Jessica Jackson was supposed to go home from Dallas County Jail in mid-December after a judge ruled she had no time left to serve, according to the Associated Press. She had been arrested in early December for misdemeanor drug possession and for violating parole, and she had received credit for time she had already served on an earlier aggravated robbery sentence, the report said. With those credits, Jackson’s release eligibility date was Dec. 19, but Christmas passed and then New Year’s without her understanding why she remained in custody, AP reported.
By the time Dallas County released Jackson on Feb. 6—49 days after the Dec. 19 eligibility date—she had missed a job interview she had scheduled and lost state-provided housing after missing a filing deadline, she said. Jackson described the delay as something that cost her stability and options, adding in the AP report that she had been expecting to leave and that frustration grew as the extra days continued. She said she had asked for help through her public defender and that family and a friend also reached out in attempts to resolve what was holding her longer than the court’s ruling.
The AP report described Jackson’s case as part of a broader problem in which Texas counties keep inmates past their expected release dates without a clear statewide method to measure how often it happens. It said it is unknown how many Texans are kept well past their release dates because no state agency tracks post-conviction “over-detentions,” and because no state law prevents or punishes it. It also said the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and the Texas Commission on Jail Standards do not formally track over-detention cases, leaving the scale difficult to quantify.
At least one key mechanism in the AP account involves paperwork counties must send to the state before release. The report said attorneys told The Texas Tribune that delays in “pen packets”—the collections of documents counties send to TDCJ to process impending releases—are often behind long holds. In Jackson’s case, the report cited emails showing Dallas County had not sent her pen packet to TDCJ by email until Jan. 29 and had not marked it for expediting until Feb. 2, more than a month after she was sentenced.
AP reported that while state law sets deadlines for TDCJ to process pen packets, Texas law does not require counties to send the documents on time. Counties have attributed delays to a range of operational issues, including technology problems or calculating sentence time, the report said. The AP account said TDCJ has 45 business days after receiving packets to process them to allow for county notifications and also aims to expedite expedited packets within 10 business days, while the department encourages but does not require counties to flag over-detention cases as expedited.
Without statewide oversight, the report said some over-detention victims have turned to private lawsuits for compensation, which it described as time-consuming and expensive for counties. It pointed to an announced settlement in February in a $1.5 million case against Smith County, saying 102 inmates resolved over-detention claims tied to pen packet delays and that it was the largest Texas settlement over the issue. In comments reported by AP, Nick Hudson of ACLU Texas said the settlement process can make taxpayers pay “foot the bill twice,” both through extra jail days and through lawsuit costs.
Another perspective cited in the AP report came from Krish Gundu of the Texas Jail Project, which identified the over-detention issue at Smith County jail. Gundu said settlements have not produced admissions of wrongdoing, and she argued that accountability can be difficult without such admissions. The AP report said Dallas County commissioners approved settlements in three lawsuits from inmates who accused the county of not releasing them on time, including two settlements for $60,000 and one for $100,000 in the past two years.
Defense attorneys described similar experiences beyond Dallas County in the AP account. Rebecca Yung, who serves Central and West Texas, told AP that at least three counties have kept clients past release dates because counties delayed sending pen packets to TDCJ. She said one client in Tom Green County was held 17 days past his May release date and was freed only after Yung filed a request with a district judge and asked that the county employees be subpoenaed. Yung said she often receives little meaningful information about why releases did not occur on time and that the repeated nature of the problem is part of what makes it hard to address case-by-case.
County officials, in turn, sometimes told AP they coordinate with TDCJ to avoid unnecessary detention. The report included a statement from Tom Green County Sheriff Nick Hanna saying the sheriff’s office was in touch with TDCJ “to ensure inmates are not detained beyond their sentencing requirements,” while declining to answer AP’s specific questions about Yung’s client. The AP report also noted that there are no state laws or guidelines requiring when a county should send pen packets to TDCJ or requiring counties to flag when a pen packet concerns a person who overstayed a sentence.
AP also said TDCJ has been working on process changes aimed at making documentation transfers more reliable. It reported that TDCJ is launching a pilot program for a “pen packet portal” to formalize how documents move between counties and the state, and said Dallas County would serve as the first testing ground with the possibility of starting to use the new program by the end of March. In comments included in the report, Michele Deitch of the University of Texas at Austin’s Prison and Jail Innovation Lab said state agencies could do more to reduce the problem by requiring that jails release inmates once they complete their sentences, describing that approach as preventative.
Deitch said a clear standard would spell out what the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits and would outline steps jails should take to avoid over-detention rather than relying on lawsuits after harm occurs, the report said. When asked by AP about whether the Texas Commission on Jail Standards would implement an obligation to stop over-detention, the interim executive director, Ricky Armstrong, said the agency would do so if the Legislature passed a law or if members of the public proposed the change. Armstrong characterized over-detention as a “fairly new hot topic” following the Smith County settlement and said it could be incorporated into inspection processes.
Other state officials cited by AP included Republican state Sen. Pete Flores, who said in a brief statement that over-detention in county jails is being “looked into and addressed” but did not provide details. AP said State Rep. Sam Harless, chair of the House Corrections Committee, was unavailable to comment. Gundu said she was skeptical that adding one requirement alone would fix the problem, telling AP that the state needs to focus on incarcerating fewer people and that over-detention functions as a way “stealing time from their life.”
For Jackson, the AP report said the delay ended with her release on Feb. 6, after which she said she found work and stayed with friends while she worked with her attorney to file a lawsuit against the county seeking compensation for the mental anguish she endured during the 49 extra days. Jackson told AP, “I’m trying to survive until then, I hope,” describing the immediate hardship that continued even after leaving jail.
Disclosure: ACLU Texas and University of Texas at Austin have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members,