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HUNTSVILLE (AP) – Texas’ sprawling prison and criminal justice system is facing a dangerous staffing crisis that puts inmates and staff at risk — and it could soon run out of room to house the projected number of incarcerated people, according to the state commission that reviews the performance of Texas agencies.

The 189-page report documents severe staffing shortages among both correctional and parole officers that have become extremely costly and diminished public safety. Some prisons are operating with up to 70% of prison guard positions unfilled and the turnover rate among all Texas Department of Criminal Justice staff is 26%. The staffing challenges come as the growing prison population is expected to exceed bed capacity by the end of next year.

The Texas Sunset Advisory Commission staff, which published the report, recommends TDCJ reallocate its staff, close the facilities with persistent staffing challenges and retrofit existing units to add more beds. The staff report suggested the agency prioritize closing prisons that lack air conditioning. About two-thirds of prison beds are in areas without climate control, which creates sweltering conditions that are the subject of an ongoing lawsuit.

The report also details the department’s outdated record-keeping practices, which largely rely on paper-based processes and manual data entry. That system has led the prison system to wrongfully release 34 inmates in the past decade. It also doesn’t fully record the type of force used in guards’ physical altercations with inmates and doesn’t completely track the types of employee grievances.

TDCJ is also not fully tracking the use or effectiveness of rehabilitation and reentry programs that cost taxpayers millions of dollars, the report found.

“Without data on whether a program is achieving its intended goal, whether that is reducing recidivism or increasing employment after incarceration, the report rightly notes that Texans cannot be assured that their money is being put to the best use,” said Marc Levin, Chief Policy Counsel on the Council on Criminal Justice.

The Commission reviews the performance of state agencies, identifies problems within them and forwards recommended changes to the Legislature. It is overseen by 10 state lawmakers and two members of the public. The speaker of the Texas House and the lieutenant governor, who presides over the Senate, appoint the commissioners.

Last week’s report from Commission staff focused on Texas’ Department of Criminal Justice, the Board of Pardons and Paroles, the Correctional Managed Health Care Committee and the Windham School District. Together, those entities house about 139,000 inmates and manage roughly 437,000 people on parole and probation.

Commissioners are scheduled to hear public testimony on the staff report on Nov. 14. Commissioners’ final recommendations are expected to be sent to lawmakers on Dec. 12 ahead of the legislative session that begins in January.

During an August interview with The Tribune, TDCJ spokesperson Amanda Hernandez said that recruitment is a top priority and that the agency is undergoing a dramatic “culture shift” that centers rehabilitation of inmates over punishment.
Prison staffing crisis

TDCJ’s staffing crisis has put both inmates and staff at risk, the report found.

Forty percent of respondents to a correctional staff survey said they feel unsafe in prison. In 2023, the agency recorded more than 2,000 “adverse events,” surpassing a pre-COVID-19 high. Adverse events include inmate assaults, sexual assaults, homicides and escape attempts. Correctional officers say exposure to these events negatively impacts their physical and mental health and makes their jobs more difficult.

Most staff report working beyond normal hours to compensate for the staffing challenges, and some understaffed facilities have a rotating schedule of mandatory overtime. Although internal policy prohibits staff from working more than 16 hours a day or 10 days in a row, violations of both of these rules are common.

Staff who are ineligible for overtime instead earn compensatory paid time off, which lapses after two years. Staff report difficulty taking that time off and in 2023 reportedly lost time equivalent to 95 years of time off due to the expiration.

Adding to employees’ frustration is a delay in performance evaluations. As of April 2024, TDCJ was overdue on performance evaluations for 14,453 individuals, contributing to delays in pay raises.

In survey responses, employees also pointed to punitive leadership and unfair treatment from supervisors as well as unrealistic expectations. For example, a correctional officer who is responsible for 300 inmates would have just six seconds to perform each inmate check in order to comply with their primary duties.

