Bosque County Jail Fails State Inspection

The Bosque County jail, in Meridian, Texas, recently failed an inspection by the Texas Commission on Jail Standards (TCJS). The TCJS inspected the jail on March 16, 2022. The Bosque County, Texas jail is now listed as being non-compliant.

The Bosque County jail violated a serious minimum jail standard. That TCJS standard requires that jailers make prisoner observations at intervals not exceeding once every 60 minutes. The 60-minute checks are for typical inmates, and not those that are assaultive, exhibiting bizarre behavior, or suicidal. The TCJS inspector found, when reviewing Bosque County jail documentation, that multiple face-to-face inmate observations in the jail were not performed by jailers no less than once every 60-minutes as required by TCJS rules. In fact, in some instances, while the inspector’s report is ambiguous, it seems the inspector is indicating that some such observations were as few as 1 minute and by as many as 31 minutes overdue.

Prisoner observations at appropriate intervals, or continuous observation for suicidal inmates, are critical. If a jail fails to perform such observations in a timely manner, serious death or injury can occur.

Written By: Dean Malone

Dean Malone

Dean Malone is the founder of Law Offices of Dean Malone, P.C., a jail neglect civil rights law firm. Mr. Malone earned his bachelor's degree at the University of Texas at Dallas, graduating summa cum laude with a 4.0 GPA, and from Baylor University School of Law with a general civil litigation concentration. Mr. Malone served in several staff positions for the Baylor Law Review, including executive editor. Mr. Malone is an experienced trial lawyer, trying a number of cases to jury verdict and also handling arbitrations through final hearing. He heads the jail neglect section of his law firm, in which lawyers litigate cases involving serious injury and death resulting from jail neglect and abuse. Lawyers frequently refer cases to Mr. Malone due to his focus on this very complicated civil rights practice area.