A Love Letter…

Dear TJP Supporter,

2023 was one of the hardest years ever in my seventeen year relationship with Texas Jail Project.

Our small team was overwhelmed with personal tragedies even as we responded to an enormous number of crisis calls, emails, and letters from families and jails across the state.

After the record number of jail custody deaths we saw in 2022, we were not quite prepared for things to get worse in 2023. County jail populations soared and so did the horrors and harms. 

But I am so proud of the way we showed up for our communities — with radical love and intentional care, and the material resources they needed to mobilize their rage against the harms of cash bail and the pretrial detention system. Thanks to your support!

In our five year strategic plan we had pledged to create space for our community members at various decision making tables. And we did!

We successfully advocated for a community member to be appointed to a legislatively mandated statewide advisory committee studying the issue of people with intellectual and developmental disabilities in jails and I was appointed to the Administrative Rules Advisory Committee of the TX Commission on Jail Standards. I am honored to be the only advocate, the only woman and the only person of color to have a voting membership on this committee. (We’ll see how long it takes for me to get kicked off for my hell raising!)

Like far reaching and resilient mycelium networks, our years of growing deep relationships with directly impacted community members, their families and whistleblower detention staff, bore fruit in the multitudes who showed up at all the quarterly meetings of the Texas Commission on Jail Standards and county commissioners courts and board meetings to hold the criminal punishment and public health systems accountable. 

Beyond the metrics and outcomes, we wanted to share stories from our work last year. Stories of loss, despair, rage, grief, and above all, hope and solidarity.

This newsletter is the first of several where we will dig deep into the stories that radically shaped and moved us to think, dream, and act daily to birth a new world free of cages and genocide. 

We hope they will radicalize you and compel you to keep walking along with us on the road to liberation.

 

We are so thrilled and proud to announce that Liz has been appointed to serve on the IDDAC in the role of a family member of a person with I/DD. She will be the voice of families with loved ones like Gabe who are often forced into the criminal punishment system for behaviors resulting from their disabilities.

Just a few weeks ago, our collaborative efforts also led to the felony charges against Gabe being completely dismissed. “I’ve very mixed feelings about it,” said Dr. Pinon.

“I know I should be happy but I am very angry! He should never have been arrested in the first place. All that trauma and stress on a vulnerable person…for what? I hope no other child has to go through what my Gabe went through. I am going to make sure of that as a representative of this community on the I/DD advisory committee.” 

Jonathan Taylor Ngumbi

The first time Deborah reached out to us for help from a small rural county, Taylor had just turned 23. An A+ student in his first year of college, a bright shining star with a golden future, Taylor experienced what many of our young ones experience between the ages of 19-23 – First Episode Psychosis.

Within a few years, Taylor had cycled through almost a dozen emergency detentions, hospitalizations and arrests. Deborah was engaged in an exhausting repeated cycle of crisis, arrests, emergency detentions, hospitalizations and competency evaluations and competency restorations.

The lack of meaningful continuity of care in our state’s mental health system took a severe toll on Taylor and his entire family. During their 13 year saga, the percentage tagged as psychiatric within the pretrial population in TX county jails, saw a sharp rise from 15%-20% to 70%-80%. Some went up by almost 800%! 

The entire county jail system has de facto transformed into the largest warehouse of people with mental illness.

Nine out of those thirteen years that Deborah was fighting to get Taylor meaningful mental health care, we were by her side. 

On countless occasions we intervened to secure essential services for him, mitigate harm, document torture and violations of human rights in solitary confinement and much more. Taylor was a part of our TJP family and Deborah had become an integral part of the warrior moms who make up the foundation of TJP’s advocacy community.    

In late October of last year, Taylor was arrested and incarcerated in a rural county jail during yet another psychotic episode brought on by a change in medications. We immediately swung into action with Deborah to ensure continuity of care for Taylor. But despite ours and Deborah’s fiercest efforts, we lost Taylor within six days of his arrest. 

On Nov 2nd, while we were at the TCJS quarterly meeting in Austin, voicing outrage about the lack of urgency by the state in tackling the mental health crisis in our jails, Taylor was taking his last breaths in a rural hospital after being transferred from the jail in an unresponsive state. 32 year old Taylor turned into a tragic statistic along with the 153 other people who died in TX county jails in 2023. Most were pretrial, legally innocent. And many suffering from serious mental illnesses. 

