After he had been incarcerated at the Bexar County Jail in San Antonio, Texas, for one week, 35-year-old Ryan O’Shea was found nonresponsive with a bedsheet around his neck like a noose. Tragically, he died the same day, on January 21, 2021.

The Texas Commission on Jail Standards (TCJS) requires jails to collect information and fill out a Suicide and Medical/Mental/Developmental Impairments Form, which is part of intake screening. TCJS says in the instructions for filling out the form that intake screening is the first step in determining which inmates are in need of specialized mental health assessment. In addition, intake screening is designed to identify patients who may be suicidal. The form achieves three primary goals, as follows:

• Help sheriffs fulfill statute requirements, including Code of Criminal Procedure §16.22, which is the protocol when an inmate has signs of an intellectual disability or suffers from mental illness.
• Create a suicide risk assessment that is objective and provides clear guidance that will signal front-line employees that it is time to notify magistrates, mental health providers, or superiors.
• Ensure that the form is user-friendly so that Texas county jailers with a wide range of experience will know how to correctly fill out the form.

Non-Compliance in Suicide Screening

On a jail inspection report dated late April 2021, the TCGS inspector indicates non-compliance with respect to the requirement for completing an approved mental disabilities/suicide prevention screening instrument at the time of booking, as follows:

• It was determined while reviewing medical files that members of the staff at the jail are not filling out the Screening Form for Suicide and Medical/Mental/Developmental Impairments to completion.

See Part 1 and Part 2 of this three-part series.

The posts on this website are added as potential resources that could help Texas county jail prisoners, both former and current. It is not intended on this site to infer wrongs on the part of persons or organizations.

–Guest Contributor