THREAD: It is with sadness that I tell you about Justin Henderson, who died in the downtown Houston jail. He was trapped there during a pandemic because he couldn't pay a few hundred dollars in cash. Although no media reported his death, his story is important.
Justin Henderson was 35 years old. He was diagnosed with mental health issues and an intellectual disability. He was forgotten in a jail cell because Judge Hilary Unger (a Democrat) required him to pay cash bail, and he couldn't even pay the bail premium.
Before his arrest, he was free in the community on a form of diversion after a minor charge of evading a police officer. A problem was that he couldn't get a job and so couldn't pay the fees judges and prosecutors required him to pay in order to be free.
The ruthless District Attorney, Kim Ogg, asked to have him put in a cage for a series of "technical violations": not getting a job, not updating an address, missing appointments, not taking a class on "Effective Decision Making," and not being able to pay fees. He owed $260.
In a huge scandal, one of the fees for which he was arrested was not being able to pay $50 to Crime Stoppers, a private right-wing ally of the DA that spreads police union propaganda and who judges and prosecutors allow to take a cut of revenue generated from DA prosecutions.
Justin Henderson is one of 15 human beings who have died in the jail in downtown Houston this year. The media has not seen it important enough to report on many of their deaths.
https://twitter.com/oJaison/status/1440452436951375885
The official summary of Justin Henderson's death was a mere six cold lines in a bureaucratic entry, listing his original charge and that he died as he made noises in his sleep: 
The jail in downtown Houston has fake windows, so free people downtown see a pretty building across the Bayou, but people inside are deprived of fresh air and sunlight.
According to researchers and organizers @OrganizeTexas @TexasCJE, there are over 6,000 human beings right now in the Harris County jail solely because they cannot pay cash. Judge Hilary Unger is responsible for a daily average of 278 people caged for their poverty.
There many organizers and advocates fighting to dismantle this horrific bureaucracy See this thread below for some hope. But there is such a long way to go because the indifference to the everyday brutality of the system across the U.S. is so entrenched.
https://twitter.com/equalityAlec/status/1441408000850341888
I've written more about how these systems work, who they benefit, and why, using hundreds of examples: yalelawjournal.org/forum/the-puni…
If you want to help, get involved with @LiberateHTX @OrganizeTexas @TxJailProject @PureJustice_HTX if you're in Houston, and support their work from afar if you can. (End.)
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