The Montgomery County jail has recently made news because of its overcrowding issues, and articles from Grits for Breakfast and Houston Press’ blog have rightly emphasized that a significant part of the problem is due to high rates of pretrial detention. The August 2014 population report from the Texas Commission on Jail Standards states that 73.15% of inmates being held in Montgomery County (MoCo) are considered pretrial, meaning that they have yet to be convicted of anything and are presumably innocent until proven guilty. And yet those 812 pretrial inmates in MoCo this month are still being subjected to the difficult reality of being overcrowded in a jail with questionable conditions, often simply because they and their families are not able to afford the high bail amounts issued by the court.

In a September 29, 2011, story, the Brownsville Herald exposes the rampant overcrowding at the jail that has evidently gone on for many years. Then Chief Jail Administrator Mike Leinart spoke the truth, when he responded to a question about inmate population numbers.

“We haven’t been in compliance in six years,” said Leinart.

“Don’t say that out loud,” Pct. 4 Commissioner Dan Sanchez said.

Corpus Christi Caller Times December 7, 2009 Overcrowding is a serious problem at the Nueces County Jail, as reported in our Nov. 22 series, “Paying the price to lock ’em up” With the jail often at 90 percent of capacity or higher, the risks of violence rise. Sheriff Jim Kaelin put it succinctly: “This is going

By KEVIN KRAUSE / The Dallas Morning News /Saturday, November 27, 2010 When the Dallas County jails failed inspection for the seventh time last year, consultants brought in to fix the problem encountered a stressed-out and overworked Sheriff’s Department with a culture that resisted change and failed to hold its employees responsible for repeated problems,

http://blogs.houstonpress.com/hairballs/2010/11/harris_county_jail_pew.php By Chris Vogel, Thu., Nov. 18 2010 @ 2:31PM Comments (18) ?In an era when locking fewer people up and spending less on jails seems to make sense and is rapidly becoming en vogue, Harris County was increasing its spending and putting more folks behind bars than nearly any other populous county in the

As rural jails in the Texas Panhandle – many of them were built in the 1950s – age, county officials are facing problems jail designers half a century ago never dreamed of. Among those challenges are overcrowding, safety concerns and a state jail standards commission that didn’t exist when the jails were built . . . .

http://www.houstonpress.com/2009-11-19/news/jail-misery/ By Randall Patterson Published on November 17, 2009 at 1:53pm Monte Killian says he asked for his medication again and again for days to no avail. On the last day of July, months after quitting his job as a cook on an offshore oil rig, Monte Killian was tooling around the Fourth Ward in

An Alternative Incarceration Program that provides labor and other needed services by inmates and people on probation, is being described as a “win, win, win” by Kleberg County officials. The county implemented the program about three weeks ago.
“This is a “win, win, win” proposition for everyone – the county, the taxpayers and the inmates,” said Pct. 2 Kleberg County Commissioner Chuck Schultz. Three inmates were busy working on repairs on the Precinct 2 building last week.

COMMISSIONERS VOTE TO RENEW JAIL TRANSFER CONTRACT Some Wichita County inmates could soon find themselves housed in Montague County. This morning, Wichita County commissioners voted to renew a contract allowing transfers, all to help ease overflow of inmates. The transfers cost about $35 a day per inmate. This summer, the jail saw a record number

The Bexar County Jail failed its annual inspection for the sixth time in eight years — for reasons ranging from overcrowding to low water pressure and broken intercoms. The Texas Commission on Jail Standards, the state agency charged with overseeing detention centers, noted seven “areas of non-compliance” in its report, which was released Friday after a three-day inspection.