Molly Ivins April 1

AUSTIN, Texas — The Texas prison system is not the kind of thing you should read about at the breakfast table.

Whenever I hear people get huffy about something they've read in the paper or seen on TV that strikes them as offensive, I wonder how they expect us to report on the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. It's easy to ignore, of course, and that's precisely what most of us do. Boy, is that ever a subject we'd rather not think about. On the other hand, it is being run with our money, in our names and under our ultimate supervision.

Well, actually, it's not under our supervision right now and hasn't been since 1980. The TDCJ was such a horrifying, barbaric, sadistic mess that a federal judge ruled the whole thing unconstitutional under the "cruel and unusual punishment" clause. The federal court just took it over — lock, stock and barrel — and put it in the hands of a special master. But that was all long ago. And ever since, the TDCJ has been struggling to reform itself under federal supervision.

Periodically, some politician rises to condemn the federal courts for unwarranted interference and in particular Judge William Wayne Justice, who had the temerity to bring the writ of the U.S. Constitution to Texas. But the truth is, no one wanted the hot potato back again.

However, now, the potato is not so hot. The mind-boggling overcrowding that afflicted the prison system about 18 years ago has been alleviated; we have spent billions of dollars building prison after prison after prison to house the inmates incarcerated for ever-longer stretches by the Legislature's determination to git-tuff-on-crime. We've got three strikes; we've got mandatory minimums; we've got people in prison whose crime is drug or alcohol addiction; we've got people in prison for being mentally ill ... well, you know all that.

The state of Texas now argues that improvements in the TDCJ put the state in compliance with federal law, so the federal courts should no longer have jurisdiction. The case was heard earlier this year in a three-week trial with more than 50 hours of testimony. It was a remarkable portrait of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice as of 1999.

Judge Justice issued his decision in March. The state lost, although the judge said that all could be proud of how much the system has changed. Incredibly enough, the judge did not find the system's medical or mental health systems sufficiently bad to be held unconstitutional despite the testimony.

Some samples:

— "Inmate Collins Gentry showed obvious symptoms of an acute heart attack but was sent back to his cell (by the medical unit).

Inmate Ophelia Rangel spent five days not eating and suffering from psychotic episodes and severe diarrhea, but she was not treated. She died. Michael Bias, who fell into a coma after a suicide attempt, was left to lie in one position, so that he developed infected pressure sores that led to massive loss of skin, breakdown of muscle and kidney failure. Presenting what Dr. Robertson considered to be obvious symptoms of metastatic prostate cancer, inmate Robert Lee was treated by a physician assistant as malingering. The inmate finally became paralyzed. ... Another female inmate was sent back to her cell after reporting significant weight loss and coughing up blood. ... Rather than treat her, a nurse documented that she was 'refusing to work,' and she was made to return to work. She died within five months. ...

— "Dr. Metzner found a significant over-diagnosis of malingering (in the mental health care units). ... Inmate Garza entered the system with a history of suicide attempts and self-mutilations, hallucinations and hospitalizations. His medications were discontinued, and he was diagnosed as having no Axis I illness. After a brief visit to Skyview, he was discharged with Dr. Tchokoev recommending no medication and heavy work in the field. The same day he returned to Beto, he cut himself and then attempted to hang himself. He is now in a vegetative state."

So what did the judge deem unconstitutional?

"The evidence before this court revealed a prison underworld in which rapes, beatings and servitude are the currency of power. Inmates who refuse to join race-based gangs may be physically or sexually assaulted. To preserve their physical safety, some vulnerable inmates simply subject themselves to being bought and sold among groups of prison predators, providing their oppressors with commissary goods, domestic service or sexual favors. The lucky are those who are allowed to pay money for their protection. Other abused inmates find that violating prison rules, so that they may be locked away in single cells in administrative segregation (the most notorious hellholes in the system), is a rational means of self-protection, despite the loss of good time that comes with their 'punishment.' To expect such a world to rehabilitate wrongdoers is absurd. To allow such a world to exist is unconstitutional.

"It is notable that in almost every prison and civil jail action to which Breed (one of the expert witnesses in the case) was appointed by state and federal courts, he was responsible for monitoring excessive use of force. This makes all the more alarming the fact that Breed found in Texas more excessive force, in quantity and degree, than in any other state system he has seen."

And so on, and so forth.

Molly Ivins is a columnist for the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. To find out more about Molly Ivins and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate web page at www.creators.com.

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