A Love Letter…
The first half of this year has been incredibly busy for our tiny team. So much so, that it has taken us well over a month to get this newsletter out to you!
We were invited to lead national workshops on jail oversight, speak at a county townhall, debate on panels about bail reform, testify in a federal court hearing, provide evidence for lawsuit filings, apply for fellowships, serve on state and county advisory committees and give expert input to the Government Accountability Office and the Senate sub-committee on Human Rights on the experiences of incarcerated pregnant people.
We informed elected officials and media on jail conditions and custody deaths, organized film screenings on bail reform, conducted teach-ins for students and citizen advocates, consulted on county budgets and commented in dozens of news stories.
We took over two quarterly meetings of the Texas Commission on Jail Standards (TCJS) which is the state’s sole regulatory agency for 244 county jails, and brought dozens of testimonies from directly impacted members and their loved ones.
Between the two quarterly meetings, we also mobilized public comments from families of directly impacted members and community advocates at commissioners courts in two counties, board meetings of local mental health authorities and two legislatively mandated TCJS committee meetings – The Intellectual and Developmentally Disabled Advisory Committee (IDDAC) meeting and the Administrative and Rules Committee (ARAC) meetings .
The solidarity and acts of collective care we witnessed between impacted families, reminded us again of how organizing can be an incredibly powerful antidote to despair. We invite you to watch some of the testimonies we compiled on our YouTube channel here.
Amidst all this labor, our tiny team experienced major upheavals – from tornadoes (Derecho) and a Category 1 hurricane (Beryl), to eviction notices and medical emergencies which are unfortunately, a daily part of the lives of people who are struggling to impact the punishment system, while continuously being impacted by it.
Like a mature grove, we survived and persisted. By moving together, by acknowledging our shared trauma, by taking care of one another with love, grace and kindness.
2024 has been an intense rollercoaster so far. And an amazing lesson in how to embody and practice our values of self and community care, with authenticity.
We have so much to share with you! Hope you’ll come along for the ride – rejoice in our wins, reflect on our learnings and grieve the losses with us.
With love always,
Amaal, Dalila, Krish and Goldie
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Stories from the Collective Struggle
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Groundswell for Accountability
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 are humbled by the manner in which all the grieving families supported one another at these meetings despite never having met before.
Watching the power shift in a room full of sheriffs, jailers, policy makers and regulators, was a deeply moving experience. We are determined to sustain this practice as an essential tool for political education and movement building.
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Collective Liberation Necessitates Collective Care
The most profound lesson we learned this year was the combined force of our collective. The healing power of shared struggle. Our directly impacted community members and their families embodied that at every public meeting whether it was at the TX Commission on Jail Standards, Health and Human Services or County Commissioners Courts. They came together across language, race and other barriers to support one aother in ways far beyond the material and emotional.
Prior to each public meeting, our foregrounding efforts to host a gathering of directly impacted families in a reflective and envisioning session, created the kind of strong loving connections that we had always dreamed of.
We could not have done this without the intentional support of institutional funders like Southern Vision Alliance and individual donors like yourself. Can you help us sustain and grow this collective?
For each TCJS quarterly meeting in Austin, we spend anywhere between $2,000 to $5,000 for ten to twenty five community members to come from across the state. The gathering includes a teach-in using resources developed in-house, workshops to craft their public comments and audio-video expert to record and publish their testimonies online.
Additionally, this year we disbursed over $1,000 to indigent community members who are pretrial detainees, for jail phone calls and commissary, and over $14,500 for emergency needs of their loved ones, such as rent, utilities, medical expenses, transportation for court appearances and childcare.
Letter from an incarcerated community member
Can you donate?
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A Community Bailout Leads to a
Historic Victory
Jury awards $450,000 in damages to our client Glenn H.
In February of 2021, when we bailed out 20 year old Glenn from Smith county jail, we could never have imagined the historic trajectory of his story.
Glenn was arrested during the winter holidays in 2020 while driving with his friends through Tyler, on his way home to Louisiana. He was charged with the alleged possession of a marijuana derivative (a vape pen) and held on a $1,500 bond.
