Category: City Jails|County Jails|Custodial Death|Medical Care|Outside Texas

The healthcare provider that has been accused of medical negligence and gross medical neglect has been replaced by another company within the past couple of days. But the cases of alleged medical neglect are subjects of scrutiny.

A Man Shouts for Help but is Ignored by a Nurse with the Medical Provider

A 50-year-old man was the next inmate who allegedly suffered from medical neglect. He was in jail because of an old shoplifting charge. He suffered from heart and kidney failure, schizophrenia, and diabetes. He fell when he was in the jail infirmary. He shouted for help, but the nurse ignored him, saying he was looking for attention.

Hours later, the inmate who had fallen was pronounced deceased.

A 31-year-old inmate died at the jail after being repeatedly pepper sprayed and tased by detention deputies. The man was mentally ill.

More Complaints

More complaints about the healthcare provided have been reported, as follows.

• Nurses repeatedly failed to administer daily medications, including to units in the jail that house people with the most serious mental health needs.
• The company providing healthcare for the jail failed to keep a psychiatrist on its payroll full-time, though it was in the contract that a psychiatrist would be at the jail 40 hours per week.
• There were 600 unanswered grievances about the jail’s medical staff.

Learn more in Part 1, Part 2, and Part 3 of this continuing series.

Helping Texas jail detainees and their families with resources is one of the purposes of this website. There is no intention of suggesting that people or organizations have been involved in misdeeds.

–Guest Contributor

Fifty-five-year-old Michael Joseph Tokos was an inmate at Jim Hogg County Jail in Hebbronville, Texas, beginning on August 17, 2022. On September 19, 2022, fellow bunkmates in the multiple occupancy cell where Mr. Tokos was housed contacted jailers because he seemed to be experiencing a medical emergency. They reported that he was shaking and nearly fell out of his bunk.

Details on Deaths at a County Jail Outside Texas

An Inmate Dies of Blunt Force Trauma

An elderly man approaching age 80 was one of the inmate deaths at the county jail outside Texas that has come under recent scrutiny. The man was a former religious leader who had been accused of sex charges. One day in 2022, he was found unresponsive in his cell. Jailers had him transported to a hospital, where it was reported that the man had numerous health complications. An autopsy was performed, and the Medical Examiner’s Office said it was an accidental death that had been caused by blunt force trauma to the head 8 days before he was taken to the hospital.

An Inmate Dies of a Pulmonary Embolism

A couple of months after the elderly inmate died, a young man of 26 collapsed in the jail after he hit his head. After collapsing, he was unresponsive and was pronounced deceased shortly thereafter. The autopsy results from the Medical Examiner’s Office listed natural causes as his death. He suffered a pulmonary embolism, which is when a blood clot becomes lodged in a lung artery.

Learn more in Part 1 and this continuing series.

Providing helpful resources to Texas prisoners held in local city and county jails is the purpose of this site. Making implications suggesting that organizations or individuals participating in wrongdoing is never intended on this website.

–Guest Contributor

The healthcare industry for inmates grew throughout the 1990s and 2000s and was greatly affected by the deinstitutionalization of the mentally ill. The closure of mental health hospitals sent many former mental patients to city streets and, oftentimes, to jail. These developments posed ever-changing problems for city and county jails. Almost half of the jails surveyed in the study had switched to privatized medical care by 2010, and 62% had followed suit by 2018.

Now, the inmate healthcare industry is dominated by a handful of companies that produce worse custodial death results than local medical operations. Yet, these medical care companies have helped cities and counties cut costs. In addition, leaving the management of medical operations to an outside entity is a huge plus for jails, since corrections and medical care are two completely different industries.

A review of records in the years 2010 through 2015 shows that death rates were similar no matter what the source of medical care for inmates. That changed in looking at death rates from 2016 to 2018. Over a three-year span, in jails in which the major medical care companies handled inmate healthcare, 691 was the total number of deaths in jails that had an average population of 138,000 inmates. There were, in contrast, 587 fatalities in jails averaging more than 152,000 inmates with medical care handled by publicly-run units.

Learn more about this story in Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and the ongoing posts in this series.

The purpose of this and all posts on this site is to provide information. There is not an intent to suggest that any organization, person, or institution has been involved in wrongdoing.

–Guest Contributor

In commenting on statistics surrounding the healthcare provider that was replaced, the former head of the company stressed that jail death rates cannot provide a complete picture of the quality of performance. He said that jails have a complicated population set with two distinct types of prisoners. There are those in jail for under a month and those who cannot afford bail or they are serving post-conviction sentences. He went on to say that he does not agree with the assumptions resulting from death statistics.

In fact, the mortality rate in a particular jail does result from a variety of factors. The overall health of the population and budget size both have an effect on medical care outcomes. All in all, however, statistics show that medical care managed by the leading contractors has consistently higher percentages of custodial deaths than medical care that is managed locally.

The Rise of Medical Care for Inmates

Prior to the 1970s, the amount of healthcare provided in jails was minimal. First aid was just about the most jails offered, according to a survey conducted in 1972. That changed in 1976 because of a ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court. It was ruled that if the medical needs of an inmate are treated with “deliberate indifference,” that action amounts to wanton and needless infliction of pain, which is a violation of the Eighth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. As a result of that finding, inmates affected by lack of medical care began to sue jails, and the correctional health care industry was born in the 1980s.

Learn more about this story in Part 1, Part 2, and the ongoing posts in this series.

The purpose of this and all posts on this site is to provide information. There is not an intent to suggest that any organization, person, or institution has been involved in wrongdoing.

–Guest Contributor