not having access to a professional to do the testing.

Sanitation tends to be an issue in larger jails, since foot traffic is greater, Munoz said.

“You’re constantly shuffling prisoners around,” he said, adding that maintenance may be more of a problem in rural areas, since they may not be experiencing the population increase necessary for building a new jail, and the older things get, the more they break.

Once a jail has been cited for being in noncompliance, the TCJS sends out an official letter, which gives the county 30 days to come up with a plan to fix their deficiencies.

While the problems may sound simple, their best solutions are not always as clear-cut as just adding staff and sending inmates off to neighboring jails. During the period of time when jail officials are creating plans, TCJS has a number of resources available to help find the best solution, said recently retired Midland County judge William Morrow, a member of the jail standards commission.

Many of the problems are long-term and solutions are constantly changing, he added.

For instance, in his county, he said the jail experiences problems with both overcrowding and understaffing. The solution has been a mixture of authorizing overtime shifts and the creation of their own bonding service, so that people in for lesser charges aren’t taking up jail space.

“We were overcrowded nearly every day for nearly a year before we got the bonding service up and running,” Morrow said. “But it’s a continuous project. You can’t ever say, oh, now we’ve done this, we don’t have to worry about it any more. I mean, we have several hundred people out on bond now, and if they commit another crime, they don’t have another chance to get out on bond, and that means that they are in our jail. So then we’d have that problem again.”

Jails are only shut down if a problem is a serious life-safety issue that cannot be immediately addressed, or if no improvements have been made over a period of time.

“Real problems can only be solved with the sheriff, the jail administrator, and the county judge and commissioners working together,” said jail standards commission member Stan Egger, a Tarrant County commissioner. “If the sheriff can say, ‘well, this would be my plan to fix it,’ and the judge can stand right next to him and say, ‘we’re on board with that project,’ then the commission feels very good about giving the county the time to fix the problem.”