Glenn sat in a cage for 115 days without an indictment or a single court appearance. In the entire time he was caged, not once did he hear from his court appointed attorney. Finally, a jailer took pity on him during Winter storm Uri and called us for help.
Dalila, our advocate in Tyler, bailed him out, bought him dinner and provided him with essentials and funds to travel back to his grandmother’s home in Louisiana.
Later that year, Glenn came back to Texas to provide vital testimony to the Senate Criminal Justice Committee on bail reform legislation.
“Fifteen hundred dollars is a lot of
money when you don’t have any.”
Glenn testifying at the Senate Criminal Justice Committee hearing in 2021
Glenn was one of dozens of indigent people whom we bailed out in 2021 through our community bail fund.
Prior to this hearing, Texas Fair Defense Project (TFDP) had helped Glenn file a malpractice suit against his attorney. Glenn received a summary judgment in that lawsuit.
In June of this year, we witnessed a landmark hearing in Glenn’s civil lawsuit in the Eastern District Federal Court in Tyler, TX. Our dear friends and allies at TFDP argued for damages in the Eastern District Federal court where Glenn was awarded $450,000 by a jury in Smith county.
Our team mate Dalila served as a crucial witness in that hearing along with all the documentation that we had gathered during Glenn’s bailout.
Glenn’s story is not an outlier. He is one of hundreds of thousands of indigent people who are rendered invisible and powerless by the criminal punishment system.
Forgotten by their court appointed attorneys and forced to take plea deals even if they’re innocent, we often wonder how many Glenns are out there…waiting for someone to believe in them.
Glenn’s story inspires us to keep pushing for an end to our two-tiered cash bail system which punishes people for being poor.
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! Call to Action !
* Join us in demanding better policies from the TCJS IDD Advisory Committee on October 9th to protect Individuals with Intellectual and Development Disabilities (I/DD) held in county jails. If you have a loved one who was criminalized, please consider sharing your story with us at info@texasjailproject.org
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Rights Behind Bars files lawsuit against Harris county jail on behalf of TJP client
The Fight to Reclaim Our Humanity
In the summer of 2022, twenty three year old Mykala reached out to us from Harris County jail where she was being incarcerated pretrial on a felony charge that was later dismissed.
While in jail, Mykala was assaulted and abused on multiple occasions which led to suicide attempts and a miscarriage. We worked feverishly to file complaints and intervene on her behalf during the entire duration of her incarceration.
For more than three months, both the jail and the regulatory agencies failed in their duty to provide Mykala basic protections. They stonewalled us and accused her of lying.
We documented Mykala’s story and the experience of other pregnant women in Harris County jail in our essays published in The Slate and The Appeal magazines in 2022. After her release, we supported her with mutual aid and legal resources.
In February, after almost two years of struggling to unearth all the details of her horrific time inside Harris county jail, we collaborated with Rights Behind Bars to file a lawsuit against Harris county jail.
We continue to support Mykala in her journey.
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We helped organize vigils and joined community members in three different counties for memorials and celebrations of those who have lost their lives in county jails.
We grieved with families and loved ones. It was a harsh reminder of the brutality of our pretrial detention system which served a death sentence to legally innocent people.
It was also a reminder that we need to keep fighting for what truly keeps us safe in our communities – equitable access to community based health care, affordable housing, food security, economic opportunities, pollution-free environment…systems of care, not punishment.
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Rooting Our Wins in Safety
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Prison Policy Initiative’s Advocacy Spotlight
We are so excited that our work on forcing sheriffs to report previously unreported custody deaths in their jails was the feature of nationally renowned Prison Policy Initiative’s Advocacy Spotlight this month.
The spotlight came as a result of our success in discovering 18 unreported custody deaths in the past sixteen months and forcing 14 of them to be reported to the Office of the Attorney General of Texas, as mandated by law.
We are grateful for PPI’s support in amplifying our advocacy efforts to force Texas to count custody deaths of community members who die after being shipped out from our county jails to facilities in neighboring states.
