Eleven out of the 14 inmates who have died of covid-19 in Texas jails — almost 80 percent — were in pre-trial detention and had not been convicted of any crimes, according to a University of Texas at Austin report.
A total of 231 deaths due to covid-19 have been reported from the start of the pandemic through Oct. 4, 2020 in Texas prisons and jails.
These include 190 prison deaths, 14 jail deaths and 27 staff deaths, according to the November 2020 report, which was based on data from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
“These numbers are conservative and there is a great risk of undercounting, especially for county jail deaths,” the authors wrote.
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice is one of the largest prison systems in the U.S. — so large that if it were a city, it would be the state’s 20th-largest municipality.
It’s massive growth is due in large part to “failed, misguided policies — such as the ‘three-strikes’ law — that caused the (U.S.) prison population to swell from half a million to more than 2.2 million over the past 30 years,” Dallas Morning News reported in 2016.
The U.S., with just 5 percent of the global population is warehousing about a quarter of all the world’s prisoners. More than 60 percent of the prison population, including two-thirds of those locked up in Texas facilities, are Black and Hispanic.
The Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that if incarceration rates continued at 2003 levels, one in three African American men (32 percent) born in 2001 will serve time in prison at some point in their lifetime.
“Any discussion about the impact of incarceration in this country must acknowledge that the policies that have led the U.S. to have the world’s largest jail and prison population (2.1 million) and highest incarceration rate (714 per 100,000) have had a disproportionate impact on African Americans,” researchers wrote for JusticePolicy.org, a nonprofit that changes the conversation around justice reform.
In Texas, Black people were imprisoned at a rate of 1,844 per 100,000 population in 2014, compared to a white imprisonment rate of 457 per 100,000 and 541 Hispanic people per 100,000, according to a report from The Sentencing Project.org, a nonprofit that does research toward a fair and effective U.S. criminal justice.
Of the Texas inmates in prison who died of covid, nine had been approved for parole and were awaiting release, 21 had served 90 percent or more of their sentence, and 58 percent were eligible for parole.
The University of Texas at Austin study found that Texas inmates and staff tested positive for the coronavirus at a 490-percent-higher rate than the state’s general population.
“Covid-19 has had a devastating impact on prisons and jails across the country, and especially in Texas,” said Michele Deitch, a criminal justice policy expert and lead author of the study.
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which operates the state’s prison system, blamed the high numbers on testing.
“While this report attempts to capture the impact of the virus on the prison population, what is noticeably absent is a discussion of the TDCJ’s first in the nation, sustained, and aggressive mass asymptomatic testing campaign,” TDCJ spokesman Jeremy Desel said, according to AP. “To date, more than 65,000 employee and 219,000 inmate tests have been carried out. This is far more than any other correctional system in the country.”
Listen to GHOGH with Jamarlin Martin | Episode 73: Jamarlin Martin Jamarlin makes the case for why this is a multi-factor rebellion vs. just protests about George Floyd. He discusses the Democratic Party’s sneaky relationship with the police in cities and states under Dem control, and why Joe Biden is a cop and the Steve Jobs of mass incarceration.
More than half the covid-19 deaths in Texas prisons come from seven of the state’s 106 prisons. Almost 6 percent of the inmates at the Duncan Unit geriatric prison near Lufkin in East Texas died of covid. More than 80 percent of the Texas covid prison fatalities were over age 55, the report said.
Twitter responded with anger, shock and sadness to the report. Some called for the abolition of the criminal justice system.
“you can’t reform it, it demands to be abolished,” mikelli scallonau Tweeted.
“Everyone says 45 didn’t have a plan. Even when investigations showed they were fully briefed Jan 26th. And they sold stock. And they thought it would only hurt ‘blue’ states. But, this slaughter was always their plan. They knew exactly who it would kill. And they let it happen,” Dawn Stern tweeted.
“I hope this is an eye opener to a lot of people that most people in jails are in jail because they can’t afford a bond, not because they’ve been found guilty,” sangre dulce tweeted.
