Forty-two-year-old Victoria Margaret Simon was arrested by the Houston Police Department and booked into Harris County Jail on September 29, 2022. The custodial death report (CDR), which the Harris County Sheriff’s Department filed, shows that Ms. Simon was housed in a single-occupancy quarantine cell. When a jail officer and staff nurses arrived at her cell on October 2, 2022, to conduct a Tuberculosis test, they discovered she was unresponsive. Efforts to revive her were unsuccessful, and a jail physician pronounced her deceased in the jail at 8:40 AM that day.

Out-of-State Restraint Policies in Deschutes County, Oregon, Continued

The Deschutes County Sheriff’s Office in Oregon defines prohibited restraint practices as follows:

• Restraints must not be used as punishment.
• Covering an inmate’s nose or mouth with tape or similar material is prohibited.
• An object cannot be placed inside an inmate’s mouth to stop him or her from spitting or screaming.
  • An approved protective spit hood may be used if an inmate is either spitting or threatening to spit. As soon as the inmate stops spitting, the spit hood will be removed.
• It is not allowed to leave an inmate lying or sitting in his own bodily waste for an unreasonable length of time.
• An inmate must not be restrained in a position that requires him or her to lie face-down with his or her legs and arms joined together behind their back with restraints.
• An inmate must not be attached to a fixed object, though there are exceptions, such as during an emergency.

Learn more in Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4 of this series.

This website seeks to ensure that Texas inmates who are now or have previously been incarcerated in a county or municipal jail have the resources they need to find help. Implicating people or entities in acts of wrongdoing is never intended on this site.

–Guest Contributor