WBUR Here and Now: Breaking the Bond: A look at bail reform in Harris County, Texas

WBUR does a deep dive on the end of cash bail for most misdemeanors in Harris County. Find TJP community members and executive director, Krish Gundu, featured in Episode 1 ‘Everybody deserves a second chance’ How bail reform changed Houston’s criminal justice system and Episode 3: ‘The guards wouldn’t do anything:’ Houston families outraged over death of loved ones in jail:

Legal experts say it made the criminal justice system more fair. People who couldn’t afford bail no longer have to spend days or weeks in jail awaiting trial. But it hasn’t made Houston’s jail complex any safer.

Lawsuits are pending in federal court, including a case filed by a 23-year-old woman who had a miscarriage earlier this year after she was allegedly beaten by a detention officer and other prisoners while in custody. The cases all have one throughline; They all accuse Harris County Jail officials of perpetuating a culture of abuse and neglect within the complex.

According to advocates like Krish Gundu of Texas Jail Project, this alleged culture and chronic understaffing has been directly responsible for the growing in-custody death toll in Harris County.

For nearly two years, the Harris County Jail had failed several safety inspections conducted by the state of Texas, mainly due to persistent understaffing. This led county officials to approve multi-million-dollar contracts with private prisons to send thousands of prisoners outside of Harris County, some to facilities outside of the state.

“The mantra seems to be out of state, out of mind,” says Corene Kendrick, the deputy director of the ACLU National Prison Project. “They’re sent hundreds or thousands of miles away, and it makes it incredibly difficult for their family members and loved ones, as well as their attorneys, to have any sort of meaningful contact with them.”

Kendrick says the two private companies that operate these out-of-state prisons — CoreCivic and LaSalle — are “both notorious operators” that are “well known to advocates as companies that profit off of human misery and incarceration.”