Every county jail in Texas must, pursuant to the Sandra Bland Act, report to the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, on a monthly basis, several types of occurrences. These occurrences include suicides, attempted suicides, deaths in custody, escapes, assaults, sexual assaults, serious bodily injury, and use-of-force incidents that result in bodily injury. For January 2019, the Harris County jail reported 384 assaults, and the Bexar County jail reported 127 assaults. This is particularly troubling, because in the entire State of Texas, which has 254 counties, there were a total of 889 assaults reported for January. By comparison, Dallas County which has a significant population, reported only 19 assaults. El Paso County reported 7 assaults.
Jails must do a better job protecting their inmates. The United States Constitution protects pre-trial detainees in Texas county jails from assaults by persons who are known or are likely to commit such assaults.
The serious incident report also indicated that attempted suicides occurred in the following counties: Anderson County, Bell County, Bexar County (5 attempts), Cameron County (4 attempts), Collin County, Dallas County, Ector County, El Paso County, Ellis County, Fort Bend County, Grayson County, Grimes County, Guadalupe County, Harris County (12 attempts), Howard County, Hunt County, Jasper County, Jefferson County, Live Oak County, McLennan County (3 attempts), Midland County, Montgomery County, Nueces County, Potter County, Red River County, San Jacinto County, Smith County, Tarrant County, Travis County, Wharton County, and Young County. Suicides were unfortunately successful in Harris County and Waller County.
Numerous Texas county jails reported use of force incidents resulting in bodily injury including those in Atascosa County, Bastrop County, Bell County, Bexar County, Brazoria County, Cass County, Childress County, Dallas County, Deaf Smith County, Denton County, Fort Bend County, Galveston County, Hardin County, Harris County (16 incidents), Hidalgo County, Hunt County, Jasper County, Johnson County, Lamar County, Leon County, Montgomery County, Nolan County, Potter County, Webb County, and Wichita County. We make no allegations of any wrongdoing against any county or person but instead are simply providing information extracted from the January 2019 serious incident report filed with the Texas Commission on Jail Standards.
