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RandySF

(57,599 posts)
Sat Nov 14, 2020, 11:06 PM Nov 2020

80 percent of those who died of Covid-19 in Texas county jails were never convicted of a crime

Over 230 people have died from Covid-19 in Texas’s correctional facilities — and in county jails, nearly 80 percent of them were in pretrial detention and hadn’t even been convicted of a crime, according to a new report.

A team of researchers at the University of Austin at Texas reviewed data from the the Texas Justice Initiative which collects information from multiple sources including the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ). They found that at least 231 people have died of Covid-19 in the state’s correctional facilities between March and October. This report only looked at state-operated prisons and county-operated jails, as researchers were focused on how Texas’s Covid-19 prison policies had fared.

The 231 figure is likely to be a conservative count. As the researchers note, TDCJ and county jails update death reports after autopsies are conducted, sometimes months after the fact. Additionally, many people have “died without ever having been tested for COVID,” and others died due to a preexisting conditioned worsened by the virus and are not counted in this figure.


https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.vox.com/platform/amp/2020/11/12/21562278/jails-prisons-texas-covid-19-coronavirus-crime-prisoners-death



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80 percent of those who died of Covid-19 in Texas county jails were never convicted of a crime (Original Post) RandySF Nov 2020 OP
Sad, but not shocking TexasTowelie Nov 2020 #1

TexasTowelie

(111,287 posts)
1. Sad, but not shocking
Sat Nov 14, 2020, 11:30 PM
Nov 2020

considering that the criminal justice system has effectively shut down in the state. Anyone who could not raise bail and that was caught in the system became screwed. Others that could afford bail have had their cases hanging over them for an extended period of time which raises stress levels waiting for resolution to their cases.

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