"A lot of things fueled the July 18 riot at the Dolph Briscoe Unit in southwest Texas. Prisoners were increasingly upset about the coronavirus pandemic. They couldn’t have visitors or make phone calls. The prison was understaffed. The medium-security unit wasn’t supposed to hold high-risk prisoners, but it did. The local temperature hit 102 degrees.
"But one thing helped make the chaos possible: lame locks. At Briscoe and many other prisons across Texas, prisoners can let themselves out of their cells whenever they want, sometimes using tools as simple as a shoelace and a bar of soap. More than a dozen current and former corrections-department employees told The Marshall Project about prisoners opening up their locked cells from Amarillo to Texarkana."
Prisoner advocates and policy experts like LBJ's Michele Deitch have been pushing for years for the creation of an independent oversight body to monitor and prevent recurring problems in state prisons, including poor conditions, medical care and security.