Taylor might have been alive today if instead of being incarcerated on a cash bond of $5,000, he had been immediately diverted by the magistrate who received his mandatory mental health screening at intake. 

Taylor would have been alive today if instead of being arrested, law enforcement had really listened to his family and centered his safety. 

Taylor could have been alive today if any one of the stakeholders in the jail or the local mental health authority or the court or the regulatory state agency had paid attention to his long mental health history and ensured timely continuity of care.

Taylor would have been alive today if instead of wasting over 50% – 60% of our county budgets in punitive systems, our counties and state had invested in people centered robust community based mental health systems.

“He was a brilliant shooting star! He was my greatest joy. I kept losing him to the jails and the hospitals but I always got him back. He lost his life to a mental illness but it’s the incompetence of the mental health system that really killed him. Why does it have to be this way? Why did he have to die this way? WHY?? I cry now from rage and crippling pain and a sadness so deep, it’s consuming me. But mostly I cry from empty arms that will miss him forever.”

Make your voice heard!

When Amada’s twin sister Anna (names changed to protect identity) reached out to us in late April, Amada had been in the Harris County Jail for almost 2 weeks.

It was a story that had become increasingly familiar for us – a person with an intellectual/developmental disability (I/DD) is criminalized for symptoms of their behavior at a behavioral health hospital and ends up in jail.

Next thing you know, they are found incompetent to stand trial and end up on the 1-3 year long forensic waitlist awaiting competency restoration* in the TX state hospital system. Even if their disability prevents them from having their competency restored to stand trial! This is one of the reasons why the TX county jail system has turned into the largest confiner of people with mental illness in the state.

In fact, Harris county jail is the largest warehouse of people with mental illness and I/DD in the state of Texas.

*It’s important to note here that the goal of competency restoration is merely to educate a person about their alleged charges and the court system so they can be punished. It’s not mental health care which is what they need.

This time we were determined to change the story. 

At a very young age, Amada who was born premature, was diagnosed with I/DD and anxiety disorders related to her disability. She is also a survivor of rape and traumatic brain injury. Two months prior to her arrest, Amada was diagnosed with encephalitis, hepatic encephalopathy and high levels of ammonia which forced her to be hospitalized.

Amada was transferred from the hospital to Oceans – a Houston area behavioral hospital where a healthcare worker decided that her behavior was uncooperative during discharge and called the cops.

Amada was arrested and charged with assault on a peace officer and harassment of a public servant. Her bond was set at $30,000. As per state law, after a mental health screening at intake (16.22 screening) she should have immediately been diverted from that jail due to the severity of her cognitive disability. 

She was dragged out by Harris County Sheriff’s deputies, handcuffed behind her back in a wheelchair. While in jail, she was charged with two additional felonies including assault on a public servant. 

On April 19th, TJP wrote a letter to the chief mental health prosecutor and copied to the highest powers at TX Health and Human Services and all other state regulatory agencies demanding her immediate release and all charges to be dropped. At the time of writing that letter, 32 people had died in the jail in a span of 16 months. We were terrified that Amada might end up being a statistic like Fred Harris, a young man with a cognitive disability who was needlessly arrested and ended up being murdered in the jail. 

Within hours of our email, a grand jury issued a “no bill” which means there was not enough evidence for an indictment. It took until the 29th of April for her to be released directly to a Houston area hospital where it took days to stabilize her. Jail staff had used force on her leaving numerous physical bruises and tremendous psychological trauma.

“I didn’t do anything wrong. I didn’t do anything wrong!” is all Amada could say for weeks after her release from jail.

Amada is forever going to be triggered by the sight of a uniformed healthcare worker and law enforcement. We shudder to think of how her story might have ended if we had not decided to make a bold intervention. TJP is continuing to work with Amada’s family to ensure that all the systems that were supposed to protect her but instead perpetrated harm on her, are held accountable.

This year, Amada’s family decided to move out of Texas in order to access better care for her complex medical and disability needs. Our hopes and best wishes are with Amada and her family. May she find healing from her trauma.

Highlights From Our Narrative Work