Texas is attempting to punish its means out of a jail overdose disaster

This text was initially printed by the Texas Observer, a nonprofit investigative information outlet and journal. Join their weekly e-newsletter, or observe them on Fb, X, and Bluesky.

D’Mitri Davis, 36, met his youthful brother Dominique Decide for the primary time in 2024, after they have been each in jail. The 2 have been residing on the French Robertson Unit in Abilene after they have been coincidentally enrolled in the identical grownup training course. They have been unaware of the household connection till an opportunity dialog in school. 

“Whose final title is Davis?” Decide requested, after glancing at classwork stacked on the entrance of the room. Decide had been adopted, however he’d met his organic dad in 2018. His dad informed him that Decide had a half-brother in jail, so each time the 24-year-old met somebody with that surname, he puzzled in the event that they have been associated.

Davis was skeptical. He’d grown up in Galveston along with his mother and his sister, the one sibling he knew. He took a tougher take a look at Decide solely when the youthful man talked about being from Beaumont. As an grownup, Davis, too, had lastly linked along with his dad, who had fathered “an entire soccer workforce” someplace in southeast Texas.

Although Davis had a darker complexion and extra facial hair than Decide, Davis seen a nebulous household resemblance. “After I regarded in his face, I noticed my dad,” he recalled in a June interview. 

Davis provided up his ID badge, which confirmed the total title he shared along with his father. Decide, already satisfied, started leaping up and down, saying: “That’s my brother! That’s my brother!”

After their fortunate assembly, the 2 grew shut. Decide had been struggling, feeling overwhelmed by the burden of his 25-year sentence. Nobody on the skin would take his calls. Feeling unmoored, he’d began utilizing medicine, which have been seemingly in all places in jail. 

“I misplaced hope, and I didn’t have a household on the time,” Decide informed the Texas Observer. Assembly his brother gave him one thing to carry onto and helped him ease off on the medicine.

Their encounters made Davis take into consideration his personal selections. He’d been dealing in Galveston when he was busted and despatched to jail. He wasn’t utilizing inside, however he’d stayed within the sport.

Prisons are full of individuals like Decide, who’re susceptible to habit, and Davis, who’ve backgrounds as sellers. The speed of substance-use issues is sort of six occasions larger amongst prisoners than within the free world, in response to knowledge from the Bureau of Justice Statistics and the Texas Division of State Well being Companies. 

Texas prisons have seen an explosion of medicine. It’s a tough place to get clear, a straightforward place to get excessive, and an more and more widespread place to die of an overdose, an investigation by the Observer reveals. Confirmed drug-related deaths in Texas prisons and state jails have steadily risen from simply 4 in 2020 to at the least 131 in 2025.

However entry to agency-led remedy packages in Texas prisons has been traditionally restricted to these already permitted for parole. The Texas Division of Felony Justice (TDCJ) says it applied extra methods this 12 months for folks to voluntarily search remedy, however the rollout is incomplete. TDCJ didn’t reply to repeated requests for details about what packages have been obtainable at every unit as of July.

On the unit the place Decide and Davis have been incarcerated, the one choice was a volunteer-led group.

Davis discovered it arduous to observe his brother battle with habit. To Davis, dealing had all the time been a way to an finish: Prisoners don’t receives a commission for his or her labor in Texas, so in the event that they don’t have somebody depositing cash of their account, they haven’t any strategy to buy objects from the commissary, to pay the charges to see a physician or dentist, or to purchase additional stamps to speak with folks outdoors. Davis additionally wished to have the ability to help his youngsters.

 “I used to be nonetheless standing on enterprise via the partitions,” Davis mentioned. “Like, OK, we’ve got faculty developing. I’m taking good care of that. What’s incorrect with the automobile? I’m fixing that.”

Inside Texas prisons, smuggling strategies are evolving, and digital economies are cropping as much as facilitate the commerce. The gamers are each prisoners and guards.

Since 2020, at the least 220 TDCJ workers have been arrested on contraband-related fees, together with drug possession, having a prohibited substance in a correctional facility, participating in organized felony exercise, and bribery. Previously 5 years, 321 prisoners have gotten new fees associated to contraband, which may embody medicine or cell telephones. The division has about 34,000 workers and round 145,000 incarcerated people.

