TJP organizes a groundswell of community testimonies at February 1st TCJS Quarterly Meeting

In February, we mobilized twenty five community members and half a dozen criminal justice reform allies to attend the first quarterly meeting of the Texas Commission on Jail Standards in Austin. The night prior to the meeting, we had a special gathering and dinner to memorialize our loved ones who have been stolen by the dehumanizing carceral system.

Our co-founder and previous executive director Diana Claitor joined us in a powerful teach-in on testimony writing. We reclaimed our power in our shared grief and vision for a world where incarcerated people are treated as human beings, where our basic needs are not criminalized and every person has the right to live with dignity.

Many of the families had lost their loved ones in custody after being arrested during a mental health crisis.

Some like Jonathan Taylor and Julian Torres had repeatedly cycled through the revolving door of the criminal and mental health system for over a decade before dying in custody due to lack of timely mental health care.

Others like John Ray Zamora had not only been brutally murdered by detention officers within hours of being jailed but his death was also not reported to the state as is required by TX law. 

We compiled some of the testimonies from this meeting on our YouTube Channel here.