Houston Public Media: State inspection finds medical neglect, other violations at private facility housing hundreds of Harris County inmates

A privately-owned facility in northwest Texas that houses hundreds of Harris County detainees has been violating statewide safety standards due to a lack of medical care and safety training. This comes as the Harris County Jail remains in hot water for a handful of additional safety violations.

Back in December, the Texas Commission on Jail Standards determined that the Giles W. Dalby Correctional Facility, located nearly 500 miles from Harris County, has provided inadequate medical care to detainees and insufficient safety training to staff while inconsistently observing those held within the facility.

This comes after Harris County commissioners in 2022 approved a $25 million contract to outsource people held in the Harris County Jail to the Dalby facility. As of now, 500 Harris County detainees were being held at Dalby, according to the Harris County Sheriff’s Office. Additionally, Tarrant County approved a $22.5 million, 500-bed contract back in October.

Jail reform advocates — like Krishnaveni Gundu with Texas Jail Project — say Harris County’s outsourcing efforts are unsustainable, and believe officials should instead focus on depopulating the overcrowded jail.

“It’s disturbing and frankly unconscionable that our county officials seem to have no qualms about sending hundreds of community members who are pretrial from our non-compliant jail, to be housed in another jail hundreds of miles away, which is also non-compliant for almost identical reasons,” Gundu said.

This comes after at least 19 people died while in custody last year. This followed a record number of in-custody deaths in 2022, when at least 27 people lost their lives — the highest number in nearly two decades, according to county records and data from the Texas Justice Initiative.

Read the Non-compliant Report in our database.