Twenty-one people died in custody of the Tarrant County jail last year, significantly more than any other jail in North Texas. So far, no one can say why. And it’s very likely that no one will answer for those deaths. That should change.
Texas jails undergo annual inspections from the Texas Commission on Jail Standards. Tarrant County has failed inspection the past two years. In March of this year, the TCJS inspection report noted 21 in-custody deaths in the previous 12 months. The average daily jail population during that period was 3,888. That’s a ratio of 1 death to every 185 inmates in the average population. That’s more than 3.5 times the mortality rate at the Dallas jail (1 to 670) for the same period, and a significantly higher rate than Dallas, Denton, or Collin County jails in the past five years.
For context, Dallas County reported eight in-custody deaths last year among a much larger population. Collin and Denton each reported one. Looking at those four counties for the past five years, the next highest death rate came from Denton County which reported four deaths in 2018 from an average jail population of 1,096.
Tarrant County has failed its annual inspection in three of the last seven years, also a higher rate than its three neighboring counties.
We’re concerned about the spike in deaths, so we reached out to the Tarrant County sheriff’s office as well as Tarrant County Judge Glen Whitley and the TCJS. None gave us a satisfactory explanation.
“The members of the Tarrant County Sheriff’s Office always work hard to improve and set high standards,” the sheriff’s chief of staff Jennifer Gabbert wrote in an email. “We have a fantastic team here, and it is due to their willingness to pull together during some of the most difficult times in our profession and the nation.”
While we don’t dispute that law enforcement agencies are under a microscope right now, we’ll point out that the reason for that scrutiny comes from incidents like these 21 deaths.
If the Tarrant County jail is failing to protect inmates, the state’s regulatory process isn’t incentivizing them to do better. TCJS Executive Director Brandon Wood explained the process: When a jail fails inspection, it receives a notice of noncompliance, and it is given 30 days to submit a plan of action for improving. Once TCJS approves that plan, the agency monitors the jail to see that it’s being executed. Then there’s a re-inspection. Wood said that in most cases jails pass the second inspection. But if they don’t, they face no fines or censure. If a jail remains noncompliant for six more months, the sheriff and county judge can be called to appear before the TCJS board, which meets quarterly. Wood said Tarrant County has never had to appear at such a hearing. At that hearing, the board can issue its own compliance order. And finally, if a jail violates that order, the case can be referred to the Texas attorney general’s office for enforcement.
All of that means that jails have virtually limitless second chances before even the possibility of facing legal or financial consequences.
Notably, Tarrant County did not fail its March inspection because of in-custody deaths. The jail was cited for failure to notify magistrates within 12 hours of taking arrestees into custody, and failure to give inmates an hour of exposure to daylight each day, an issue that Gabbert connected to COVID-19 protocols. Wood said that for in-custody deaths to contribute to a failed inspection, his commission would have to identify patterns of abuse or neglect that contributed to the death. He admitted that standard is rarely met, though the jail was issued a separate notice of noncompliance in relation to one of the 21 deaths last year, a 50-year-old man who hanged himself in his cell. TCJS found that the jail staff failed to adequately observe that inmate.
We see two steps that should be taken here.
First, Tarrant County Sheriff Bill Waybourn should take an active role in getting this trend pointing the right direction. According to a database of in-custody deaths managed by the Attorney General’s office, there have been nine more deaths in TCJ custody since the March inspection. Through Gabbert, Waybourn declined to talk with us about this issue. That’s not the tack he should take. He should be out in front of this. So should Judge Whitley, whose office didn’t return our calls.
Earlier this year, Waybourn’s colleague in Collin County, Sheriff Jim Skinner, fired seven people and held multiple news conferences after a single controversial death in jail custody. Waybourn should likewise go out of his way to show his commitment to transparency, accountability, and saving lives.
Second, the regulatory system for county jails lacks teeth. The incentives for keeping inmates alive shouldn’t be years-removed from failures to do so.
It concerns us to see a spike in deaths in law enforcement custody. What concerns us even more is what we’re not hearing: a common-sense, concerted effort to solve this problem.
The Dallas Morning News
