“That’s a clear indication. When the system is overwhelmed and collapsing under its own weight, you start seeing how people are being neglected,” Krish Gundu, co-founder and executive director of Texas Jail Project, said. “They’re not getting their meds on time or not getting timely medical attention. There’s issues with getting food on time. Just all sorts of things start snowballing.”
Gundu said the number of complaints coming out of Dallas County has sharply increased of late. This could be because the Dallas County jail population has swelled in recent months. Earlier this week, the jail was at around 98% of capacity.
A spokesperson for the Dallas County Sheriff’s Department told the Observer that the rise in inmates can be attributed to several factors: the implementation of a new court management system, normal summertime increases in book-ins, elevated crime statistics and special operations being conducted by law enforcement agencies in the county. Housing inmates elsewhere is part of the immediate contingency plan for the jail, the spokesperson said.
Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot and Dallas County Commissioner John Wiley Price spoke to the city's public safety committee this week about capacity issues at the county jail.
Price said he looks over jail sanitation and jail population. The detention centers at the Lew Sterrett Justice Center, where the Dallas Police Department takes all of its prisoners, are authorized to hold just over 7,200 individuals. As of Thursday afternoon, there were 6,628 inmates in the jail, according to the county.
He said there are certain standards the jail must meet that have compounded capacity issues. For example, when women are booked into custody, they can’t be within sight or sound of male inmates. Additionally, maximum security inmates must be kept apart from others."I don't want people to feel that we are at a point where the jail is about to bulge at the seams." – Dallas County Sheriff Marian Brown
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Despite the jail population reaching such high levels, Price said the county is still doing well when it comes to housing inmates. In his years looking over the jail, there’s been only one contract for custody housing outside of the county, he said. “We’ve never had to utilize that, unlike some of our peer counties who are having to divert to the tune of $18 million, $23 million,” Price said.
Price said the county has yet to divert local law enforcement agencies to other facilities to house inmates. “We’ve never placed DPD or any other law enforcement agency on divert,” Price said. “Dallas County has always made the adjustments and what you bring, we take into custody.”
At Monday's public safety committee meeting, City Council member Cara Mendelsohn asked if the county might hit a point where the local law enforcement might have to be diverted. “I don’t see one,” Price said.
Jail operations cost the county about $13 million every month, Price said. That doesn’t include the $50 million that the county spends in overtime to make sure the jail is in compliance and that there’s one jailer for every 48 inmates.
City Council member Gay Donnell Willis said, “When you hear 98% capacity, you sound very confident in managing that, but it just sounds like there’s not a lot of headroom there.” But Price insisted that the county is working to bring more space online for the inmates.
Willis also pointed out problems with implementing the new court software system, Odyssey. Price thinks the problem has been in integrating the county’s Adult Information System with the new software. “There’s some challenges,” Price said. Judges and clerks are having to work around the issues with the software, he added. But problems persist.
Creuzot told the public safety committee there have been growing pains with the new software. “There’s a perception, and it may be true, that when Odyssey was turned on is when this jail population took the spike up,” Creuzot said. “I know that it is difficult for us, increasingly difficult … to understand where someone is in the process.”
He said the software isn’t the problem. It’s the way it was implemented. “Odyssey itself is a good application,” Creuzot said. “There’s nothing wrong with Odyssey. It’s the manner in which it was turned on and the permissions it was given and how it interfaces when we try to go into it and see.”
Since the software was implemented, some inmates have languished in the jail longer than they should. The DA explained the law requires that the state be ready for trial within 90 days if a person is in jail on a felony offense. Otherwise, they must be released on a personal recognizance bond or have their bond lowered. Creuzot said: “Have we had some people reach that? Yes. Have some of them been from the city of Dallas. Yes. Is it a large number? No.”
He said some 20 to 30 people have reached this point. “Did the person actually get released? I can’t tell you because we don’t know,” Creuzot said. “Under the current system we have, we can’t tell that.”
The county recently extended its contract with Tyler Technologies, the company behind Odyssey, to help sort out the problem with the rollout.
Dallas County Sheriff Marian Brown told CBS News that despite the higher population, the jail is not being overcrowded. "I don't want people to feel that we are at a point where the jail is about to bulge at the seams,” she said. "There is no reason for people to be concerned that we are going [to be] randomly releasing people that don't need to be released into the community. That is absolutely not going to happen."
