The cause of the April 8, 2020, death of Amy Michelle McInnis—an inmate at Victoria County Jail in Victoria, Texas—was not immediately known. What is understood is that the minimum jail standards provided by the Texas Commission on Jail Standards (TCJS) are designed to help ensure inmate safety as much as possible.

TCJS enforces Texas county jail standards, and the primary method for holding jails accountable is to conduct annual jail inspections. Any jail whose records indicate that minimum jail standards are not being met is listed as a non-compliant facility and corrective steps must be taken.

A range of jail standards enforced in Texas are apparent in their purpose of keeping inmates from being seriously or mortally injured. Watch groups monitor Texas jail inspection reports and point out the reasons that certain kinds of non-compliance can potentially cause preventable deaths and injuries. Inmate supervision, for example, is known to be an effective component of preventing inmate injuries and deaths. Yet, non-compliance reports for many Texas county jails reflect gaps in conformity to mandatory face-to-face observation of inmates. The following are two examples.

RULE §275.1 – Regular Observation by Jailers

Under RULE §275.1, inmates in the general population of a jail must be observed face-to-face every 60 minutes at most. Also, inmates who are categorized as being at risk must be observed every 30 minutes at most.

• In one Texas jail that was inspected in late 2020, documentation showed that these observations were not being performed as required.

§273.6 – Restraints

Although TCJS minimum jail standards allow restraints to be used on Texas county jail inmates in certain circumstances, restraints can be a threat to health. Medical personnel must be involved, and personal observations of inmates in restraints must be made every 15 minutes at most, during which time the circulation to the inmates’ extremities must be checked.

• In early March 2021, inspectors at a Texas jail found that, on multiple occasions, inmates being held in restraints were not checked every 15 minutes, as required. Jailers allegedly often checked restrained inmates late by as many as 1 to 17 minutes.

This is a three-part series; see Part 1 and Part 2.

On this site, posts are provided for the purpose of supplying Texas inmates with resources of potential help. It is not intended on this website to infer misdeeds on the part of any person or institution.

–Guest Contributor