Inmates transferred as jails near capacity

As the Harris County Jail edged toward capacity, the sheriff ’s office Friday shipped 133 inmates to private jails in Jefferson and Bowie counties to avoid overcrowding.

The transfers — which are expected to cost the county about $180,000 a month in boarding fees — mark the fourth time in the past year that the sheriff ’s office has had to ship inmates to jails in other parts of the state.

The transfers come just days after Harris County won a $2 million grant to help officials here lower high rates of pretrial detention that could lead to release of hundreds of jail inmates.

The jail had reached 96 percent capacity by Friday morning, with 9,061 of its 9,434 beds filled, said Ryan Sullivan, a department spokesman.

The jail is dealing with a higher-than-usual number of maximum security inmates, who can’t be placed in some areas even though there may be open beds, Sullivan said.

The move brought sharp criticism from elected officials, who questioned the county’s management of the facility and the use of taxpayer funds for private jail space. Until last June, the jail had gone three years without being forced to transfer inmates because of bed shortages.

“It’s just mismanagement of the population,” said state Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston. “Certainly they could go through the 9,000 inmates and find enough people who are sitting [in jail] because they can’t afford a bond. They could consider electronic monitors.”

Plans to reduce population

State Sen. Rodney Ellis, DHouston, voiced similar concerns.

“Harris County’s over-reliance on the inefficient and ineffective use of mass incarceration as a means of dealing with low-level and nonviolent offenses continues to result in some of the highest jailing and incarceration rates in the U.S. and the world,” Ellis said in an emailed statement.

The county will shoulder the cost of housing the inmates in the Jefferson and Bowie county jails run by LaSalle Southwest Corrections, paying $46 per inmate, according to the sheriff’s office. Sullivan said the inmates were all “paper ready,” meaning they had already been convicted and were waiting to serve out their sentences in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

On Friday, 71 inmates were transferred to the LaSalle-run jail in Bowie County, and 62 were transferred to a similar facility in Jefferson County.

The transfer comes days after Harris County District Attorney Devon Anderson announced a sweeping $5.3 million plan to improve release rates for low-level and nonviolent offenders, for which the county received a $2 million grant from the MacArthur Foundation.

The plan could reduce the jail’s daily population by as much as 1,800 — or 21 percent — over three years. The jail, one of the largest in the country, typically holds 8,500 to 8,700 inmates.

Brandon Wood, executive director of the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, said that sheriffs often try to address overcrowding by offering credit for good time or finding other ways to release non-violent inmates from jail early.

“The jail is only one part of the criminal justice system,” he said. “If (that’s) not working as effectively as it possibly can, the backup occurs at the county jail, which is the most expensive point that it can occur. It requires collaborative effort ... to keep the jail population within its limits while also ensuring the safety of the community.”

Fewer beds

Harris County sheriffs have struggled with high jail populations for years. The jail failed several state inspections beginning in 2004 due to housing concerns, and in 2007, overcrowding prompted then-Sheriff Tommy Thomas to ship more than 600 inmates to lock-ups in Louisiana.

Two years later, when the jail population reached 11,500, thenSheriff Adrian Garcia sent buses of inmates to facilities in Texas and Louisiana. The transfers continued through 2012.

In June, ending a three-year hiatus, recently appointed Sheriff Ron Hickman shipped 100 inmates to a LaSalle Southwest Corrections jail in Jefferson County. In early July, the sheriff’s office sent 133 inmates to a LaSalle jail in Waco in McLennan County, and then later in the month, another 48 inmates to Jefferson County.

Sullivan said the latest problems were complicated by the recent doubling of the size of the mental health unit, which means fewer beds for inmates elsewhere.

“The more limitations you have on the total number of beds, the more difficult it is when you have an increase in maximum security prisoners,” Sullivan said.