Needless quotas
Bogus disciplinary reports harm inmates and the integrity of our justice system.
Every now and then, police departments will get in trouble after being caught enforcing ticket quotas for traffic patrols. Unfortunately, this type of misguided management isn’t limited to speeding tickets and changing lanes without signaling. Apparently, some of our jails have suffered under a similar mandatory enforcement mechanism.
Some law enforcement officers have been ordered to find a certain number of disciplinary infractions within the Texas criminal justice system — or else — as Chronicle reporter Keri Blakinger recently reported.
This perversion of justice came to light in mid-May after Blakinger obtained copies of a leaked email from the TDCJ’s Ramsey Unit in Brazoria County that required officers to write up prisoners or face disciplinary consequences themselves.
“Two each day is my requirement,” Capt. Reginald Gilbert ordered officers at the Brazoria lock-up in an email. “Remember this is to be done each workday without exception.”
Although quota systems for disciplinary problems violate Texas Department of Criminal Justice policy, inquiries ultimately found them to be in use at more than one correctional institution.
As a result of investigations, the TDCJ has since demoted a handful of employees and tossed more than 500 inmate disciplinary cases. That’s a good start, but Bryan Collier, executive director of TDCJ, needs to do more to restore the public’s trust.
Any Texas driver instinctually understands how quota systems for traffic tickets are an unfair way to evaluate officer performance and serve only to incentivize bad decisions and mistreatment of the public. It’s a lesson that Collier needs to extend to his own officers.
The director should take a hard look at the department’s training system. Although this overt policy at Brazoria has since been abandoned, Collier should dig deep to insure that no quotas — either explicit or implied — undergird Texas criminal justice disciplinary policy.
The department should also adopt a practice of more closely monitoring the complaints of inmates and their families regarding corruption at Texas prison units. That’s how officials learned about another problem at the Brazoria lock-up.
As officials probed the cases there, an inmate's mother wrote in to say her son had been set up by prison guards who allegedly planted two screwdrivers in the man's cell.
A spokesman for the TDCJ said it’s not clear the screwdriver incident was connected to the quota, but the fact remains that quotas can provide an incentive for employees to manufacture evidence. Bogus disciplinary actions carry serious consequences for inmates. Inmates can get kicked out of their classes, lose their jobs or be denied other privileges.
“One of the biggest complaints we have from family members is that an officer has written a bogus case and there's no way for people to fight that because it becomes a he said-he said type of situation and an inmate has no recourse,” Jennifer Erschabek of Texas Inmate Families Association told Blakinger.
The unfair quotas also add unnecessary anger and tension to already stressful lockups. In the weeks leading up to the 10-day hunger strike at the Wynne Unit in Huntsville, Erschabek said she'd fielded numerous complaints about “bogus cases” sparking widespread unrest at the unit.
Claims of quotas within prison walls have been rampant for years, and recent developments prove prisoners and their families right in too many cases. Collier needs to set things straight. And if he can’t, it falls on our Legislature to provide proper oversight.
Competent management shouldn’t have to depend on a leaked email.