“Sunset staff repeatedly heard from employees about a culture trickling down from upper levels of agency leadership of ‘doing more with less’ and ‘making it work,’” the report states. “Under this dynamic, the crush of tasks described above creates a lose-lose scenario for officers and other staff who risk punishment for admitting failure to complete all required tasks, feel they must deceive supervisors or falsify recordkeeping, and wind up having to make high-stakes prioritizing decisions.”

To address staffing shortages, the report recommends that TDCJ submit a 10-year plan that identifies facility and capacity needs amid a growing population and ongoing staffing issues. The Sunset staff also recommends phasing out certain facilities, particularly those with high vacancy rates and high deferred maintenance costs. The report also recommends that TDCJ streamline how employees file workplace complaints, since the current process is not confidential and is unclear.
Outdated record keeping

TDCJ uses outdated technology and lacks streamlined processes to manage complicated systems, the Commission staff found. The agency’s IT staff has built different case management databases for departments instead of customizing one system to fit the needs of different groups, for example.

Sunset staff also found numerous examples of incomplete data. For example, while TDCJ collects data on use-of-force incidents, it doesn’t document what type of force was used, nor does it categorize the type of employee complaints and grievances that are filed.

“TDCJ’s inefficient, siloed and outdated data governance leads to errors that can hinder the agency’s ability to ensure safety to inmates, staff, and the public,” the report states.

“TDCJ too quickly defaults to a cultural inertia of doing things the way they have always been done,” the report later says, noting that staff showed a “deep resistance” to moving away from paper-based processes.

Staff often have to enter the same data into multiple databases, and manual entry has resulted in critical errors. Over the past 10 years, 34 inmates were wrongly released because of incorrect data entry.

Sunset staff advised TDCJ to establish an office of modernization that would identify ways to modernize the agency and recommended that they prioritize improving data collection.
Rehabilitation programs lack oversight

The Legislature has allocated millions of taxpayer dollars toward rehabilitation, reentry and education programs, but TDCJ does not keep a list of active programs. The agency provided a range of estimates, from 97 to 2,000 of the number of active programs. Only a small fraction of the total number of programs are evaluated, even though state statute requires TDCJ to evaluate their effectiveness.

Some programs, the report noted, are associated with increased rates of recidivism. At times, these adverse outcomes are because TDCJ over-enrolls the program, not because of issues with the program itself.

The Commission staff also found that the agency takes a long time to place inmates in parole programs, limiting inmates’ opportunities for rehabilitation and costing taxpayers millions of dollars by having to continue to house inmates who otherwise could be released. In 2023, the average wait time for a particular substance use program was 146 days, for example. Those long placement times cost millions of dollars a year.

TDCJ also relies on about 27,500 volunteers to help provide programming for inmates but does not evaluate these programs. Although TDCJ wardens are legally required to identify volunteer organizations and submit a report annually to summarize their activities, most do not do so.

Sunset staff recommends that TDCJ comprehensively inventory rehabilitation and reentry programs and conduct biennial program evaluations. They also suggest that TDCJ track parole program placements to understand placement delays.

In an emailed statement, Hernandez, the agency spokesperson, said TDCJ “appreciates the work of the Sunset Advisory Commission staff, and will continue to collaborate with that staff as they present the results of their review to the Commission.”

“This report is just one step of the process, and we are eager to continue collaborating with the Commission staff, the Commission, and the Legislature during the upcoming session,” she said.

NEW YORK (AP) — The massive port workers’ strike that has crippled all the major dockyards on the Eastern seaboard of the U.S. is highlighting a fear held by many workers: Eventually, we will all be replaced by machines.

The International Longshoremen’s Association, which represents the approximately 45,000 dock workers who walked off the job Tuesday, is testing whether it’s possible to fight back.

The union is demanding, along with hefty pay raises, a total ban on the automation of grates, cranes and container-moving trucks in its ports. But it’s unclear whether they’ll be able to stave off a trend that has seeped into virtually every workspace.

