When Valorin Michele Rodriguez was booked into Winkler County Jail in Kermit, Texas, it was reportedly for the purpose of serving a 10-day sentence. She died in jail custody on February 5, 2018, and no details were provided on the custodial death report to indicate what the cause of death of the 42-year-old woman may have been.

Transparency within the county jail system in Texas is not readily demonstrated if you go by the lack of information provided in current versions of custodial death reports. Questions justifiably arise, also, as a result of statistics showing that jails in which custodial deaths have occurred were virtually all found to be compliant during their most recent annual inspections previous to the deaths.

It makes sense that the Texas Commission on Jail Standards is under occasional scrutiny. Only four inspectors currently handle the workload of inspecting 241 county jails every year plus conducting special inspections connected to jails in non-compliant status. The time constraint alone for this type of workload calls into question just how thorough the inspections could be. The following is an example of a recent jail inspection report showing a type of non-compliance that indicates the potential for inmates to be endangered by the lack of conformity to minimum jail standards.

Negligence Demonstrated for Making Observation Checks

The Texas rule that was allegedly violated is one in which observations of inmates must be conducted every quarter-hour and documented. During each of the observations, circulation to the inmates’ extremities must be checked, along with the security of the restraint device.

• The inspector studied restraint logs for the Texas jail and found that members of the jail staff with the duty of making 15-minute observation checks were 1 to 17 minutes late on multiple occasions.

See Part 1 and Part 2 of this ongoing series.

Each of the posts on this website is added as a way of possibly helping current and former Texas county jail prisoners. There is not an intention to infer that improprieties have occurred on the part of persons or entities.

–Guest Contributor