Cass County, Texas Jail Fails State Inspection

The Cass County jail, in Linden, Texas, failed an inspection by the Texas Commission on Jail Standards (“TCJS”). The Cass County jail is now listed by the TCJS as being non-compliant. The inspection occurred on or about November 19, 2020. The Cass County jail violated six minimum jail standards.

The TCJS inspector noted that the facility generator failed to operate automatically when power was disconnected to the facility. The TCJS inspector also noticed that the fire alarm panel for the courthouse was red-tagged nearly a year earlier – on December 19, 2019. Repairs to the courthouse fire alarm system had not been completed as of the time of the inspection.

Further, a TCJS minimum standard requires emergency power equipment to be tested at least once each week, and electric load transferred to the circuits at least monthly. However, at the Cass County jail, required monthly load tests of the generator were not conducted from January 2020 to October 2020. Further, the generator test documentation for the week of October 23, 2020 to October 27, 2020 was listed as “vacation.”

Regarding inmates, the Cass County, Texas jail violated a minimum standard regarding training. Staff who had not completed the required four hours training for principles, procedures, and instruments for classification assessments, housing assessments, reassessments, and inmate needs were nonetheless performing inmate classification duties.

Further, logs for times when Cass County, Texas inmates were put into restraint chairs indicated that staff exceeded the required 15-minute observations by as little as 2 minutes and by as long as 11 minutes on multiple occasions. This is an important jail standard, as inmates can die or suffer serious injury without appropriate observation. Finally, the Cass County jail violated the minimum standard requiring each inmate to be allowed one hour of supervised physical exercise or recreation at least 3 days per week.

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