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The Atlantic Monthly Panel on Bail Reform
“The debate on bail reform is over. It keeps our communities safe and families together.”
In May, we were invited to speak on a high profile panel organized and moderated by The Atlantic Monthly on bail reform in Harris county at the annual MacArthur Safety & Justice Challenge conference in Houston.
Our executive director Krish, joined Judge Shannon Baldwin and Dr. Sandra Thompson – who are part of Harris county’s monitoring team in the ODonnell Federal Consent Decree – in a timely discussion about the positive outcomes of misdemeanor bail reform in Harris county, and the backlash across the state fueled by the bail bonds industry.
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Tarrant County Town Hall on Rising Custody Deaths
In January, Tarrant County Commissioner Simmons invited us to participate virtually in a townhall organized in Arlington, to discuss the alarming rise of custody deaths in Tarrant county jail.
Under Sheriff Waybourn, at least 65 community members have reportedly died in the jail since 2017. We joined the Sheriff, allies and advocates from United Fort Worth and Broadway Baptist Justice Network, and criminal court representatives to interrogate the culture and policies that have led to so many deaths.
Due to our collective efforts, the Department of Justice is now considering an intervention in the jail.
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Carceral Death Collective Conference
Dr. Andrea Armstrong’s McArthur Genius Award Celebration
In March, we were invited by Dr. Andrea Armstrong to attend a two day Carceral Death Data Collective conference at the Loyola University College of Law in New Orleans.
Dr. Armstrong is the recipient of the 2023 MacArthur Genius Award for her research and advocacy work on deaths in custody. The conference included a joyous celebration party for her award with rousing blues music, dancing and delicious New Orleans food!
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The attendees were a carefully chosen collective of academics, researchers, journalist and advocates from across the country who have been working on a range of projects to gather data and stories to improve transparency in custody deaths in all types of carceral settings.
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Civic Engagement – Smith County Commissioners Court
“We need mental health care, not a jail cell!”
Our lead mental health advocate Dalila Reynoso has been speaking regularly at the county commissioners court in Smith county for the past four years. She has been tirelessly shedding light on the criminalization of mental illness in her community and passionately advocating for more non-carceral mental health and substance use disorder resources.
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Dalila spoke about the tragic suicide of Nathan Lee Johns in 2023 in Smith county jail after he was arrested at a local hospital following a suicide attempt. She was joined by youth organizer Amy whose brother has been repeatedly arrested during mental health crises.
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Community Safety Budget Training
#Care Not Cages
For the third consecutive year, we continued to advance our holistic vision of community safety through our work with the intersectional and diverse Community Safety Budget Coalition in Harris county.
In July, we joined coalition allies and friends at Woori Juntos to organize a multi-lingual budget training session for community members.
In the coming weeks leading up to the budget vote we will continue to work with county government staff and directly impacted people in pushing the county to invest in community based mental health care, housing, flood control and other essential infrastructure and services, the lack of which have created a rampant culture of criminalization.
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TX Tribune Rural Health Challenges Symposium
In Spring, our lead mental health advocate, Dalila attended a mental health symposium organized by the Texas Tribune in Tyler, Smith county. For nearly four years we have been working diligently on diverting people with mental illness and developmental disabilities from the Smith county jail.
Dalila made essential points about the importance of not criminalizing symptoms of mental illness and creating a culture of care instead of punishment. Following the symposium, her letter to the editor was published in the Tyler newspaper.
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MacArthur Safety + Justice Challenge
Jail Oversight Workshop
In May, we were invited to the Mac Arthur Safety and Justice annual conference in Houston, to conduct a workshop on citizen oversight of jails. Our executive director Krish, joined our dear friend and ally Noah Barth, the Monitoring Director of Pennsylvania Prison Society (PPS) in presenting two very different models of jail oversight.
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PPS is a non-profit organization with a legislative mandate going back to the 1700s, to monitor the jails and prisons in Pennsylvania. In contrast, TJP has blazed its own path to become the de facto civilian oversight collective for the county jail system in Texas.
