"There's no more fundamental obligation that jails have than to keep the people inside them safe and alive," said Michele Deitch, a distinguished senior lecturer who focuses on criminal justice policy issues and deaths in custody at the University of Texas LBJ School of Public Affairs. "And if we're not tracking what's happening to the people in there, we don't know what's going on inside those jails."
HHSC tells KXAN it is not aware of any other state agency currently tracking deaths on the waitlist — though both the attorney general's office and the TCJS already require sheriff's offices to submit forms or participate in investigations surrounding custodial deaths in jails. While competency may be included in resulting reports, those agencies tell KXAN they do not currently compile that information for analysis. But Deitch suggests it is a simple step they could take, then share with HHSC for tracking.
"The Commission on Jail Standards could be requiring counties to be submitting that information," she said. "Each one of those people who died is a person with a story and people they've left behind who are suffering as a result of this."