Austin American-Statesman: What does shortage of Travis County Jail officers mean for incarcerated people?

On Sept. 27, 2022, the Texas Commission on Jail Standards received a letter from a person in the Travis County Jail begging for help. 

The writer, who had been incarcerated for two months in the Travis County Correctional Complex in Del Valle, described violence and theft among incarcerated people and claimed that they spent 23 hours a day in their cell. The complainant claimed there weren’t enough correctional officers supervising their unit, and those who were present were overworked.

The complaint was made during the height of a shortage of correctional officers at the Travis County Jail. In 2022, the officers’ vacancy rate reached a high of 35%. 

In 2023, the average daily population of the jail was the same as in 2019 — yet there were 200 fewer correctional officers. 

Advocates say the staffing shortage likely makes jail conditions worse — concerns that are echoed in jail standards complaints reviewed by the Statesman.  

Many complaints reviewed by the Statesman, made in 2022 and 2023, included reports of 23-hour-a-day confinement, limiting access to showers, recreation time and phone calls. 

In an entry received in July 2022, a complainant described being “hardly allowed out of our cells.”

Robert Lilly, an organizer with Grassroots Leadership, works with people incarcerated in the Travis County Jail and had heard accounts of 23-hour-a-day confinement. He was concerned such conditions would lead to poor mental and physical health — and could make it difficult for someone to transition to life outside jail.

Krish Gundu, an organizer at the Texas Jail Project, agreed. She told the Statesman that staffing has been a “chronic issue” at jails throughout the country, stretching back before the pandemic. Given how difficult it has been to improve staffing, Gundu said, it’s all the more important to reduce jail populations.