Paper: Houston Chronicle

Date: Wed 04/11/07

Section: B Page: 8 Edition: 3 STAR

Sinister statistic / Rising number of inmate deaths in Harris County Jail belies assurances that medical care and sanitary conditions are satisfactory.

Staff

The Chronicle recently reported that more than 100 Harris County jail inmates had died while in custody over a six-year period beginning in 2001. The investigation by reporter Steve McVicker focused on cases that involved allegations of inadequate response or brutality by jailers, unsanitary conditions and questionable access to medical treatment and prescription drugs.

The story prompted Sheriff Tommy Thomas to issue a rebuttal claiming the mortality rate of prisoners was exaggerated and that there was no factual basis for charges by critics that poor sanitation contributed to fatal infections. In fact, wrote Thomas, the jail staff provides "exemplary health care."

A follow-up report by McVicker indicates the sheriff has some more explaining to do. In the first three months of this year, 11 fatalities occurred at the jail, doubling last year's rate and nearly equalling the 12 deaths reported for all of 2004. One of the recent fatalities involved 41-year-old Kimberley Humphries, who apparently died from a staph infection contracted while being held at the downtown jail.

After several complaints for various symptoms, she was treated at the jail clinic and returned to her cell. Her condition worsened, and on Dec. 30, Humphries was transported from the jail to LBJ Hospital with a running sore under her right arm and suffering from renal failure.

She died there 24 days later. Her sister blames medical neglect by jail staffers for her terminal infection. "She kept trying to get medical treatment, trying to get them to help," Gloria Humphries told McVicker.

from blood infections contracted at the jail. Overcrowding, poor ventilation and sanitation, and failure to promptly address medical complaints can allow staph and other infections to spread swiftly. Sixty medical quarantines have been necessary at the jail in five years. At least two were related to staph infections.

In his Feb. 26 letter to the editor, Thomas noted that the jail's death rate was far below that of Harris County's population. But Thomas, unfamiliar with the principles that govern statistics, miscalculated. In 2002, the year he cited, 22 inmates died. The jail's population was below 10,000, resulting in a mortality rate of more than 220 deaths per 100,000. The general population's mortality rate, according to Thomas, was only 121 - a little more than half the jail's rate.

Thomas also ignored the fact that the general population includes the elderly and infirm, the seriously ill and those at risk from driving, occupation accidents and violence. Inmates should be safer than the general population, not more at risk.

Rather than dismissing the rising number of inmate deaths as inconsequential and without meaning, Thomas should concentrate on improving jail conditions to prevent prisoners from getting so sick while in custody that even a hospital can't save them.

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