Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo is done with the seemingly never-ending tales of tragedies and injustices occurring in the Harris County Jail. She made her feelings known recently after the Office of County Administration (OCA) identified issues and inefficiencies in the Harris County jail competency restoration process.
“The deaths and the stories coming out of the Harris County jail are tragic,” said Hidalgo in an issued statement. “We’ve been looking at what’s going on that’s causing us to have such problems with overcrowding, and one of the things we’ve learned is that people are staying too long in the jail because of inefficiencies with competency restoration,”
Hidalgo pointed out a specific example of an extreme case brought to her attention during a recent Commissioners Court meeting involving a gentleman who has been in jail awaiting trial – for nearly 18 years.
The cause given for this obvious miscarriage of justice – is system inefficiencies.
The Harris County Jail transfers people to state hospitals when they are determined incompetent to stand trial. Under the current competency restoration process, individuals are booked with a new booking number when they come back to the jail after a stay at the state hospital, which effectively ‘sets back the clock’ on their length of stay. That oversight can lead to situations where individuals with competency restoration issues end up in jail for excessively long periods of time, contributing to overcrowding.
It also contributes to the amount taxpayers pay to house individuals awaiting trial.
According to the most recent data provided (2016) by the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition, the statewide average costs to taxpayers to house an individual in county jail is $59 per day per individual. The 2016 average cost to Harris County taxpayers to incarcerate the entire pretrial population per day was $375,299. And that was before the massive overcrowding the Harris County Jail is currently experiencing.
At that $59 per day rate, the individual held in the HJC for over 18 years awaiting trial cost taxpayers over $387,000 alone. And that’s not adjusting for inflation.
Distraught over that case and others, Hidalgo is hopeful change is coming.
“As much as that case and other cases like it break my heart, I am glad that we’ve found it now and are working toward solutions that will actually help us make things right at the jail,” she said.
At Hidalgo’s direction, OCA and Commissioners Court have made solving the issues at the Harris County jail a priority. As part of this effort, OCA conducted a jail population analysis, which identifies priority populations driving jail overcrowding so Harris County can work toward solutions to reduce overcrowding. While conducting the jail population analysis, OCA identified the individual who was in jail for nearly 18 years due to issues with the competency restoration process.
OCA presented initial recommendations for improving the competency restoration process at a recent Commissioners Court meeting and will bring more detailed recommendations at the next meeting.
Among their initial recommendations, OCA will look into maintaining and expanding the Jail Based Competency Restoration program, which was funded by the American Rescue Plan through this month. Harris County will also look into establishing a system or database to streamline and digitize the manual process of communication within the competency restoration process, as well as improve data collection and tracking of individuals with competency restoration issues.
