Month: May 2023

TPI is posting advocacy letters we have written to provide examples of violence against persons in prison, primarily against trans and queer persons in Texas prisons. Personal identifying information has been removed for all incarcerated persons, and named staff or other persons causing harm is removed on a case by case basis.

Content warning: Some of these letters describe threats and incidents of violence that may be disturbing. We will note whether each letter is considered a low, moderate, or high risk for being disturbing. We consider this letter to be moderate risk.

The trans woman in this complaint was sexually assaulted by someone she had previously been in a relationship with, and was able to stop the assault and prevent further abuse by calling out, causing the assailant to leave the scene.

When she tried to report the assault, she was initially refused in violation of Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) requirements to respond to all reports of sexual violence. Later she did report, and unit safe prisons staff, which are responsible for PREA implementation at the unit, convinced the subject to retract her statement by stating she could be subject to retaliation by other members of the gang to which the accused belongs. It should be noted that it is unit safe prisons staff responsibility to monitor for retaliation and keep persons reporting sexual violence safe. Also, retraction of a claim of sexual violence is manipulation of data that is a violation of PREA standards to document all reports of sexual violence.

The subject was promised a transfer if retracting her allegation of sexual violence. However, the subject was not transferred, was subject to retaliation by persons affiliated with her assailant, and was initially refused further opportunity to report the sexual abuse, although with persistence she was able to report.

When the sexual assault was eventually reported and “investigated,” TDCJ’s PREA ombudsman stated that the subject “disclosed the [previous] relationship with the alleged assailant was consensual and there was no sexual abuse,” which appallingly seems to show the TDCJ PREA managers appear to be claiming sexual violence cannot happen between intimate partners or prior intimate partners. Eventually, however, additional violence by the person abusing the trans woman resulted in requiring both be housed separately to avoid further harm.

In the 2021 Texas legislative session, HB 1598 and SB 1980 proposed creating a new independent ombudsman office separate from TDCJ as an oversight agency. TDCJ seems to have responded by creating their own “independent” ombudsman office, which we are directly addressing in this letter, probably to make the argument that an actual independent agency is not needed because they already have a supposedly independent oversight group. Nothing could be further from the truth. Most of TPI’s responses from the “independent” ombudsman simply repeat the findings (and excuses) of staff at the units where the incidents occurred.

TPI is posting advocacy letters we have written to provide examples of violence against persons in prison, primarily against trans and queer persons in Texas prisons. Personal identifying information has been removed for all incarcerated persons, and named staff or other persons causing harm is removed on a case by case basis.

Content warning: Some of these letters describe threats and incidents of violence that may be disturbing. We will note whether each letter is considered a low, moderate, or high risk for being disturbing. We consider this letter to be moderate risk.

TPI submitted an initial complaint in early March 2022 concerning an unauthorized and abusive body cavity search. Although the complaint could have alleged sexual abuse, there is a US Department of Justice (DoJ) interpretation of allegations against staff for committing sexual violence where if the sexual violence happened while carrying out one’s job duties, intent of sexual violence must be proven. Intent like that is next to impossible to prove in prison settings, so we sometimes choose to address these allegations as staff misconduct. To be clear, TPI believes that what was reported to have happened WAS sexual abuse, but we know that reporting it as such, the report would only be dismissed and would stand less chance of finding any misconduct.

The TPI complaint was not sent to the PREA Ombudsman (which would investigate sexual violence), but the TDCJ Ombudsman forwarded it to the PREA Ombudsman as a means of manipulating our compliant, relegating it to a certain finding of “unsubstantiated” as sexual abuse instead of investigating staff misconduct.

The letter provided here is a subsequent complaint about that malicious manipulation of our complaint, with documentation we have about this and similar manipulation that we believe indicates willful negligence in addressing staff misconduct and unconstitutional violence against persons in prison. The letter was copied to the DoJ.

In the 2021 Texas legislative session, HB 1598 and SB 1980 proposed creating a new independent ombudsman office separate from TDCJ as an oversight agency. TDCJ seems to have responded by creating their own “independent” ombudsman office, which we are directly addressing in this letter, probably to make the argument that an actual independent agency is not needed because they already have a supposedly independent oversight group. Nothing could be further from the truth. Most of TPI’s responses from the “independent” ombudsman simply repeat the findings (and excuses) of staff at the units where the incidents occurred.

TPI is posting advocacy letters we have written to provide examples of violence against persons in prison, primarily against trans and queer persons in Texas prisons. Personal identifying information has been removed for all incarcerated persons, and named staff or other persons causing harm is removed on a case by case basis.

Content warning: Some of these letters describe threats and incidents of violence that may be disturbing. We will note whether each letter is considered a low, moderate, or high risk for being disturbing. We consider this letter to be low risk.

