Video Puts Texas Prisons In New Light
It started out a few years ago as an unlikely economic development program: from as far away as Hawaii and Massachusetts, more than 5,500 inmates have been sent to jails across Texas, where many counties have an excess of jail cells and have parlayed them into out-of-state payments.
While the transfer policy was already tangled in numerous court disputes over its constitutionality, it is now the subject of a mushrooming controversy after a videotape became public last week depicting guards in a Houston-area jail kicking inmates from Missouri, coaxing dogs to bite them and shocking at least one prisoner with a stun gun.
The nearly year-old videotape, which was originally shot to be part of a training film for jail guards, has led Missouri to cancel its contract to house 415 inmates at the Texas jail.
Idaho officials say they’re satisified with the safety of inmates sent to Texas prisons managed by the same company accused in the brutality charge. The company, Capital Correctional Resources, Inc., is among nine contractors who bid on Idaho’s first private prison project.
“As soon as we saw that, our only recourse was to bring them back,” John Fougere, a spokesman for the Missouri Department of Corrections, said Thursday in referring to the taped beatings. “We’re not going to stand for something like that.”
The tape has also prompted the FBI in Houston to announce an inquiry into the possible violations of the inmates’ civil rights at the privately run jail, the Brazoria County Detention Center. The incident has grown even more controversial with disclosures that two of the guards who were reported to be involved in the abuse had been hired despite having convictions for beating inmates in their previous jobs as guards in the Texas prison system.
It prompted Texas Gov. George W. Bush to place a personal call this week to Missouri Gov. Mel Carnahan in which Bush assured his Missouri counterpart that the abuse shown on the videotape was not condoned by Texas officials and would be thoroughly investigated and dealt with, Bush’s spokeswoman said.
And the tape has provoked denunciations from many other quarters, including a Democratic state representative in Houston, Ron Wilson, who said: “If those old boys were acting the way they were on videotape, no telling what they’re doing when they’re not on tape. That is the scary part. They knew they were on tape.”
Many questions raised by disclosure of the videotape - such as whether the guards were provoked or how seriously the inmates were injured - have yet to be answered because all those involved have declined to respond to inquiries.
Officials in the Brazoria County sheriff’s office initially said that they did not think the tape depicted wanton abuse, but they have since declined to make any comment.
The sheriff’s office referred all questions about the tape to Otto Hewitt, a lawyer in Alvin, Texas, who is representing Capital Correctional Resources Inc. of Jackson, Miss., the company that runs the jail.
“This matter is currently in litigation and therefore neither I nor my staff are at liberty to discuss it with you,” an assistant to Hewitt said, reading from a prepared statement of his. “We expect defendants to be fully vindicated in the court’s final judgment; no civil rights violations having occurred or being established.”
The videotape apparently came to light in the course of proceedings in a lawsuit by the Missouri inmates and was first reported in The Brazosport Facts, a local newspaper.
While the videotape has become a flashpoint, it is far from the first time that out-of-state inmates have complained about the treatment they have received in Texas jails, or even that out-of-state prison officials have expressed concerns about conditions at the jails.
Several months ago, Oklahoma officials began taking back their inmates from the Limestone County Detention Facility in Groesebeck, Texas, after they were reported to be bothered by how often their prisoners were being controlled with pepper spray.
And just this week, federal authorities announced an investigation into conditions at a privately run county jail in northwest Texas, which houses hundreds of inmates from Montana and Hawaii. Prisoners there have complained about strip searches and the guards’ use of warning shots in giving them orders. And an audit by Montana’s Corrections Department concluded that there was inadequate food, medical care and counseling services at the prison.
In addition, a Montana inmate was killed in May in a fight between factions from the two states.
The basic policy of transferring state prisoners to Texas has already provoked legal challenges in the home states of many of the prisoners. The inmates complain that being moved severely limits their ability to have visits from family members, meet with their lawyers or arrange for work and a place to live upon their release.
But a group of inmates from Colorado has already gone one step further, arguing that their transfer violates their constitutional rights because, they say, conditions in Texas jails are much worse than in Colorado prisons.
And underlying the whole dispute here is the question of whether there is more abuse or poorer living conditions at the Texas jails than at those of other states. Such a contention is staunchly denied by Texas corrections officials, although they also point out that by definition, jails are typically designed for shorter stays than prisons and thus typically have less in the way of services and recreational offerings.
County officials in Texas, which has far more out-of-state inmates than any other state, have welcomed the prisoners, for whom they receive an average of $40 a day. That has amounted to about $80 million for Texas counties that run their own jails and the private companies that run many jails in Texas.
In general, courts have upheld the constitutionality of the transfer of prisoners to other states, although there have been exceptions, said Jenni Gainsborough, public policy administrator of the National Prison Project of the American Civil Liberties Union. A judge in New Mexico, she said, found that the transfers violated terms of a consent decree between that state and a group of prisoners shipped to Texas, and they were brought home.
A judge hearing the Colorado inmates’ claim had clearly expressed sympathy for the inmates’ assertions that conditions at a northeast Texas jail fell below state standards. But that case was essentially sent back to square one when the inmates were shipped to other jails in Texas and were required to prove that their new quarters also failed to meet the state standards.
Gainsborough described the tape from Brazoria County as shocking. “I think there can be no two opinions about that,” she said. “It’s OK now to treat prisoners worse than we treat animals and we find that very disturbing.”
At least one Missouri inmate, a convicted burglar whose name was not provided by Brazoria County officials Thursday, has filed a civil lawsuit seeking $100,000 in damages for being kicked by guards and bitten by a jail dog.
Public officials in many states have praised the idea of sending their criminals to Texas or elsewhere.
“An atoll in the Pacific would be fine as well - patrolled by sharks,” Sheriff Pat Sullivan Jr. of Arapahoe County, Colo., said in an interview last year. “I have no philosophical problem at all with that. This is punishment.”
Said Wisconsin Gov. Tommy Thompson: “If keeping criminals off our streets means sending our prisoners to Texas, bye-bye. They’re going south.”
Some advocates said the videotape, however disturbing, was by no means the most extreme example of the brutality that occurs in some jails and prisons. But, they said, it might nonetheless focus public attention on the broader issue of how prisoners are treated.
“Some of the problems are much worse than this,” said Gainsborough, of the ACLU. “Politicians have talked so much about how prisons are like country clubs and how easy lives are there and the public, most of whom have never seen a prison, have believed it. Only when something like this tape surfaces are people jolted.”
xxxx OTHER STATES CONCERNED Several months ago, Oklahoma officials began taking back their inmates from the Limestone County Detention Facility in Groesebeck, Texas, after they were reported to be bothered by how often their prisoners were being controlled with pepper spray. Federal authorities last week announced an investigation into conditions at a privately run county jail in northwest Texas, which houses hundreds of inmates from Montana and Hawaii. Prisoners there have complained about strip searches and the guards’ use of warning shots in giving them orders. An audit by Montana’s Corrections Department concluded that there was inadequate food, medical care and counseling services at the prison.