The harms of this drug provide are stark. In Might, the company reported that almost one in 5 in-custody deaths was attributed to an overdose, regardless that since 2022, Narcan has been stocked in prisons. Narcan can reverse the consequences of an overdose from opioids like fentanyl or hydrocodone, nevertheless it’s ineffective in opposition to K2—extraordinarily potent and often-adulterated artificial cannabinoids that may be distributed on paper and have run rampant via the system since at the least 2017. In 2023, 16 jail deaths have been attributed at the least partly to K2; in 2025, that quantity was at the least 113.

The response to this rising situation has largely centered on focusing on sellers like Davis, moderately than providing ongoing remedy to these like Decide. In 2025, it turned a felony to own or convey prohibited substances onto TDCJ property; the regulation additionally applies to contraband cell telephones, which are sometimes used to orchestrate smuggling and offers.

Davis obtained tangled within the enforcement dragnet. He’d been caught with an unlawful mobile phone in 2023, and a 12 months later, he was criminally charged for it. 

He’d profited from dealing inside, the place so many individuals relied on medicine to tamp down their isolation and grief. He’d seen loads of folks so determined fora repair that they’d traded their meals trays and uncared for their hygiene. “Smoke, smoke, smoke,” he mentioned. “You simply go down that rabbit gap.” Now he knew that one of many folks utilizing was household.

After getting in hassle and assembly his brother, he determined to cease dealing.

Davis is aware of, although, that the issue is complicated—and cracking down on folks inside received’t clear up it. Medication enter jail models hid on guests or employees, hidden in packages, dropped over barbed wire fences by drones, and tossed throughout by folks with robust arms in the dark. It’s gotten tougher for officers to trace drug transactions as a result of little money exchanges palms. Most offers are finished by way of digital funds on contraband telephones, which themselves promote for between $1,000 and $3,500. 

OUT OF 30 UNITS WITH THREE OR MORE CONFIRMED DRUG-RELATED DEATHS, ONLY THREE HAVE TDCJ-LED DRUG AND ALCOHOL REHABILITATION.

It’s troublesome to quantify how a lot TDCJ has spent to curb contraband, for the reason that efforts are unfold throughout numerous price range classes: growing employees pay, implementing physique cameras for guards, and updating unit surveillance techniques. However the company does keep a particular price range class for its agency-led rehabilitation packages. This funding has successfully fallen lately: For instance, the price range for TDCJ’s Substance Abuse Felony Punishment program elevated from $99 million in fiscal years 2018-19 to solely $110 million in fiscal years 2026-27, lagging far behind inflation. Over the identical time-frame, the company didn’t ask the Legislature for any important price range will increase to broaden substance abuse programming, even because the company acknowledged in its appropriations requests that decrease rehabilitation funding ranges correlate with better substance abuse in prisons.

Out of the 30 models with three or extra confirmed drug-related deaths from January 2020 via April 2026, solely three have TDCJ-led drug and alcohol rehabilitation packages, in response to the company’s web site. Only a quarter of the state’s 102 models provide this remedy. And these agency-led packages are usually obtainable solely to people who find themselves mandated to do them as a situation of launch. Area constraints imply ready lists will be lengthy, and people packages have had huge staffing shortages lately. In 2023, the emptiness charge for the rehabilitation division was 31 p.c.

“It isn’t for lack of considering it’s a precedence,” mentioned Amanda Hernandez, TDCJ’s director of communications, of the truth that programming isn’t obtainable at each unit. “In the event you have been to ask our management proper now what the largest factor plaguing our company is, it’s going to be contraband and substance use points.”

Hernandez individually informed the Observer: “Regardless of staffing challenges, TDCJ is ready to run substance use programming,” later saying that the company is utilizing expertise like Zoom to present its restricted variety of counselors better attain. 

Merci Wooden, deputy director of the company’s Rehabilitation and Reentry Division, mentioned that the company is working to help volunteer- and peer-led teams that assist fill the remedy hole. TDCJ additionally affords on-line modules on matters like substance abuse that prisoners can entry on their tablets. 