The growth of automation and technological advances have created tension between workers and management since the Industrial Revolution, when machines first began to manufacture goods that had previously been made by hand. And with the growing use of artificial intelligence, the group of jobs workers perceive as threatened with disruption is ever-widening.

“You cannot bet against the march of technology,” said Yossi Sheffi, director of the MIT Center for Transportation & Logistics. “You cannot ban automation, because it will creep up in other places.”

History of pushback against automation
It’s not the first time that port workers have resisted automation. In 1960, as ports on the West Coast introduced machinery to move cargo once moved by hand, the union representing longshoremen negotiated protections for workers, including assurances that the current workforce would not be laid off, according to the International Longshore & Warehouse Union.

Harry Bridges, who led the union at the time, negotiated pay increases and job security arrangements for some of the workers, said Adam Seth Litwin, associate professor of industrial and labor relations at Cornell University.

“He saw that this was going to become potentially a real problem if he didn’t try to get ahead of it,” Litwin said. “Essentially what he was saying was, ‘I recognize the reality of what’s happening here, and the way to best represent my members is to make sure that they are protected.’”

The downside was that as port machinery became more common, the size of the union eroded precipitously over the years.

The coal industry went through a similar reckoning as conveyor belts and other machines displaced laborers. Union leader John Lewis negotiated for job security and pay increases for existing workers, but the encroachment of machines led to fewer hires, and over time the workforce and union ranks shrunk.

“Amongst coal miners today, he isn’t necessarily a big hero, but he knew what he was doing. And I think he also recognized that fighting automation rarely makes a whole lot of economic sense, particularly if you’re talking about a market that’s at all competitive,” Litwin said.

Some dockyards outside the U.S are far more automated and efficient, especially ports in Dubai, Singapore and Rotterdam, Sheffi said.

How to protect workers
There are ways unions and employers can protect workers. Some unions have negotiated that employees must receive guaranteed employment protection if companies bring in technologies that could make their jobs obsolete. Others have bargained for employers to provide tuition reimbursement or retraining programs so workers can shift into other roles when machines come in.

“The trick is to make it over time, not to do it haphazardly,” Sheffi said.

When health care giant Kaiser Permanente switched from paper to digital medical records a decade ago, dozens of unions bargained together to ensure workers wouldn’t lose jobs or face wage reductions as a result of the technology deployment. Drivers who moved boxes of medical records to warehouses and librarians who retrieved paper files who were trained and reassigned to roles such as medical librarians or coders, Litwin said.

“They ultimately all got pay increases because they ended up being in jobs that ended up being more highly skilled,” Litwin said.
AI is starting to disrupt white collar jobs

Workers such as cashiers or file clerks who perform routine tasks and have lower levels of education face the greatest risks of their jobs being automated, according to Dawn Locke, a director at the U.S. Government Accountability Office. But the growth of artificial intelligence is increasingly threatening cognitive jobs.

In the months after the launch of ChatGPT, a generative AI tool that can compose essays, write computer code and engage in conversations, job postings for writers, coders and artists plummeted.

“Now we see law firms putting AI to use and cutting the number of junior associates,” Sheffi said. “But it’s a problem. How do you become a senior associate arguing before the Supreme Court if you don’t start as a junior associate?”

When companies embrace artificial intelligence, it doesn’t always result in workers losing jobs. In some cases the productivity gains enabled by automation or AI make workplaces more profitable, enabling them to hire even more workers.

But unions aren’t taking any chances. In September, video game performers reached an agreement after striking with 80 games that provided protections around exploitative uses of artificial intelligence.

Last year, Hollywood screenwriters concerned that scripts would soon be written by artificial intelligence won protections against the use of AI after a five-month strike.

“More and more people who thought they were immune from automation are probably looking to groups like the longshoremen and thinking, ‘Wait a second, actually, I may not be that far removed from this,’” Litwin said.

