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 auditor falsely stated that no person housed at Estelle Unit had ever been placed in segregated housing, and failed to interview person who were housed in segregated housing as required by audit guidelines.
- The auditor failed to interview the minimum number of incarcerated lesbian, gay, and bisexual persons, as required by audit guidelines.
- The auditor erased the existence of trans and nonbinary persons at the unit by claiming only males were housed there at the time of the audit, which results in all assessments of cross-gender compliance were not appropriately considered.
- The auditor failed to properly identify and assess basic training problems that are in part reflected in the high number of complaints TPI receives about disrespectful and unprofessional interactions with transgender persons at Estelle Unit.
- The auditor documented failures in proper PREA screening practices but still claimed Estelle Unit was compliant with PREA requirements.
- The auditor documented clear problems providing PREA required separate showers for transgender persons, yet still assessed Estelle Unit as “fully compliant” with the requirements.
- Although the auditor did properly recognize that locking people in segregation after a report of sexual abuse or sexual harassment meets the PREA definition of protective custody and must follow protective custody standards for such lockups, the auditor showed serious misunderstanding of what TDCJ defines as “protective safekeeping,” and how that designation is used and applied. The misunderstanding also includes how the separate “safekeeping designation” is used, as well as how other types of separation occur when sexual harassment and sexual abuse is alleged. Without a clear understanding of these issues, compliance cannot be determined. This is in part a lack of auditor due diligence, but is also caused by intentional manipulation and confusion on TDCJ’s part.