In different phrases, regardless of some urgency from the division, prisoners searching for assist should usually flip to outdoors organizations or to 1 one other.

Julian Alejo first tried medicine when he was 13 years previous. He knew what habit regarded like—his father was an alcoholic who had gotten locked up 4 years earlier—however that didn’t cease Alejo. Leisure medicine turned part of his youth, then his marriage. For some time, he and his spouse obtained sober collectively. Alejo had develop into a father and a licensed plumber. However then, he began utilizing once more, and shortly he failed a drug take a look at. Baby companies took his daughter away, Alejo and his spouse separated, and the habit took over.

By 2013, Alejo was ingesting two circumstances of beer a day and smoking “as a lot meth [as he] may get.” He started shoplifting and promoting the merchandise to help his behavior. One in every of his journeys to Walmart turned ugly. He was arrested, charged with aggravated theft, and given 30 years in jail.

Whereas he was in county jail earlier than being transferred to the jail, his mom died of cirrhosis of the liver. At that time, he promised himself he’d get clear for good—a tall order in jail. However Alejo has saved his phrase. 

In 2019, he began taking courses on sobriety and life abilities, a lot of which weren’t overseen by the rehabilitation division however led by both volunteers or the Windham Faculty District, an unbiased physique that runs instructional programs in TDCJ. He educated for seven months to develop into an authorized restoration specialist. Now he runs his unit’s peer-led program. Greater than 150 “restoration friends” right this moment serve about 50 models, in response to TDCJ, to complement the company’s restricted parole-mandated packages. 

Wooden mentioned the company is shifting its focus to getting folks remedy earlier, not simply via peer mentoring however by evaluating people after they’re booked, growing entry to instructional sources on their tablets, and providing a no-questions-asked assist line, obtainable in 16 models as of July, the place prisoners are informed they’ll self-report drug use with out worry of disciplinary motion. “[This] is basically turning a ship,” she mentioned.

This purported pivot comes following a 2025 Sundown Advisory Fee audit, wherein the legislative committee discovered that TDCJ had didn’t “monitor volunteer- or peer-led packages, going as far as to say these packages are unattainable to trace or management.” 

The Sundown report additional discovered that TDCJ’s agency-led rehab programming was each troublesome to entry and, in some circumstances, ineffective for these capable of enroll.

TDCJ had additionally failed to judge the outcomes of its programming and “[could] not display packages are efficient in lowering recidivism and bettering reentry outcomes,” the audit acknowledged. The fee discovered that one program, the Pre-Launch Substance Abuse Program (PRSAP), even led to larger charges of recidivism, “which means participation in this system is at finest ineffective and at worst could also be so dangerous as to extend the chance of recidivism.” Greater than 20,000 folks have been required to finish PRSAP over the previous 10 years.

Some individuals echo the committee’s findings, saying this remedy included orchestrated interactions which will have finished extra hurt than good. Substance-use training coaching supplies offered to the Observer by TDCJ in 2025 describe confrontational “encounter teams” wherein individuals in group remedy periods are inspired to publicly name out the others’ flaws or misdeeds. “The encounter course of is designed to confront a shopper’s destructive conduct and reinforce that duty to group,” the lesson plan states.

Ashley Lengthy, who labored from 2017 to 2021 for Administration & Coaching Company, a non-public contractor that operates some TDCJ rehabilitation packages, helped run encounter teams and informed the Observer that they usually turned hostile. 

Jennifer Toon, now a felony justice reform advocate, went via a parole-mandated remedy program on the Henley State Jail in 2018. Suggestions and a few criticism is widespread in group remedy, however Toon mentioned requiring folks to inform on each other in a jail surroundings was problematic: “This could go on for about an hour with the supervision of the counselor. Folks dreaded that group.”

Officers confirmed these supplies and strategies are nonetheless used.

