Enforcement of minimum jail standards includes assurances of humane treatment of inmates. Partly because not everyone who is arrested for a crime is guilty of the alleged offense, the treatment of prisoners should be important to everyone. The use of restraint chairs is a particular matter of interest and potential concern because it involves more restrictive confinement. The Texas Commission on Jail Standards (TCJS) is the state institution that enforces minimum jail standards. As a result of a recent annual jail inspection by the TCJS, a county jail in Texas was found to be non-compliant with regard to the use of restraint chairs.

One of the jail standards is that the decision as to whether or not restraints will be applied must be made by medical personnel or supervisory personnel. Yet, documentation shows that at the particular jail recently cited for non-compliance, detention officers, not supervisory or medical personnel, had been making the decision to restrain detainees in the emergency restraint chair.

The same Jail Inspection Report shows that on multiple occasions the required 15 minutes between observations of an inmate kept in a restraint chair was exceeded by one minute to 15 minutes.

Under the Texas Administrative Code, there is a section about restraint chairs under the subchapter called “Restraints” in Part 11 Texas Juvenile Justice Department. It also covers physical restraint and mechanical restraint in other sections of the law. Texas rules dictate that the use of a restraint chair must be governed by certain criteria.

Learn more about Texas guidelines for the use of restraint devices in this ongoing series, which are different for juveniles as opposed to adults.

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–Guest Contributor