Texas Tribune: When Texas jail standards push inmates to lockups in other states, oversight doesn’t follow

Texas law requires the reporting and investigation of deaths of people in jails or prisons within the state. Those requirements do not apply to inmates who die out-of-state.

Families of nine people who died in Harris County Jail are suing local officials there. The FBI is also conducting a civil rights investigation over deaths in the Harris County Jail.

That makes it difficult for anyone to uncover what goes on in facilities across state lines. In 2022, Harris County inmate Billie Davis died while at LaSalle Correctional Center. It wasn’t until a year had passed that jail advocates finally managed to track down a coroner’s report from Louisiana and found that Davis’ death was ruled a homicide. That death is not counted in a Texas attorney general database that would have included it if Davis died in a lockup within the state.