"Jailed to Death"

WFAA-TV  
02/25/20

Texas is a law-and-order state, and sympathy for people arrested and put in jail is rare. That’s why it’s significant when lawmakers here act to protect the rights and lives of those behind bars. It wouldn’t have happened without our “Jailed To Death” investigation into why people were dying in county jails run by LaSalle Corrections, a private, for-profit company.

As a direct result of our stories, state lawmakers passed a new law that strengthens training requirements for county jailers across the state – not just in those run by for-profit companies. It also mandated that any time a for-profit company’s jails fail inspections they receive additional scrutiny from the state jail commission.

Our reporting found that, essentially, death was a cost of doing business for LaSalle. In case after case, we found that deaths in LaSalle jails followed a predictable and heartbreaking pattern: too few guards with no real training either using inappropriate amounts of force or lying on forms saying they were checking on sick inmates.

The result? Death sentences for people picked up on suspicion of minor crimes.

We began looking into LaSalle Corrections after being contacted by the family member of an elderly man who died several years ago in the Johnson County jail from lack of medical care.

We discovered that LaSalle has contracts to run rural county jails all over Texas. How many other people had died?

WFAA investigative reporter Tanya Eiserer scoured the AG’s custodial death database, and then filed dozens of Texas Public Information Act requests with local and state agencies for details. Her and investigative producer Jason Trahan then began months of reporting and source building to find voices, facts and more documents.

WFAA discovered what LaSalle officials had long ago figured out – a loophole in state law allowed newly-hired guards to work for up to a full year without any expensive, time-consuming training. During that first year, guards can work under a temporary state license.

We also discovered that some prisoner deaths weren’t reported to the state at all. In at least two instances, prisoners who developed critical illnesses inside LaSalle jails were “released” after they were taken to the hospital. Despite being locked up for weeks in some cases, since they were not physically “in custody” when they died, their deaths were not reported to the state AG and no criminal investigation was done. After we brought one of the deaths to the attention of state regulators, they launched their own investigation and cited LaSalle for “failing to meet minimum jail standards” for medical care.

A huge challenge in this story was making people care about the deaths of “criminals.” Through our reporting, we found that many of the people arrested and booked into LaSalle jails had significant medical problems and that without the proper medical care they would die. We also found that some of the people who died in these jails were addicted to drugs and had repeatedly sought treatment to turn their lives around. We had to make our audience understand that it could be their brother, sister, mother, father or friend suffering and dying in these facilities.

LaSalle ignored our repeated attempts to get answers. But as our reporting generated attention among state lawmakers in Austin, we got harder to ignore.

State lawmakers were so moved by the stories and disturbed by LaSalle’s business practices that they took action. Representatives Bill Zedler and Garnet Coleman filed bills closing the loophole that allowed new jailers to work without training.

The new law did not target just for-profit jail companies like LaSalle; every county jail in the state would have to increase training for newly-hired guards. Several local sheriffs lobbied heavily against the legislation, anticipating higher costs for training. But eventually, when the legislation was wrapped into a bill strengthening the Sandra Bland Act, it passed.  It became law Sept. 1, 2019.

WFAA’s investigation of why people are dying in Texas jails continues with more stories planned for 2020 and beyond. Discussions of more reforms among lawmakers and state regulators also are ongoing.

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Submitted by Jason Trahan.