The backlogs and high quality of the rehabilitation packages have been worse from 2020 to 2022, beginning on the peak of COVID-19 restrictions however persevering with effectively after. Required prerelease packages have been extra prone to be delayed—till June 2020, prisoners weren’t being transferred for something nonurgent, so some folks couldn’t bodily get to the models the place these packages have been held—and courses have been considerably truncated. In affidavits and interviews, some individuals who participated in jail packages throughout this time reported a whole lack of instruction and even pressures to falsify time sheets. 

Joshua Ladd was permitted for parole in October 2019, however he waited an interminable 5 months to be transferred to the Gist Unit in Beaumont to undergo his mandated six-month program. He mentioned he was the “final bus out” of his unit earlier than transfers successfully halted.

“I don’t know if I’d moderately it had been stopped so I didn’t must undergo the crap,” Ladd mentioned. “It was a joke from day one to me. I used to be actually mad about ready for 5 months. Like, I suppose they don’t need me to get well too unhealthy.”

Six years later, regardless of the grim actuality of widespread drug use and growing overdose deaths in models, prisoners like Alejo mentioned they imagine present peer-led efforts have promise. 

“Attempting to get clear needs to be from us males in white,” he mentioned, referring to the prison-issued white uniform. “There may be hope, there may be success, and there are males right here like myself who’ve made that change to develop into profitable males of society and spend their time in jail to information males to their pathway to restoration and be there for them when no person else will.”

In March, Lieutenant Governor Dan Patrick declared eliminating contraband in prisons a prime precedence, tasking the Senate Committee on Felony Justice with analyzing tendencies and company response earlier than the subsequent legislative session. 

On Might 4, Texas’ prime jail officers confronted that committee in a subterranean listening to room within the Capitol in Austin. In some methods, the lads—TDCJ Government Director Bobby Lumpkin, Inspector Common Lance Coleman, Texas Board of Felony Justice Chair Eric Nichols, and Jack Choate, the director of the Particular Prosecution Unit—appeared indistinguishable from the politicians questioning them. All wore well-pressed grey or dark-colored fits, no-nonsense ties, and glistening state-seal lapel pins.

Lumpkin, the newly appointed head of the jail system, spoke first, and he painted a dire image, saying that Texas prisons are “constantly beneath assault” as smuggling efforts develop into extra refined. The overarching situation of medicine in jail is nothing new, he mentioned. What has modified is the “scale and the efficiency [and] stage of coordination.” He highlighted enforcement efforts and new remedy initiatives. 

After listening to over an hour of testimony, committee members informed the Observer that the system should do extra to deal with the issue—and to cut back the unacceptable variety of overdose deaths.

“The State is accountable for the well-being of these within the TDCJ system,” mentioned Houston Democratic Senator Borris Miles in an announcement to the Observer. “We should do a greater job of preserving medicine out of our jail system whereas additionally increasing remedy and help for these combating habit as soon as they’re inside.”

Republican Committee Chair Pete Flores mentioned he “help[s] each initiatives [punishment and treatment] and extra funding that may remove contraband in our prisons.” 

The Legislature has funded TDCJ’s requests for enforcement, together with modernized video surveillance and drug-sniffing canine. And lawmakers even have thrown tens of tens of millions of {dollars} at one other underlying downside: the excessive turnover, restricted vetting, and underpayment of jail guards, who’ve been a significant supply of medicine in Texas prisons and been implicated in smuggling rings.

Within the pandemic’s wake, TDCJ officers have been so determined to fill jobs that, in 2022, virtually half of all candidates have been employed (in contrast with round one in six now). These making hiring selections could not have correctly thought of candidates’ histories of habit or involvement with medicine within the rush to deal with a yearslong staffing scarcity. (TDCJ hires correctional officers with misdemeanor data if three or 10 years have elapsed, relying on the category of offense.)

The shortages have now abated: Jail officers report that they’ve greater than 20,000 correctional staffers for the primary time since 2021, and retention charges are bettering. That is partly as a result of legislative funding enabled TDCJ to lift all correctional employees salaries by over 40 p.c since 2022. Nonetheless, even essentially the most senior correctional officer, somebody with greater than six years of expertise and who works at a most safety unit, makes about $65,000 a 12 months. 

For some, the large payouts from drug smuggling appear well worth the danger. Others, like former jail guard Anival Porras, have been additionally motivated by their very own addictions.

