Wilson County, Texas Jail Fails State Inspection
The Wilson County Jail in Texas is now listed as a Non-Compliant Jail on the TCJS website because of a recently failed jail inspection conducted by the Texas Commission on Jail Standards (TCJS). An October 21, 2022, jail inspection report issued by TCJS Inspector Martin P. Arnold details the alleged violation of minimum jail standards, as shown below. Wilson County Jail’s address is 800 10th St UNIT 4, Floresville, TX 78114.
TCJS cited Wilson County Jail for non-compliance with § 273.6(3)-Restraints. This rule is under the chapter on Health Services, and it pertains to restraints. Under section (3), which is the specific rule allegedly violated by Wilson County Jail, the following is required:
Any inmate being held in restraints must be observed every 15 minutes, at a minimum, and the observation must be documented. An assessment must be made of the security of the restraints as well as the blood circulation to the inmate’s extremities during each observation.
- The TCJS inspector conducted a review of observation records of inmates who were held in restraints. The review revealed that the amount of time between the required face-to-face observations exceeded 15 minutes on several occasions.
This minimum jail standard regarding restraints encompasses all types of restraints approved by TCJS, including highly restrictive restraint chairs, which immobilize the extremities of a person who is strapped into one. Manufacturers’ instructions for the use of restraint chairs come with a number of “cautions,” and one of the typical warnings they give is to ensure that a person in a restraint chair is checked to ensure that blood circulation has not been cut off by the restraint system, which echoes this minimum jail standard.
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