By Ella Rose Lipton
AUSTIN, TX – Wrongfully charged with child abuse in East Texas, Jess Hampton was transported 100 miles away and has spent 11 months in a Louisiana Prison cell awaiting the day he can finally return home, reports Pooja Salhotra from The Texas Tribune.
Unfortunately, Hampton’s case is not an outlier.
The Texas Tribune reports that across Texas, prisons are unable to adequately house the high number of incarcerated people, resulting in millions of tax dollars spent on “transporting (incarcerated), many of whom have yet to stand trial and are legally considered innocent. Some are sent to neighboring counties; others are bused across state lines.”
Hamptons’ innocence is certain, supported by the thorough investigation by Child Protective Services supporting Hampton’s claim the abuse “never occurred” and yet his bail remains the same – $250,000 – far from the amount the Hampton family can afford, explains The Texas Tribune.
Hampton is a veteran and was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder after his time in Afghanistan and Iraq, writes the Tribune, but his mental health has not been prioritized because prisons are not equipped to support the mental health of those who are in prison.
The distance presents additional obstacles for Hampton as his, now fired, Texas based lawyers failed to appear at one of Hampton’s hearings, states Salhotra.
The Texas Tribune explains the situation is only getting worse, exacerbated by unaccommodating Texas laws and institutions like their mental health system that “essentially forces jails to take on psychiatric patients though they are ill-equipped to do so.”
According to a Texas Tribune analysis, although crime rates have continued to decrease since 2020, incarceration rates have surged; in addition, “the number of Texas county jails housing (incarcerated) elsewhere (outside the country or state)” have “risen by 10 percent. according to data kept by the Texas Commission on Jail Standards.”
To combat the increasing incarceration rate and transfer of incarcerated people to alternative prisons “law enforcement officials say that jail space must increase,” Salhotra explains.
Opposing civil rights advocates and defense lawyers argue “the state should invest more heavily in mental health support and alternatives to incarceration (and) the state should adjust its bail policies so decisions about who is freed until trial are not effectively based on a person’s wealth,” reports the Texas Tribune.
Krish Gundu, co-founder of the Texas Jail Project, which advocates for people in Texas county prisons explains that law enforcement officials should try to understand why people are ending up in jail, arguing “the problem at the root,” and law enforcement officials regulated by Texas’ Republican-controlled Legislature “are unlikely to follow their advice,” author Salhotra explains.
According to The Texas Tribune, “the state has a long history of relying heavily on incarceration to control crime and to maintain law and order. Texas locks up 751 per 100,000 of its residents, one of the higher rates in the United States, according to a recent report from the Prison Policy Initiative.”
Gov. Greg Abbott’s press secretary, Andrew Mahaleris, told The Texas Tribune in an email, “Gov. Abbott will continue to work with the legislature to end revolving door bail policies and keep dangerous criminals off our streets.”
Salhotra reports Mahaleris failed to “answer questions about how the state will respond to jail overcrowding. The governor appoints the nine members of TCJS, which conducts regular inspections of all county jails.”
Salhotra traveled to Harris County Jail to gather more information, and reported, it “did not appear overcrowded…A cell block that could accommodate 70 people but housed under 50, the infirmary was nearly empty, and everyone in intake had a place to sit. And yet about 2,000 of the county’s roughly 9,300 (incarcerated) were being housed in facilities as far away as Tutwiler, Mississippi and Olla, Louisiana.”
Salhotra explains that about $50 million dollars is spent to transport/house incarcerated people in different facilities for the Harris County Jail alone. Salhotra notes this issue can be significantly contributed to “a persistent staffing shortage.”
According to Salhotra, Dustin Fawcett, the Ector County judge who is that county’s chief executive explains “in order to compensate for that jailer issue, everybody is increasing salaries for jailers, which means they are going to increase their cost of housing” someone incarcerated, increasing costs overall.
According to Fawcett the state provides “little help.”
Salhotra writes most incarcerated people have yet to be convicted or sentenced, forcing them to “return to their county of arrest for court hearings. In 2023, the county spent about $91,000 in (incarcerated) transportation costs, according to county records.”
While advocates for the criminal defendants say the state should arrest fewer people, Wallace, the Trinity County sheriff, said, “people must be arrested for low-level offenses to deter them from committing more serious crimes,” reports Salhotra.
“If someone spends a couple weeks or 30 days in jail, they might say ‘I don’t like this,’ and maybe they won’t graduate to felonies,” Wallace said.
Wallace echoes the opinions of Texas Republicans who control both chambers of the Legislature and every statewide office, reports Salhotra, adding Republican enforced policies have kept people in prison longer and “prohibits judges from letting people accused of violent crimes out of jail unless they pay a cash bond or a portion of that amount to a bail bonds company.”
Proponents say it keeps dangerous people off the streets. Critics say the law disproportionately impacts poorer defendants who haven’t yet been convicted, the Texas Tribune story maintains.
Prisons have become “the largest mental health provider in the state” reports The Texas Tribune; “inadequate or inaccessible community mental health care means that law enforcement officers are often the first to respond when a person faces a crisis.”
Unable to be treated by doctors, people are arrested for criminal behavior and their underlying mental health issues go untreated, Salhotra writes, adding, “As of June 14, 1,173 people in jail were on the waitlist for a state mental health bed, which are used for people deemed incompetent to stand trial.”
