Bugs, food cited at jail

State inspectors, for fifth time in 2 years, criticize Harris lockup

For the fifth time in less than two years, inspectors cited the Harris County jail for failing to meet state standards after a weeklong visit revealed lukewarm food and bug-infested cells.

While the past compliance failures centered on shortcomings in inmate observation and supervision, Friday’s finding stemmed from a surprise annual inspection at the 9,000-person local lockup, which was still out of compliance from the last bad review.

“We take the care, custody and control of our inmate population seriously, and our team is committed to bringing the jail back into full compliance in the very near future,” said Sheriff Ed Gonzalez in a press release. “We respect the jail commission’s findings and will work diligently to correct each issue identified by the inspectors.”

The latest Texas Commission on Jail Standards inspection included 23 areas of review — everything from inmate intake to education to visitation procedures. In 21 of those areas, the jail met the state’s minimum standards. But when it came to sanitation and food service, inspectors found that the jail fell short.

During facility walk-throughs,

inspectors spotted debris-strewn cells with “excessive trash,” according to a state report. At one of the buildings, the Inmate Processing Center, the state team found ant and roaches in some of the cells.

Then, during a visit to the 1200 Baker Street building, officials fielded numerous inmate complaints about lukewarm food. After sampling temperatures in a few trays, inspectors discovered the hot meals weren’t hot enough, a finding that echoed the results of an inspection in January. Now, the county jail’s compliance team will be required to conduct daily tray inspections.

Though it didn’t rise to the level of non-compliance, officials also noted problems with the fire alarm panels in the 701 San Jacinto building. The issue was corrected on-site before inspectors finished out their week.

To address the unfavorable findings, Gonzalez ordered an internal review, according to a sheriff ’s office release.

The recent string of non-compliance findings by jail inspectors started back in February 2017 with the suicide of 32-year-old Vincent Dwayne Young. Jailers hadn’t checked on Young for over an hour when they found him in his cell hanging from a bed sheet.

Afterward, the sheriff’s office sought funding to install more surveillance cameras in health services cells and put in place a new policy requiring random weekly audits to make sure jailers were really doing rounds as often as required.

But the facility was still in noncompliance when the state chastised them again in April 2017, this time for leaving inmates in a transport van overnight.

And last December, the jail was back in non-compliance when Maytham Alsaedy killed himself in his cell just a week before he was scheduled to plead guilty to capital murder.

The mentally ill stabbing suspect was already housed in a unit for inmates with serious and persistent mental illnesses, but the facility failed to meet minimum standards because a jailer doing periodic rounds didn’t bother to make the 26-year-old remove newspaper he used to cover a cell window, so staff didn’t actually lay eyes on the man or see what he was doing.

Then in August, Debora Lyons hanged herself with a bed sheet in a common area of the jail, the second suicide in a matter of weeks. She had been locked up on a theft charge and couldn’t make the $1,500 bail set by Judge Jim Wallace. According to a source familiar with the case, she had threatened suicide at least once in the days before her death.

Afterward, the county submitted a corrective action plan, but state officials hadn’t yet marked the jail compliant with that plan when they showed up Monday for an annual inspection. By the end of the week, officials decided the lockup had come into compliance regarding the earlier bad finding, but instead reviewers found the sanitation and food service issues that sparked the latest non-compliance.

Now, the jail has 30 days to file a corrective action plan with the state.

Though there are roughly two dozen county jails currently out of compliance with state standards, Jail Commission Executive Director Brandon Wood said that five such findings in two years is “higher than normal.”