Bay Area Edition | February 2023

Adrian Garcia said at a January 2022 Commissioners Court meeting that when he became sheri in 2009, his oce created programs to allow inmates to build credit toward earlier releases and to keep people with men- tal health conditions out of jail. However, he said he could do so because most people in the jail had been charged with low-risk oenses. As of Jan. 23, about 61% of the jail’s population had been charged with vio- lent or serious crimes. Commissioners Court approved a $645,000 expansion of the Har- ris Center for Mental Health and IDD’s Jail-Based Competency Resto- ration Program at its Jan. 31 meeting. Expected to take eect in April, the program will provide services to indi- viduals found incompetent to stand trial—typically due to an active mental illness or intellectual disability. “There are too many folks with men- tal health issues stuck in jail for too long,” County Judge Linda Hidalgo said at a Feb. 9 news conference. In terms of recent outsourcing e orts, commissioners approved close to $35 million in 2022 to send inmates to two private facilities in Lou- isiana and Post, Texas. As of October,

commissioners had also approved nearly $40 million in federal American Rescue Plan Act funding since 2021 to tackle the court case backlog, according to the Oce of County Administration. The backlog of felony cases was down 23% since Jan. 1, 2022, according to the oce’s Oct. 25 report to Com- missioners Court. However, County Administrator David Berry said at a July 19 meeting that using temporary federal funds to address the jail’s prob- lems was “not nancially sustainable.” In 2021, with support from Com- missioners Court, the Texas Legisla- ture created the 482nd District Court, the rst new criminal district court in the county since 1984. But Megan LaVoie, the administrative director for the Texas Oce of Court Administra- tion, said during her Dec. 9 testimony before the Texas Senate Committee on Criminal Justice that, based on case lings alone, the county would need 41 more district courts. “It costs between [$500,000] and a million dollars to create a new district court, so there is a signicant cost at the local level,” she said. At a Feb. 21 meeting, commission- ers approved a $1.4 million contract for the development of a framework

Comparing counties

Among the ve largest county jail populations in Texas, Harris County had the largest jail population in April but only the fourth- highest population per 100,000 people.

Harris

Dallas

Bexar

Tarrant

Travis

APRIL 1, 2022, JAIL POPULATION COMPARISON

10K

100%

250

80%

200

60%

150

40%

100

20%

SOURCE: AMERICAN CIVIL LIBERTIES UNIONCOMMUNITY IMPACT

assessment plan for the county’s detention facilities. Commissioners also authorized two reports on the rising jail population and on medical stang in the jail. In addition, a $250,000 contract was approved granting each inmate two additional free phone calls and video visitation services. Beginning

in May, the contract will be funded by ARPA funds and be re-evaluated in four years. Jovanna Aguilar and Emily Lincke contributed to this report.

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