The Texas prison system announced NINE employee covid deaths in the past 16 days. Five just since last Friday.
How many prisoners died in that time? NO CLUE. They haven't updated prison deaths since JANUARY.
Some of the staff who died had a lot of years in with the agency, but some of them are so much younger than the deaths earlier in the pandemic. Like this guy was 38 -- and died three days after testing positive.
And this one was 32:
The sudden uptick in staff deaths seems like it could indicate an increase in covid behind bars -- and maybe more sick and dying prisoners. But, again, we don't really know.
Sometimes, we can track these things in other ways, like @EvaRuth does through the AG database. But that's an imperfect method of tracking covid because those reports don't consistently offer that level of specificity. oagtx.force.com/cdr/cdrreportd…
Last year, @mydeitch published an excellent report on how damn many Texas prisoners were dying compared to other states.
Not long after, TDCJ just stopped posting the death notices altogether.
THREAD: When I got arrested, a woman I met my first day in jail told me I should take notes on everything and someday write a book. A decade later, I FINALLY have – and now you can buy it here.
I can tell you more about the book, but first I want to tell you more about that woman – Susan. She was a foul-mouthed pagan lesbian, and I liked her from the start. She was in her early 60s when we met, and her graying hair stood out on a cellblock filled with 20-somethings.
Unlike most of us, she wasn’t in for drugs; it was a DUI. And unlike most of us, she was single, had no kids and actually had a long employment history – she’d been a veterinarian and a firefighter and in the merchant marines.
NEW: After Texas death row inmate Steven Butler’s lawyers spent almost 2 decades saying he was too intellectually disabled to execute, yesterday prosecutors finally agreed he should not be on the row.
Butler was convicted of a 1986 killing at a dry cleaner, and has been on death row since 1988 -- much of that time in near-total isolation. houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-t…
Tests show his IQ is between 67 and 77. He’s been unable to balance a checkbook, obey common signs or fill out basic paperwork on his own:
Wondering how Texas prisons have fared in the storm?
Officials say 1 unit on generator power, several others had outages but are back online, another had a power line down and another had trees blown over nearby. No flooding or sewage probs reported. More details below:
The unit still on generator power is Wayne Scott. CONFUSINGLY, the old Scott Unit closed last year but now another unit (Jester IV psych unit in Richmond) was renamed as Scott Unit.
The Stringfellow Unit in Rosharon & all the Jester Units in Richmond (all SW of Houston) had outages, but are now back up and running. Stringfellow, btw, was one of the units that had to evacuate for Harvey.
chron.com/news/houston-t…
When I got arrested, Gawker took a swimsuit pic off my FB &wrote: "Cornell senior smuggled heroin, posed in bikini, edited Cornell Daily Sun"
It was completely misogynist clickbait.
I am not glad they're back. But I hope they do better this time
I think we can all understand why this was problematic, but to be clear: It was a 3-year-old candid picture of me - a nobody - and they put it in the headline of their story, framing the existing shaming of a drug arrest in a way that invited sexist commentary.
A few months after he went to prison, a dentist pulled all of Nicholas Bailey’s teeth. “I’m in pain,” he wrote, begging for dentures. “I cannot eat because I have no teeth.” My latest column w/@NBCNews is a look at dental care in Michigan prisons. Thread: themarshallproject.org/2021/07/22/i-h…
This story is mostly about Michigan, but the basics are something I remember well: Even when it’s actually adequate, prison and jail medical and dental care is hard to get. That was something that shocked me when I got locked up myself. nbcnews.com/news/us-news/m…
Back in 2011, I was in jail in upstate NY when a chunk of my tooth fell out. The jail had a rule that they wouldn’t treat cavities, so they gave me a choice: Get it pulled or be in pain.
It’s not clear yet how many they have already moved there, but previously they said they expected around 1000 total. I have asked if any other units are earmarked for this same repurposing and have not gotten an official response on that.