Overcrowding in Texas prisons causes facilities to send pretrial detainees to other counties and states

SEATTLE – Counties across Texas are struggling to adequately house the people held in their jails. One of the solutions state officials and lawmakers have chosen is to spend millions of taxpayer dollars transferring inmates to neighboring counties or across state lines.

The number of Texas inmates housed outside their prison district increased from 2,078 in June 2019 to 4,358 in June 2024.according to an analysis by the Texas Tribune. Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of prisoners housed elsewhere in Texas has increased exponentially.

The number of districts relying on outsourcing has also increased. In June 2010, 31% of Texas county jails housed inmates elsewhere. In June 2024, 41% of counties did soaccording to data from the Texas Commission on Jail Standards.

Although violent crime rates in Texas have declined since 2020, overcrowding in the state's prisons and jails remains a problem. “It's very difficult to know exactly what's driving incarceration rates, but usually it's not crime rates,” said Jeff Asher, a crime analyst who cautioned against drawing a direct link between a community's crime rate and the size of its prison population. “It's more about enforcement.”

According to a recent report by the Prison Policy Initiative: Texas is one of the ten states with the highest incarceration rates in the United States. For every 100,000 residents, 751 people are incarcerated in Texas.Louisiana leads the U.S. state population with the highest incarceration rate, with 1,067 incarcerations per 100,000 residents, the report said.

The shortage of prison cells as well as the need for prison guards are some of the factors that worsen the situation. In 2021 a state law limits who can be released during pretrial detentionwhich increases the prison population and the time they spend behind bars. Staffing shortages have also played a part, as fewer guards mean that prisons and county jails have to reduce the number of inmates they can house, even when cells are available.

“Counties need to think outside the box,” said Ricky Armstrong, deputy director of the Texas Commission on Jail Standards. “We know there are some counties that house people from out of state. That's not something we recommend or encourage, but we see it as a necessary evil.”

Civil rights activists and organizations argue that the state should invest heavily in mental health and alternatives to incarceration. They also say the state should adjust its bail policies so that decisions about who is released pending trial are not actually based on the individual's wealth.

“We're addicted to prison solutions,” says Krish Gundu, co-founder of the Texas Jail Project, which advocates for people in Texas county jails. “If we really cared about keeping these people out of prison, we would have to look at why they end up in prison and solve the problem at the root.”

Since 2022, at least eight Texas counties – Sabine, Harris, Wilbarger, Newton, Chambers, Tyler, Loving and Liberty – have sent their excess prison inmates out of the state to Louisiana, Oklahoma, Colorado and Mississippi.