Property issues may seem to be of little significance to persons on the outside, but in prison, your property can be an important link to feeling human in a greatly dehumanizing environment. Property handling also becomes a kind of proxy power struggle between incarcerated persons and staff because staff have many opportunities to confiscate and destroy property, so winning property battles can be a significant personal victory, one that helps a person feel seen and acknowledged as a human being.

In this case, a trans woman follows all TDCJ policy concerning inquiries about property being sent from one prison to another when she was transferred. Even with clear documentation that TDCJ was in possession of her property and obviously lost it somewhere during the shipment, TDCJ refused all accountability, claiming she did not provide proof of ownership, when the subject had clearly stated she had receipts and paperwork for all items missing.

This advocacy attempt also illustrates an important secondary purpose of advocacy: pushing prison agencies for responses gets them to reveal operational problems. As part of our complaint, we cited the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act (CRIPA), which outlines basic civil rights afforded persons in prisons. Among those are the right to review of their grievances, and the right to have timely responses to grievances. CRIPA states that the entire grievance process should be completed within 180 days; the subject of the complaint had yet to get a response to her Step 2 grievance after almost 220 days.

TDCJ responded to the allegation of CRIPA violations that they consulted with the TDCJ Office of General Counsel, which “advised the federal law to which you refer is a voluntary procedure in which states may avail themselves of, if they so choose. Currently, Texas has not chosen to do so.”

It is true that no specific penalties are defined under CRIPA for non-compliance, but that does not make a federal law subject to only “voluntary” compliance. And that opinion misrepresents CRIPA. The act gives the US Attorney General the right to take legal action against any party responsible for human confinement when the AG determines the failure to comply with CRIPA deprives “such persons of any rights, privileges, or immunities secured or protected by the Constitution or laws of the United States causing such persons to suffer grievous harm, and that such deprivation is pursuant to a pattern or practice of resistance to the full enjoyment of such rights, privileges, or immunities.”

In the 2021 Texas legislative session, HB 1598 and SB 1980 proposed creating a new independent ombudsman office separate from TDCJ as an oversight agency. TDCJ seems to have responded by creating their own “independent” ombudsman office, which we are directly addressing in this letter, probably to make the argument that an actual independent agency is not needed because they already have a supposedly independent oversight group. Nothing could be further from the truth. Most of TPI’s responses from the “independent” ombudsman simply repeat the findings (and excuses) of staff at the units where the incidents occurred.

TPI is posting advocacy letters we have written to provide examples of violence against persons in prison, primarily against trans and queer persons in Texas prisons. Personal identifying information has been removed for all incarcerated persons, and named staff or other persons causing harm is removed on a case by case basis.

Content warning: Some of these letters describe threats and incidents of violence that may be disturbing. We will note whether each letter is considered a low, moderate, or high risk for being disturbing. We consider this letter to be moderate risk.

TPI tries to respond immediately to death threats, in this case threats against the life of a gay man due to his sexual orientation. Enhancing our concern in this case was that the report came from Telford Unit, in northeast Texas, which TPI considers one of the worst units in the TDCJ system for trans and queer persons. It is not uncommon for staff and administration at Telford to take actions that increase the endangerment of anyone who is trans or queer.

In this case, a person reported receiving multiple kites, or notes, threatening his life due to his sexual orientation at some point around or before the end of March 2022. The subject of the complaint had filed for an Inmate Protection Investigation (IPI), which is supposed to identify endangerment. As is common at Telford and throughout TDCJ, the IPI was “unsubstantiated,” which means they claim there was less than a 50/50 chance that the report of endangerment was true.

The subject was ordered to be housed back where he reported endangerment, then filed for another IPI in early April. That IPI too was “unsubstantiated.” Fortunately the subject was transferred the day after the second IPI was filed.

A transfer can take weeks if not months in TDCJ. A transfer has to be recommended by the unit, then approved by the State Classification Committee. That the transfer happened almost immediately indicates it was done as an expedited action in response to some sort of emergency circumstances. In cases such as this, no one should believe the report that an investigation was appropriately determined to be “unsubstantiated”; these expedited transfers do not happen when there is not a serious threat of endangerment and harm.

In the 2021 Texas legislative session, HB 1598 and SB 1980 proposed creating a new independent ombudsman office separate from TDCJ as an oversight agency. TDCJ seems to have responded by creating their own “independent” ombudsman office, which we are directly addressing in this letter, probably to make the argument that an actual independent agency is not needed because they already have a supposedly independent oversight group. Nothing could be further from the truth. Most of TPI’s responses from the “independent” ombudsman simply repeat the findings (and excuses) of staff at the units where the incidents occurred.