“Staffing crisis” in Texas prisons makes staff, inmates and public less safe – Houston Public Media

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Several Texas prisons are nearly impossible to staff, and the agency responsible for more than 100,000 inmates is currently unprepared to address the problem.

These and other criticisms were raised this week in the Sunset Advisory Commission staff report against the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

Sunset reports are used to analyze the usefulness and effectiveness of Texas government departments and are sometimes recommended for their abolition.

The Sunset Advisory Commission believes the agency, which spent nearly $4 billion last year, has system flaws that the 189-page report recommends detailed fixes for.

Outdated technology, lax oversight of rehabilitation programs and especially staffing levels are just a few of the things that make the entire system dangerous for inmates, staff and the public, the report details.

The state has had a vacancy rate of around 25% for years. An April corrections officials report prepared by TDCJ showed that many prisons were only half full, or sometimes less than 40% full.

Prisons are more violent than they were a decade ago, with “adverse events” up about 30% since 2014.

“Although the number of inmates has declined, the amount of contraband such as drugs, weapons and cell phones found in TDCJ facilities has increased significantly over the past decade,” the report said.

Employees work more, harder and drop more balls.

According to the report, TDCJ is violating its own policies by allowing guards to work more than 16 hours a day or 10 days in a row. In fiscal year 2019, the state violated this policy an average of 9,000 times per month.

This leads to increased employee dissatisfaction and more terminations in a negative feedback loop.

“While some employees proactively seek overtime, half of respondents to the Sunset correctional staff survey said the amount of extra time they have to work has a negative impact on officer safety, and more than 40 percent of respondents said “This has a negative impact on the safety of inmates and the public,” the report said.

The report links the “staffing crisis” to the fatal escape of Gonzalo Lopez in 2022. Lopez escaped medical transport due to austerity measures and staffing shortages, the report said. Lopez then killed a family of five in Leon County.

In a statement, TDCJ staff said they appreciated the work of Sunset Commission staff. “We look forward to sharing information about TDCJ’s continuous improvement efforts – including those focused on work culture – with Sunset members so they can gain a comprehensive understanding of our operations and services,” said Amanda Hernandez, communications director at TDCJ.

Guards also find their workplaces unfair and excessively punitive. Employee surveys found that the most common complaint was a hostile workplace (33%).

The report also highlighted ineffective disciplinary measures and their application. “TDCJ has a history of adopting a rigidly hierarchical culture that does not adequately hold senior level employees accountable,” the report said.

With 20% of all probationers, more than the rest of the staff, having received at least one disciplinary action, Sunset staff said the punishments were not an effective deterrent.

Inmate safety may be linked to increase in suicides.

Suicides are also more than double what they were in Texas prisons a decade ago, and fiscal year 2024 saw 65 deaths, the highest in more than two decades.

“It’s totally predictable,” said Michele Deitch, director of the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab at the University of Texas at Austin.

“If there is such a vacancy rate, it means they are not available to monitor the population and do not have enough experience to recognize when people are at risk of suicide,” she added.

Many of the Sunset staff's recommendations centered around addressing the department's staffing crisis. Among other things, they suggested consolidating and expanding employee retention support functions and collecting and analyzing feedback from current and departing employees.

Dozens more addressed the need for better strategic planning, modern technology and better oversight.

“This report is just one step in the process and we look forward to continuing to work with Commission staff, the Commission and the Legislature during the upcoming session,” Hernandez said.

The Sunset Commission, made up of lawmakers and members of the public, will decide next session which recommendations to adopt and write legislation around the documents.