ODESSA, Texas (AP) — West Texans will have their say this week regarding a proposed carbon dioxide injection site when the Environmental Protection Agency holds a series of public meetings in Ector County.

The proposed project — which has been under review for the last two years — would be the largest of its kind in the United States. Occidental Petroleum Corporation, or Oxy, an oil and gas company based in Houston, wants federal approval to capture and store an estimated 722,000 metric tons of carbon dioxide in three injection wells 4,400 feet underground.

“We know that achieving global net zero by 2050 requires technological solutions that can quickly reduce emissions on a large-scale,” William Fitzgerald, a spokesperson for Oxy, said in a statement. Oxy “has been safely and securely storing CO2 underground for more than 50 years.”

Known as Stratos, the facility would be located 20 miles southwest of Odessa. Oxy previously broke ground last year. Public testimony begins Wednesday with an information session at 7 p.m. and ends Oct. 7. The agency can take up to 90 days to issue a final decision, including changes to the proposal.

If approved, Oxy would receive what’s known as Class VI permits, the first of their kind in Texas and the surrounding region that includes New Mexico, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Louisiana and 66 Tribal Nations.

Certain sectors of the energy industry have embraced carbon capture and storage to propel the nation toward its climate goals. For its part, the federal government has put up about $12 billion for eligible projects under the Infrastructure Investment and Jobs Act.

Climate advocates argue that the evidence about the advantages of decarbonization is insufficient and that it falls short of offsetting the greenhouse gases emitted by removing them from the atmosphere.

Companies are pursuing projects anyway. Multiple plans to capture and store carbon dioxide are underway in Texas, including a natural gas power plant in Baytown owned by Calpine Texas CCUS Holdings, which was eligible for up to $270 million in federal dollars. A second San Antonio-based gas company, Howard Energy Partners, was awarded $3 million in federal money to “evaluate the technical and economic feasibility” of transporting 250 million tons of carbon dioxide from the Gulf Coast. Another project in southeast Texas, owned in part by Chevron, spans almost 100,000 acres.

None, however, are close to the amount of carbon dioxide Oxy hopes to capture, inject and store underground.

Oxy is one of the top oil and gas producers in the Permian Basin. With roughly 2.8 million acres between Texas and New Mexico and the biggest direct air capture facility in its portfolio, the company has become a household name in the Texas oil and gas industry. The proposed injection sites will create 120 jobs, Oxy said in a statement.

Oxy said the Stratos project will provide more jobs, workforce training programs, educational opportunities and economic development in the region, but did not provide specifics. Earlier reports said the site will cost about $1 billion to construct.

While it is unclear whether this project qualified for federal incentives, 1PointFive, the company’s subsidiary dedicated to carbon capture, in September received $500 million for a direct air capture plant in South Texas.

Carbon dioxide is a byproduct of oil and gas production. When a fossil fuel company burns coal, crude oil, or natural gas, it emits carbon dioxide. The greenhouse gas traps heat and prevents the atmosphere from cooling.

Oxy intends to capture and store carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and put it underground. Federal regulators determined that the energy firm met every requirement under the Safe Drinking Water Act and accounted for the protection of groundwater. Their review also concluded that the risk of seismicity due to the injections was minimal.

And if necessary, the permit “also puts requirements in place in the event of potential groundwater contamination and/or seismic activity, including shutting down injection operations,” an agency spokesperson said.

Oxy will capture carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through direct air capture, or DAC. The technology separates the gas from other particles in the air and then raises the temperature to incinerate them, leaving only the carbon dioxide. The equipment compresses the remaining gas by raising the pressure until it is the consistency of a brine that is transported and stored permanently in pockets of rock underground.

According to the proposal, Oxy will monitor the pressure and temperature of the proposed sites on the surface of the well and downhole. Temperature and pressure gauges will be measured every second on the surface and every ten seconds in the well, providing a reading every ten minutes. A change in pressure could indicate a problem.

