Here’s how the newspaper put it in one article:

... a Houston Chronicle investigation has found misuse of force by staff against inmates is prevalent and hard to prove, especially when jail staff file charges against inmates in altercations during which their own actions have been called into question. Between 2009 and May of this year, the Harris County Sheriff’s office has pursued charges more than 900 times against inmates for harassment, assault and other crimes against public servants stemming from incidents within the jail, according to court records. With the U.S. Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division continuing its review of excessive force by jail staff and pursuing an “ongoing law enforcement proceeding” in the jail, the Chronicle found that jail staff members have been disciplined in more than 120 incidents for misuse of force and other abuses of authority since 2009, records show. Several of those disciplined have been involved in dozens of inmate prosecutions.

These oft-disciplined guards are demonstrably untrustworthy. Yet their word is good enough to convict men of jailable offenses. Grave injustices are surely a result. The newspaper investigation noted other cases of video contradicting the narrative of jail guards. And it found “14 Harris County deputies and sergeants with disciplinary histories related to use of force incidents who filed charges in 50 separate cases in which inmates were charged with crimes against jail staff since 2009.”

Keep that year in mind.

The series also found “eight cases in which inmates were choked, punched or kicked by detention officers and then ended up facing felony charges for alleged crimes against staff members, even though jailers were later disciplined for misconduct in connection with the same incidents.” And it reported that since 2009, “fifty-five inmates died in the jail while awaiting adjudication,” never receiving the day in court that is their constitutional right. The jail system has failed to prevent suicides, too, sometimes due to breaches in protocol that violate federal law.

Summing up the status quo in Harris County, the criminal-justice blog Grits for Breakfast wrote:

If you’re too poor to post bond in Houston, your bail hearing will be a joke, with no lawyer to represent or speak up for you. You might get sick in jail or be beaten by a guard then convicted of a felony for assaulting him. Even if you’re innocent. And if despair overtakes you and you attempt suicide, maybe no one will be there to stop you; perhaps they’ll even falsify records to cover up their negligence.

It would be comforting to think that this jail system’s problems are due to the myopia of local leaders, and that the revelation of these serious problems will directly lead to improvements.

But this same jail system was investigated by the Department of Justice back in 2009. And numerous shortcomings were documented in a formal report. The findings are here.