Several week ago, Jasper County Sheriff Chuck Havard was notified by the Texas Jail Commission they would be conducting "a limited compliance inspection" on the county jial. On Friday, Sherif Havard was contacted by the jail inspector and she advised him there were three deficiencies found at the Jasper County Jai;. Sheriff Havard sats due to complete transparencies, he wants to share those deficiencies with the citizens of the county.
• Security Rounds – there were some occasions where our personnel were late on making security rounds.
Action Taken- Due to concerns with some of the handheld electronic security devices that we currently utilize to help us document and log our security checks, we will revert back to manually documenting security rounds on written logs. Additionally, I have implemented more supervisory audit checks to ensure these security checks are being done in a timely manner.
• Operational Plans regarding Inmate Classifications- in an attempt to exceed Jail Commission audit requirements, our policy (until today) was to conduct monthly audit reports. We were only conducting audit reports on a quarterly basis. The Jail Commission only requires one audit report annually.
Action taken- we will now only conduct an annual audit report to simplify our requirements. This still meets the standards of the Jail Commission and will make our operational plan easier to follow. Our operational plan will be updated immediately.
• Inmate Housing Error- of the documents submitted for review to the Jail Commission for our inspection, the inspector found one instance where our personnel housed a lower security classified inmate with a higher security classified inmate. This was an error made unintentionally. However, the inmate should have been housed in a different location.
Action Taken- we will ensure our supervisors are checking and double checking each inmate’s classification status to ensure this doesn’t happen again.
For the last several months, our jail has been under construction with a major expansion and we are currently replacing all antiquated and out of date security equipment. I have taken immediate steps to correct these issues and we expect to be in compliance with all commission rules moving forward. I want to thank Inspector Perez for her assistance and guidance.
I appreciate our Jail Administrator, Joe Pomponio, and our entire correctional staff for the work they are doing. Managing a county jail is a very big responsibility and can be extremely daunting and tedious. There are many moving parts within a correctional facility. It is a very challenging, complex operation.
I am proud of the job our correctional staff do and we will continue to protect and rehabilitate people that are incarcerated in our facility to the best of our ability.
Havard