The proposal stated that operators would monitor corrosion in the well four times a year or every three months. Similarly, the groundwater will be monitored every three months unless the regulators ask for additional testing. After three years, groundwater monitoring will occur once annually. The company must alert the EPA 30 days before most tests or if there are any changes. It must also alert them of any malfunctions within 24 hours.

The oil and gas industry introduced carbon capture and sequestration to remediate excess greenhouse gas emissions from its operations since the 1970s. These emissions harm human health and deteriorate the atmosphere, and scientists agree they spur climate change. Industry leaders say it will help the country meet its climate goals and cool global temperatures.

The benefits of carbon capture and storage have been fiercely debated for as long as the technology has existed. Climate advocates and scientists have been skeptical. They say no project has worked fast enough to offset the greenhouse gas emissions from major emitters.

A handful of proposals in Louisiana were subject to backlash from the community, which expressed concerns over contamination.

Commission Shift, a Texas-based watchdog group, said carbon capture and storage threaten groundwater sources. In a statement, the organization said the EPA should refrain from approving the project until the state resolves other lingering issues with saltwater injections, another underground disposal technique contributing to earthquakes in West Texas.

“Outside of the ineffectiveness and inefficiency of (carbon caputure) as a climate mitigation solution, the injection and sequestration of carbon dioxide is dangerous to the land, water, communities, and ecosystems nearby,” Paige Powell, senior policy manager for Commission Shift, said in a statement on Friday.

Ramanan Krishnamoorti, senior vice president of energy at The University of Houston, said neither the public nor the industry should consider carbon capture a permanent solution. He said that residents should pay particular attention to the precautions that Oxy and the EPA will take in case of a leak or contamination.

“We need not build up our hopes that this is the be-all, end-all solution, but the solution that has a time and place,” said Krishnamoorti, an advocate of carbon capture and sequestration technology. “Let’s use it as appropriate, but with very clear eyes that we understand what the hazards are, what the risks are, and how do we make sure that we lessen the risk to the maximum extent possible, and yet be able to do it reasonably.”

SOUTH TEXAS – The Border Report says that a series of new reports find that immigrants on the South Texas border are helping to create jobs, paying taxes and driving the local economies. DHS increases amount of time asylum regulations at Southwest border in effect The four reports were released by the American Immigration Council in partnership with the Brownsville Chamber of Commerce and Texans for Economic Growth and studied immigrant contributions to the economies of McAllen, Laredo, Brownsville and the mid-Valley of the Rio Grande Valley from 2014 to 2019, based on data from the U.S. Census Bureau. In McAllen, immigrants were credited with preserving or creating 10,500 local manufacturing jobs that would have otherwise vanished or moved to other locations in 2019, according to the “Immigrants in McAllen” report.

In Laredo, immigrants paid over $194 million in federal taxes and $142 million in local taxes in 2019, according to the “Immigrants in Laredo” report. In the mid-Rio Grande Valley, fewer immigrants received Medicare or Medicaid benefits in 2019, 33.8%, compared to 39.2% of U.S.-born residents, according to the “Immigrants in Middle Rio Grande Valley” report. In Brownsville, although immigrants made up less than a quarter of the overall population — 23.4% — they comprised over half, or 53.3% of entrepreneurs in the border city in 2019. They also were 160.4% more likely to be entrepreneurs than their U.S.-born counterparts, according to the “Immigrants in Brownsville” report. “It really goes to show that immigrants are having a great impact on the economy and are really contributing well to the region,” Juan Avilez, state policy associate for the nonprofit American Immigration Council, told Border Report on Monday. “If you look across the board at these reports, immigrants really are punching well above their way in terms of entrepreneurial spirit and how much of the entrepreneur workforce they make,” Avilez said. “And I think that speaks to just their ability to create jobs in those regions, and how greatly they’re able to contribute in those areas. So, I think really they’re driving innovation in a lot of these areas, creating jobs, not just for other immigrants, but for all the residents.” The data was taken from the Census Bureau’s American Community Surveys, which study economics, occupations, education attainment and home ownership within the country.

