A woman who has filed a wrongful-death lawsuit against administrators with the Llano County Jail says they neglected her son, who died last year. An attorney for the administrators has said they have done nothing wrong.

A study of 41 local jails has found that juveniles awaiting trial often face hours of isolation daily or exposure to abuse by older inmates. County jails struggle to deal with a population they are not equipped or trained to handle. 

A judge's expected ruling forcing the state to find room to treat mentally ill inmates is sending officials in search of space at already-full mental hospitals. 

County jail inmates are often released in the dark of night with little or no money and no transportation. Despite tragic stories of death and assaults, lawmakers this year failed to approve legislation that would require releases during daylight hours. 

Adan Muñoz, executive director of the Texas Commission on Jail Standards talks with The Texas Tribune about budget cuts and the challenges of running a jail.

The director of the Texas Commission on Jail Standards on the agency's budget cuts, jail overcrowding and eroding facilities. 

Lt. Ronny Taylor talks about some of the security measures in place to prevent inmates from escaping from the Harris County Jail in Houston.

The family of Amy Lynn Cowling today filed a lawsuit against Gregg County, alleging the inaction of jail officials there led to the death of the 33-year-old mother of three just after Christmas last year.

Beginning next year, jails like the one in Gregg County where Amy Lynn Cowling died could be required to tell state officials how many staff members leave their jobs every month. Experts say there likely is a correlation between high staff turnover rates and increased deaths. 

State jail officials would get a clearer picture of potential problems in county lockups under a bill a Senate panel considered on Tuesday that would require counties to report the monthly turnover rate among jailers.

To keep critical jail inspections going even as they cut funding to the agency that provides them, lawmakers are proposing that the counties pay for them.

Amy Lynn Cowling's death is just the most recent at the Gregg County Jail in Longview. Interviews and public documents reveal a troubled facility, where the staff turnover rate is unusually high and inmates report shoddy medical care. 

Slashing funds for community-based mental health care will hurt taxpayers and degrade the quality of life for thousands of mentally ill Texans and their families, Harris County Jail officials told Texas budget writers today in written testimony for the Senate Finance Committee.

The jail conditions expert and professor at the University of Texas' LBJ School of Public Affairs on why maintaining treatment programs that keep offenders in their communities and reducing some of the harsh, long-term jail sentences often doled out in Texas' notoriously tough criminal justice system could be more cost-efficient and allow Texas to close prisons.

Mentally ill offenders and nonviolent criminals are crowding local jails to the point that the facilities could become health hazards and counties are struggling with the cost of housing and caring for the burgeoning population, according to a new report from the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition.

The first Hispanic sheriff in Harris County history on growing up as a child of legal immigrants, how his mom helped change his liberal views about illegal immigration and whether Houston is a sanctuary city.

Across Texas, defendants charged with misdemeanor offenses are choosing to spend time in the local lockup rather than endure months on probation. They don’t want to deal with the hassle of probation's conditions, and they can’t afford the thousands of dollars in fees that it requires. People on both sides of the criminal justice system agree that the trend is troubling: It’s helping to fill local jails beyond capacity, and even worse, it means that people charged with DWI, possession of small amounts of drugs and family violence are not getting the treatment they need.

Ramsey on the fourth University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll (with insights into the statewide races, issues, the budget, and Texans' view of the national scene), Hamilton and Thevenot in Galveston on the anniversary of Hurricane Ike, Ramshaw on secret hearings that separate children from their guardians, Hu on what former state Rep. Bill Zedler did for doctor-donors who were under investigation, Aguilar on the troubles around Mexico's bicentennial, Galbraith talks coal and wind with the head of the Sierra Club, E. Smith interviews state Rep. Debbie Riddle about tourism babies and godless liberals, Grissom on why complaints about city jails go unaddressed, Philpott on the debate that will apparently never happen and Stiles continues to put the major-party gubernatorial candidates on the map: The best of our best from September 13 to 17, 2010.