Defense lawyers seek to end practice of jailing local inmates in Louisiana
Local criminal defense lawyers say they are preparing a court filing to ask the Texas Criminal Court of Appeals to order Harris County to stop jailing pretrial inmates at a private prison in Louisiana, which they say is too far away to provide adequate counsel to their clients.
The attorneys said at a time when Harris County has spent more than $6 million defending a lawsuit over its cash bail system, housing inmates nearly 300 miles away may violate their constitutional right to effective counsel, potentially exposing the county to another suit.
“It’s creating a huge problem,” said Doug Murphy, president of the Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association. “It is interfering with defense attorneys’ ability to represent their clients and aid in their clients’ defense.”
Harris County houses more than 500 male and female prisoners at Jackson Parish Correctional Center in Jonesboro, La. As of Wednesday, 88 percent were pretrial detainees. The prison is operated by LaSalle Southwest Corrections, a Louisiana-based private prison firm.
Their predicament is the product of a county criminal justice system that remains swamped a year after Hurricane Harvey drenched the region, causing widespread flooding, including the Harris County Criminal Justice
Center. The district attorney’s office is struggling to clear a backlog of felony cases as judges juggle swollen dockets in makeshift courtrooms. The delays toss hundreds of extra inmates into the lap of Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez, who has no room in his jail to put them.
The sheriff prides himself on ending the outsourcing of about 400 inmates within three months of taking office in 2017. That August, however, Harvey flooded the downtown criminal courts building and halted proceedings for weeks. Even with waivers from the Texas Commission on Jail Standards to increase the capacity of the Harris County Jail by 580 prisoners, Gonzalez said the jail could not handle the resulting surge in inmates.
The sheriff said his best option was to send some prisoners to Louisiana, beginning in March. Since 2011, Harris County has had a contract with LaSalle to house overflow inmates when the county jail population exceeds capacity. To the county, LaSalle houses inmates at a bargain price — $29.33 per male inmate per day, as low as half the cost of local outsourcing options — and the company provides all inmate transport.
The sheriff ’s department said it costs Harris County $87 to house an inmate for a day, though that figure also includes court costs.
“Going to Louisiana is never the ideal situation for us,” Gonzalez said. “We, obviously, have to balance several interests, including being good stewards of taxpayer money.”
Parish jail cheaper
He said the county is attempting to negotiate an agreement with Fort Bend County to house some inmates in its jail but that Harris County has yet to find a local facility as cheap as the one in Jackson Parish. After four months of talks, Gonzalez said Fort Bend and Harris counties have been unable to agree on costs and who should be responsible for transporting inmates.
As of Aug. 1, the Fort Bend County Jail had 732 beds available, according to monthly reports published by the Texas Commission on Jail Standards. If Gonzalez cannot close a deal with his Fort Bend counterpart, he could turn to other nearby counties. Brazoria County has 217 available beds in its jail; Montgomery, 182; Galveston, 45; and Chambers, 34. Harris County on Friday transferred 39 inmates from Louisiana to the Jefferson County Jail in Beaumont, which also is run by LaSalle.
The sheriff said he hoped the opening of several additional courtrooms would expedite cases and lower the jail population, but he has yet to see progress. As of Wednesday, Gonzalez was responsible for more than 9,600 inmates. The Harris County Jail’s official capacity is 8,900.
A desire to keep costs down does not relieve Harris County of its responsibility to ensure inmates have access to effective legal representation, said Michele Deitch, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin. She said the county has put itself at risk of a lawsuit over the constitutional rights of pretrial inmates.
“During that pretrial phase they need to have a lot of conversations with their attorney,” Deitch said. “It’s hard enough at the county jail. It’s virtually impossible when they’re 300 miles away.”
Deitch also questioned how inmates could receive a comparable level of supervision and care in Louisiana at half the cost of Texas facilities. Gonzalez said a team of sheriff’s deputies inspected the Jackson Parish Correctional Center in July and concluded the conditions were adequate.
Harris County Judge Ed Emmett said he looks forward to ending outsourcing when the sheriff finds an acceptable solution.
“This a longstanding issue for the sheriff ’s office, and I have every confidence that Sheriff Gonzalez is dealing with it and will deal with it appropriately,” Emmett said in a statement.
‘A huge burden’
Defense lawyers say they are frustrated Harris County has, for a year now, failed to find a better remedy for jail overcrowding than shipping inmates to Louisiana.
“At some point, blaming Harvey has to stop,” said lawyer Mary Kahn. “It’s a problem, but it’s not an insurmountable problem.”
Kahn said inmates in Louisiana are at a disadvantage because they are cut off from their attorneys, families and support system. To ensure confidentiality, lawyers said they only discuss cases with clients in person. Jackson Parish is 280 miles by car from downtown Houston, a 10-hour round trip on county roads through the forests of northern Louisiana.
Kahn said it is impractical for lawyers to spend an entire day driving for a half-hour jailhouse meeting with a client. Attorneys can easily travel from their downtown offices to the Harris County Jail. They are left to hope Jackson Parish inmates are transferred back to Harris County several weeks before trial, so they can confer with clients and devise a defense strategy.
“If I’m preparing for trial and the client is not here, that’s a huge burden,” Kahn said. “They’re being denied the right to participate in their own defense.”
State regulators also are wary of outsourcing Harris County inmates in Louisiana. Texas Commission on Jail Standards spokesman Brandon Wood said the commission, which enforces minimum standards for county jails, would prefer Harris County to house all inmates in the state. It has no authority over jails in Louisiana.
State Sen. John Whitmire, who chairs the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, said he was disappointed inmate outsourcing has been an infrequent topic of discussion at Harris County Commissioners Court. Jail outsourcing has not appeared as an item on any of the court’s 23 regular meeting agendas since Harvey struck this past August.
“I’m sounding the alarm to everyone in Harris County to hold the elected officials responsible,” Whitmire said. “I want it fixed, yesterday.”