Report: ‘Staffing crisis’ in Texas prisons making staff, inmates and public less safe

Many Texas prisons are nearly impossible to staff, and the agency responsible for more than 100,000 inmates is not currently set up to address the problem.

This and other criticisms were leveled this week at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice in a Sunset Advisory Commission staff report.

Sunset reports analyze the usefulness and effectiveness of Texas government departments, sometimes recommending their elimination.

The Sunset Advisory Commission believes the agency, which spent nearly $4 billion last year, has systemic flaws, which the 189-page report details and recommends fixes.

Outdated technology, lax supervision of rehabilitation programs and especially staff are just some of the factors that make the entire system unsafe for prisoners, staff and the public, as detailed in the report.

For years, the state’s vacancy rate has been around 25%. An April report by correctional officers by TDCJ found that many prisons are employing half and sometimes less than 40% of their staff.

There is more violence in prisons than a decade ago, and the number of “adverse events” has increased by around 30% since 2014.

“Even as the prison population has declined, the amount of contraband, such as drugs, weapons and cell phones, found in TDCJ facilities has increased significantly over the past 10 years,” the report said.

Employees work more, harder and lose more balls.

According to the report, TDCJ violates its own policies by allowing guards to work more than 16 hours a day or 10 days in a row. In fiscal year 2019, the state violated this policy an average of 9,000 times per month.

This leads to increased employee dissatisfaction and more resignations, which creates a negative feedback loop.

“While some employees actively seek overtime, half of respondents to Sunset’s survey of corrections workers said the amount of extra time they have to work negatively impacts officer safety, and more than 40 percent of respondents said it has a negative impact on the safety of inmates and society,” the report said.

Report links “crisis staffing” levels to Gonzalo Lopez’s fatal escape in 2022. Lopez escaped from medical transport due to staffing cuts and staffing shortages. Lopez later killed a family of five in Leon County.

In a statement, TDCJ staff said they appreciated the work of Sunset Commission staff. “We look forward to sharing information about TDCJ’s ongoing improvement efforts – including those focused on workplace culture – with Sunset members so they can gain a comprehensive understanding of our operations and services,” said Amanda Hernandez, director of communications at TDCJ.

In employee surveys that found the most common complaint was a hostile workplace (33%), guards view their workplace as unfair and overly punitive.

The report also highlighted the ineffective disciplinary policy and the way it was applied. “Historically, TDCJ has adopted a strictly hierarchical culture that did not sufficiently hold senior staff accountable,” the report said.

Because 20% of all probation officers and more for other employees received at least one disciplinary action, Sunset employees said penalties were not an effective deterrent.

Inmate safety may be linked to increased suicide rates.

Suicide rates are also more than twice what they were in Texas prisons a decade ago, and fiscal year 2024 saw its highest rate in more than two decades with 65 deaths.

“This is completely predictable,” said Michele Deitch, director of the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab at the University of Texas at Austin.

“When we have this vacancy rate, it means they are not able to observe the population and do not have enough experience to determine when a person is at risk of suicide,” she added.

Many of the Sunset staff’s recommendations focused on solving the department’s staffing crisis. They proposed, among others: consolidating and expanding employee retention support functions and collecting and analyzing feedback from current and departing employees.

Dozens of others addressed the need for better strategic planning, updated technology and better oversight.

“This report is just one step in the process, and we look forward to continuing to work with Commission staff, the Commission and the Legislature during the upcoming session,” Hernandez said.

The Sunset Commission, made up of lawmakers and citizens, will decide what recommendations to adopt and then write legislation based on the documents during the next session.