A family member just emailed, May 29, 2010:
You will be sent away if you wear shorts or dresses above the knee. No sleeveless tops are allowed either. It is so heartbreaking to watch people wait 2 hours in line after paying $3 to park only to be sent home without seeing their loved one for this dress code infraction that is not even posted--anywhere! You should also know that children can only visit on the weekend and there is no place inside to wait if you are not going to visit. Thank you for this site.

Day 1: 11/29/09
Today I turned myself into Dallas County for probation violation. Here’s my plan: To write to this journal every day if possible. And the scary part? To be truthfully honest with myself and with the journal. Even now my mind is backtracking on the honest part; the repercussion, the feelings it will hurt, etc. Read more

(Prison Legal News is an independent national publication that covers both prison and jail news/issues. Some jail and prison administrators in Texas have tried to block inmates from receiving it, despite that being unconstitutional.
In 2007, PLN won a suit against Dallas County Jail which had tried to ban newspapers and magazines for inmates.
Prison Legal News has now teamed up with the Texas Civil Rights Project in an important new case described in the following press release... D. Claitor)Read more

Dallas County commissioners voted Tuesday to settle two federal jail neglect lawsuits for close to a half-million dollars.

County officials say the lawsuits are the last major legal claims related to prior conditions in the jail system, which were described a few years ago by federal investigators as being dangerous to inmates' well-being.

As a result of the settlements, the family of former inmate Rosie Sims will receive $250,000, and former inmate Bruce A. McDonald will receive $190,000, minus legal expenses.Read more

At the Taylor County Jail in Abilene, some inmates say they've been strapped to chairs and left outside all day in the sun or rain.

Others say guards sometimes sprayed pepper spray directly into their eyes. Another staffer allegedly asked a mentally ill inmate: "Why don't you do something positive and hang yourself?"

The allegations, some among 200 pages of complaints filed with a state agency, are alarming even in a state with a "hang 'em high" mentality, according to the Texas Jail Project. The group rallied Wednesday in Abilene to decry inmate mistreatment, saying reform is still needed nearly 2 years after the U.S. Justice Department lambasted the Dallas County Jail for serious lapses resulting in deaths.Read more

Letter to TJP from inmate family member, Dallas, 2008:

I would like to thank the Texas Jail Project for their help and support with getting my nephew medical care while in the Lew Sterett Justice Center in Dallas. He was having some medical problems and I did not know where to turn. I had called repeatedly to get him medical attention and they would see him but not treat the condition he was having problems with. They would just call him down to the nurse station and check his blood pressure and send him back.Read more

A North Texas man is suing Dallas County and the maker of its jail computer system for violating his civil rights. He claims he was lost in the system for six days.

Jim Muise credits a political leader from a foreign country for helping him get released and now he wants justice.

Muise is an automotive journalist. His stay in the Dallas County Jail kicked his emotions into overdrive.

"I felt like… no one on the outside was able to hear me," Muise said.Read more

In February 2005, Alice Lynch-Fullen visited her brother, Christopher Lynch, at the Lew Sterrett Justice Center after he was arrested on rape charges in Grand Prairie. A large, imposing man, Lynch had ligature marks around his neck, alerting his distraught sister that he had tried to hang himself.

"Don't let me bury you; I can't bury you," Fullen told her brother.

Immediately, Fullen pleaded with guards to look after him, but they laughed at her. Later, a sergeant told her to stop "babying him." Over the next few months, Fullen and her parents continued to plead in vain with jail officials to place Lynch on suicide watch. A few months later, while Fullen was at the State Fair with her family, a detective with the Sheriff's Department told her that her brother was dead.Read more

Letter to TJP from former inmate Margie Snider, November 28, 2006

I was put in the Dallas County Jail on May 1st for Civil Contempt—for missing child support payments the previous year to my angry, rich ex-husband. Even though I was paying, with the money coming out of my payroll checks, the fact that I had missed some earlier payments gave him a loophole and a way to sue me. He found a way to once again use/abuse the system put in place for our children to cause me suffering.Read more