Emergency meeting set for jail issues

Liberty County commissioners will hold an emergency meeting tomorrow morning, but the emergency is not about Imelda. The emergency is a Sept. 3 remedial order from the Texas Commission on Jail Standards and whether the county will go to court over it.

The Vindicator has not, as yet, had any luck pulling up a copy of that Sept. 3 order, but the Jail Standards Commission has been on the county’s tail for a good while now regarding its handling of mentally disabled inmates, and only two weeks ago an inmate was discovered having hanged himself in his cell with a bed sheet.

Last April and then again in June the Commission on Jail Standards issued reports citing the Liberty County jail’s failure to provide medication to an inmate in accordance with a doctor’s order; its failure to either make or document notifications when required to do so by the screening form for suicide and medical/mental/developmental impairments; and the lack of evidence showing that the jail had checked the mental health history of inmates against a database maintained by the Department of State Health Services as it is required to do.

The Liberty County Jail is operated by The GEO Group, Inc. a Florida-based company. That company posted a job opening Sept. 19 for a chief of security at the Liberty County Jail.