TPI is filing complaints about PREA (Prison Rape Elimination Act) auditor failures to provide proper audits. Under PREA § 115.401(o), auditors “shall attempt to communicate with community-based or victim advocates who may have insight into relevant conditions in the facility.” TPI has seldom been contacted concerning information we have about Texas prisons, and the National PREA Resource Center, which oversees the audit process, has failed to hold auditors accountable to this requirement. TPI has developed a simple auditor tool for auditors to see current information about any unit that we have in our system, so they do not have to even contact us. They are required to list if they tried to contact others about prison information and who they contacted. We are seeing many auditors list no contacts, or contacts that are perfunctory and likely provided no information.
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.
The following file is the TPI complaint against the auditor. The audit report by the auditor, which we feel was inappropriately considered final an accepted as documenting “compliance” with the PREA standards, can be accessed here. Some noteworthy points include:
- The facility is falsely described as housing males only, in spite of the auditor documenting persons of other genders at the unit.
- Audit entry 47: The auditor falsely states that 0 persons at the unit had been placed in segregated housing due to risk of sexual victimization.
- Audit entry 66: The auditor failed to conduct the minimum number of interviews with transgender and intersex persons, and failed to do appropriate due diligence to identify additional transgender and intersex persons at the facility.
- Audit entry 67: The auditor failed to conduct the minimum number of interviews with persons who reported sexual abuse in the facility. The person who was counted but who denied being a member of the target population should have been replaced by identifying one of the other at least five persons in this target population who were available.
- Audit entry 69: The auditor failed to conduct the minimum number of interviews with persons who had been placed in segregation due to risk of sexual violence, and failed to do due diligence to identify persons in this target population.
- PREA § 115.15: The auditor failed to appropriately audit the unit for cross-gender strip and body cavity searches. Compliance with this standard is not supported and cannot be determined based on what is provided in this report.
- PREA § 115.43: The auditor misrepresents how protective custody is provided in TDCJ, and fails to investigate TDCJ’s misrepresentation of “protective safekeeping” as the only housing that meets PREA “protective custody” requirements. Compliance with this standard is not supported and cannot be determined based on what is provided in this report, especially given the level of misinformation presented here.
- PREA § 115.72: The auditor does not present any supporting information that indicates the preponderance of evidence standard is used in administrative investigations, and in fact provides objective evidence that such a standard is likely not used. Compliance with this standard is not supported and cannot be determined based on what is provided in this report.