TPI began looking at PREA audit reports for Texas Department of Criminal Justice prisons and commenting on what we view as deficiencies in the audits in March 2023. By October 2024, when we received our first meaningful response from the Department of Justice PREA Management Office/National PREA Resource Center (PMO/PRC) to these comments, we had submitted 19 audit comment letters.
The response identified seven concerns that TPI raised. This was only a small portion of the concerns we had actually raised, but at least it was a response.
We note that of the concerns that were identified in this response, one had been addressed somewhat, and one would be addressed soon. Concern 2 noted that auditors only defined populations at facilities as “male” or “female,” and that was in part due to restrictions in the auditor tool, which amazingly did not allow any entry except those two identities. This was addressed by an update to the auditor tool in late 2024. Concern 4 had to do with auditors only considering cross-gender viewing and searches relative to the gender of staff and the gender designated (“male” or “female”) of the facility. An update to the FAQ about Standard 115.15 noted that such a simplistic assessment “would not be compliant.”
The response to some of the concerns referenced training for auditors, but it was difficult to tell if this represented additional training or anything other than what has been insufficient to hold auditors accountable to date. There was also an absurd statement that our complaint that regardless of TDCJ policy, the agency practice is to house transgender persons by genital status: the PMO/PRC essentially made a circular argument that TDCJ could not have that practice because their policy says they do not.
The entire response letter is provided below.
TPI chose to respond by letter rather than by email, as the missing and overlooked issues were too many for comfortable email response. We explained in that response that we could not let the lack of response stand on so many issues because, as in the prison systems, a failure to continue to bring up issues not addressed by administrative responses is interpreted as acceptance of the response. We did not accept the PMO/PRC response.
On October 26, 2024, we sent that response to the PMO/PRC. We brought up specific texts in PMO/PRC documents contradicting the provided response, information from PREA audit reports that directly contradict PMO/PRC statements, how the response manipulates the gist of complaints, and provided a list of other issues not addressed in the response.
Our reply to the PMO/PRC is shown below:
Although TPI is pleased to see that our comments are being considered, we hope that the consideration in the future is more appropriate to the overall PREA goals of, as per the PREA Standards themselves, working toward “zero tolerance toward all forms of sexual abuse and sexual harassment” rather than rubber stamping audits in a show of progress.