This was our third time leading this kind of workshop with PPS. Last year, we presented a similar workshop at the National Association for Civilian Oversight of Law Enforcement which led to our ED being invited to join NACOLE’s oversight committee which comprises ombudsmen, inspector generals and other official oversight departments across the country.
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Launch of Texas Freedom Stories
In May, we joined our national partner Zealous to screen Texas Freedom Stories – a short film featuring two of our community members.
The film conveys the essential successes of misdemeanor bail reform in Harris county while dispelling the myth fueled by the bail bond industry, that bail reform has led to an increase in crime. It was a joyous celebration with food, friends, allies and the stars of the film.
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A panel discussion with the two community members who benefited from pretrial freedom, the filmmaker and our executive director Krish, was moderated by Nick Powell who’s on the editorial board of the Houston Chronicle, and attended by county officials and over eighty community members.
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Protecting the Protestors
At the height of the Palestine protests, we provided jail support to student protestors and were called upon by TCJS to provide input on appropriate policies to protect the religious rights of protestors, especially women, who wear head scarves.
We worked closely with student activists, policy advocates, jail administrators and the leadership at TCJS to create and implement processes that ensure the dignity and safety of protestors during jail bookings, incarceration and release.
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Albert Schweitzer Public Health Fellow Joins TJP
We are excited to welcome Caroline Crain, our new public health fellow from The Albert Schweitzer Fellowship which is a yearlong program focused on advancing public health and health equity through partnerships with community organizations.
Caroline is a medical student at the McGovern Medical School in Houston. Through this fellowship, Caroline will be working with us to create advocacy campaigns and educational materials, document our work through stories of community members with mental illness and developmental disabilities who are criminalized for symptoms of their behaviors, and conduct a community needs assessment to ensure that we are meeting the needs of our community.
This fellowship is an important step in TJP’s vision of creating public safety through equitable access to public health.
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TJP In The Media
- Texas’ Crowded and Understaffed Jails Send People Awaiting Trial to Other Counties and States
Texas Tribune, Aug 13, Statewide
- When Texas Jail Standards Push Inmates to Lockups In Other States, Oversight Does Not Follow
Texas Tribune, Aug 14, Statewide
- Advocates, Family Members Denounce Jail Deaths at Texas Capitol Hearing
KXAN, Feb 1, Statewide
- Townhall in Arlington to bring Tarrant county Sheriff, activists to discuss jail conditions, deaths
KERA News, Jan 17, Tarrant County
- Dying for Help: Falfurrias woman dies while in custody of Kleberg County Sheriff’s Office
KRIS 6, March 25, Kleberg County
- Bail is big topic in Travis county DA’s race. What is it? How does it relate to public safety?
Austin American Statesman, March 3, Travis County
- A woman had a miscarriage after detention officers allegedly assaulted her in the Harris County Jail, lawsuit says
Houston Public Media, Feb 27, Harris County
- Pregnancy Care was Always Lacking in Jails. It could get worse.
KFF Health News, Feb 23, National
- Tarrant County Plans to Cut Ties with Private Prisons that Violated State Jail Standards
KERA, Feb 6, Tarrant County
- Texas’ Plantation Prisons: Inside A 200 Year History Of Forced Labor Shrouded In Secrecy
Texas Observer, July 15, Statewide
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R e f l e c t i o n s
A gate to a cemetery bordering the Audobon Park in New Orleans
Did you know, the Harris county jail leads is the largest warehouse of people with mental illness in the state of Texas? The county jail system in Texas is the de facto mental health institution of the state. Due to over incarceration and a slow court system, Harris county is now spending nearly $55 million/year on private prison companies to ship over 1,700 pretrial detainees to Louisiana and Mississippi. Five other county jails in Texas are shipping their pretrial detainees to Louisiana.
Imagine what we could do with $55 million dollars in our community. Imagine how many people we could provide healthcare and homes and sustainable jobs to. Imagine the kind of safe communities we could create. |
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