HOUSTON – The Houston Chronicle reports that several hundred employees at Citgo Petroleum’s Houston headquarters can be sure of only one thing as an affiliate of a Florida hedge fund prepares to buy the company: change is coming. Elliott Management is known for its strong hand. It seizes control of companies and squeezes value from them by shaking up management, slashing spending and creating more efficient versions that are more profitable for shareholders. Now, Elliott is setting its sights on Citgo. A U.S. court aims to sell Venezuelan-owned Citgo at auction to Amber Energy, a new company backed by Elliott, and use the proceeds to pay some of Venezuela’s debts. Amber Energy won the bidding process for Citgo, according to a Friday court filing, after it agreed to buy the oil refining company based in Houston for $7.29 billion. The deal still requires approval from the U.S. District Court in Delaware, which will consider objections over the coming weeks.

Citgo, which directly employs roughly 3,300 people as well as 2,500 contractors, owns three major refineries in Corpus Christi, Lake Charles, La., and Lemont, a Chicago suburb. It also operates several pipelines and dozens of terminals in the East Coast and Great Lakes regions, where it stores and distributes gasoline, diesel and jet fuel. At the helm of the newly launched Amber Energy are two refining industry veterans who built and sold refining companies to larger ones: Gregory Goff, a board member at Exxon Mobil who was previously the chief executive of Andeavor, and Jeff Stevens, previously the chief executive of Western Refining. Does this new Elliott affiliate plan to grow Citgo, or sell it for parts? The answer to that question could determine the fate of Citgo’s Houston headquarters. Amber said in a statement that it plans to reinvest in the company, and that it would “potentially pursue” larger strategic investments that could make the company more profitable. It declined to comment further. Amber’s statements about growth could be good news for employees, said Mike Collier, transaction advisory services partner with Weaver, a Houston-based accounting firm. Elliott is following a common private equity template with Citgo, which has likely had to defer big-picture investments while it waits for the dust to settle in the long-running dispute over its assets.

BEAUMONT – A Nederland man has been sentenced to 20 years in federal prison for violations in the Eastern District of Texas, announced U.S. Attorney Damien M. Diggs.

Tarrell Donald Nowlin, 53, pleaded guilty to Hobbs Act robbery and was sentenced to 240 months in federal prison by U.S. District Judge Marcia A. Crone on October 1, 2024.

According to court documents, on January 16, 2024, law enforcement officers responded to a call regarding an armed robbery at the Speedway Gas Station located on Eastex Freeway in Beaumont. The store clerk reported the assailant pulled into the parking lot and parked near one of the gas pumps. The driver then entered the business and pointed a revolver at the clerk and demanded money. The clerk opened the cash register, and the assailant took approximately $550 cash and left the store. Law enforcement reviewed video footage from the gas station and local surrounding businesses and were able to identify Nowlin as the assailant. Further investigation revealed Nowlin was a career offender with three prior robbery convictions. Nowlin was indicted by a federal grand jury on April 3, 2024.

This case is part of Project Safe Neighborhoods (PSN), a program bringing together all levels of law enforcement and the communities they serve to reduce violent crime and gun violence, and to make our neighborhoods safer for everyone. On May 26, 2021, the Department launched a violent crime reduction strategy strengthening PSN based on these core principles: fostering trust and legitimacy in our communities, supporting community-based organizations that help prevent violence from occurring in the first place, setting focused and strategic enforcement priorities, and measuring the results.

This case was investigated by the FBI, Beaumont Police Department and Nederland Police Department and prosecuted by Assistant U.S. Attorney Matthew Quinn.