TPI has been reviewing PREA audits of TDCJ facilities for about a year at the time of this post, and the number of inaccuracies, mistakes, problems, and other issues is amazing. These reports even provide information indicating clear deficiencies, yet the auditors are not requiring corrective actions.
TPI has developed a simple auditor tool for auditors to see current information about any unit that we have in our system to help give them a heads up about any problems we see, but as far as we know, no auditor to date has used this tool.
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 letter report is TPI’s report of deficiencies we were able to identify with this audit. Allred Unit is a facility that TPI feels is one of the worst in the entire Texas prison system, and the problems with this audit do nothing to alleviate that assessment. The audit report itself, which TPI feels should be considered as deficient for documenting “compliance” with the PREA standards, can be accessed here. Some noteworthy points include:
- The auditor failed to do due diligence to identify persons housed in segregated housing due to risk of sexual victimization.
- PREA § 115.15: Documentation of “opposite-gender” staff viewing surveillance cameras with point and zoom capabilities and failure to recognize the gender of transgender persons indicate compliance with this standard is not sufficiently supported.
- PREA § 115.21: Only 3 out of 44 persons alleging sexual abuse (at least 24 of which appear to have been provided within 120 hours) were provided forensic medical exams, indicating a failure to comply with this standard.
- PREA § 115.33: Possible misinformation on signage indicates potential noncompliance with this standard.
- PREA § 115.42: Apparent inappropriate assessment of providing adequate access to separate showers for transgender persons indicates compliance cannot be determined.
- PREA § 115.43: Failure to appropriately assess segregated housing and documentation of use of transient housing that constitutes segregated housing indicate unlikely compliance with this standard.
- PREA § 115.52: Documentation that not all administrative remedies received a response indicates probable noncompliance with this standard.
- PREA § 115.64: Auditor documents only 25% compliance with separation of abuser from victim, and apparently only 7% to 13% compliance with forensic medical evidence collection, indicating the facility is not compliant with this standard.
- PREA § 115.72: With less than 5% of sexual abuse allegations and less than 6% of sexual harassment allegations substantiated, it appear unlikely the facility uses the preponderance of evidence assessment required by this standard, and thus fails compliance.
- PREA § 115.73: It appears that at least 1 person was not notified of the outcome of the investigation into the report of sexual abuse, indicating noncompliance with this standard.
- PREA § 115.82: Apparent failures to provide medical and mental health services and possibly appropriate prophylaxis indicate it cannot be determined if the facility is compliant with this standard.
- PREA § 115.86: The auditor only documents 22 of the required 29 incident reviews, indicate the facility is not compliant with this standard.