Julian Dena had been an inmate at Bexar County Jail in San Antonio, Texas, for a few hours when he suffered a medical emergency that he never recovered from. He died on July 30, 2020, at the age of 34.

Inmate Medical Care

All inmates in the state of Texas have a right to receive needed medical, dental, and mental health care services. Each Texas jail is required to implement a written and approved plan for inmate health care. The plan for health services includes the following requirements that must be included:

• Make and implement a plan for inmates to gain needed access to regularly scheduled sick calls.
• Procedures must be in place that detail the method by which referrals are made so that inmates are provided with mental, dental, and medical services.
• When there is an acute and/or emergency situation, prompt inefficient medical care must be provided according to the approved health services plan.

Restraint Devices

Based on the minimum jail standards as they are currently, jails are rarely found in non-compliance with regard to medical care, although the complaints against Texas county jails are most frequently related to medical care, according to the Texas Commission on Jail Standards (TCJS). There is a segment under health services that relates to restraints. Inmates kept in restraints must be checked in face-to-face observations at 15-minute intervals, and the inmate checks must be accurately documented.

It is not unusual for a jail that is the subject of a jail inspection report involving non-compliance to have records showing that inmates kept in restraints were not checked routinely every quarter-hour as required. This is concerning because part of the observation is to ensure that blood circulation has not been cut off to any of the inmates’ extremities. Also, restraint chairs and other restraint devices approved by TCJS are controversial because there is plenty of evidence that inmates have died while detained in them.

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

With the intention of possibly assisting current and former inmates held in county jails in the state of Texas, this website regularly provides new posts. There is never an intention on this website to suggest that people or organizations have engaged in wrongdoing.

–Guest Contributor