Porras’ imposing stature was an asset in his job as a jail guard on the James V. Allred Unit close to the Oklahoma border. Standing over 6 toes tall, some prisoners referred to him by the nickname “Tall Man.” In February 2023, he was pulled over by Wichita Falls police for having an expired registration. 

Porras informed the officers he labored for TDCJ as a guard on the close by unit, which homes about 4,500 males. The seven-year worker wasn’t essentially a standout among the many jail’s almost 700 staff. He’d by no means had a disciplinary violation, however he’d additionally obtained middling efficiency critiques. On the time of his arrest, his wage was round $51,000.

The guard gave officers permission to go looking his automobile. By then, one other officer had arrived with a Okay-9 named Lock educated to detect marijuana, meth, cocaine, and heroin. Lock sniffed across the automobile, then paused on the driver’s-side door. The Belgian Malinois sat, indicating that he smelled medicine. 

Porras admitted he had a pipe within the automobile, which officers shortly noticed. They then discovered a field of paper — stationery and tattoo switch papers — on the passenger-side ground. Officer Dylan Dilbeck lifted the lid and located the highest sheet coated in tiny brown dots. It wasn’t arduous for officers to attach dots of their very own. Dilbeck already knew from talking with different TDCJ workers “that they usually discover paper laced with totally different narcotic substances getting smuggled into the prisons,” as he later wrote in his report.

There have been simply over two kilos of what officers suspected have been fentanyl-laced papers within the automobile. It’s unclear how a lot was on these pages, since soaking or spraying papers leads to various dosages, however ingesting simply two milligrams of fentanyl will be deadly.

Porras cooperated with police and the TDCJ Workplace of the Inspector Common (OIG). The federal Drug Enforcement Administration later took over the case. He admitted it wasn’t his first time. He’d smuggled or tried to smuggle drug-soaked papers into the unit twice earlier than. A drug person himself, he’d been paid in the identical product he snuck in.

Federal prosecutors would later argue that Porras was a bit participant in a bigger conspiracy. In 2023, a federal grand jury indicted 13 folks, together with incarcerated and non-incarcerated folks and two extra TDCJ workers. The defendants every confronted various fees, together with conspiracy to own with intent to distribute fentanyl and methamphetamine, conspiracy to commit cash laundering, and identification theft.

In line with the indictment, the group trafficked fentanyl, meth, K2, and different contraband like cell telephones into a number of prisons all through the state. Their details of entry: corrections officers and the mail.

Inside, prisoners allegedly used contraband cell telephones to coordinate with suppliers who offered fentanyl and meth in bulk, some in liquid kind, and with different contacts who saturated papers with the medicine. Then, the papers have been handed off to the indicted guards, who would convey them inside and have been “usually paid 1000’s of {dollars} for his or her smuggling companies,” in response to court docket paperwork. 

Porras finally pleaded responsible to his function within the scheme. He admitted he, too, had develop into hooked on fentanyl and methamphetamines after attempting medicine he’d confiscated from prisoners.

At the moment sentenced and serving time in a federal jail, Porras didn’t reply to the Observer’s interview request. His federal protection lawyer, Thomas McHugh, mentioned that Porras, surrounded by a lot drug use every day, had a “real curiosity.” However, McHugh mentioned, his shopper quickly discovered: “You don’t management it. It controls you.” 

The primary time McHugh met Porras, he discovered his shopper’s predominant concern was about how his household can be affected. Porras begged for the sentencing to be postpone lengthy sufficient to attend his son’s highschool commencement. 

McHugh, who labored as a federal prosecutor on circumstances, together with drug crimes, earlier than changing into a protection lawyer, mentioned he’s sympathetic to males like Porras, who’ve jobs and households however find yourself shedding management. “They do not know what’s across the activate this journey that they’ve simply put themselves on,” he mentioned.

Data present at the least 30 different TDCJ workers have been arrested for contraband-related crimes, together with bribery, in 2023, the 12 months Porras was charged. Most concerned remoted incidents that are inclined to obtain far much less consideration than multiagency busts, however large-scale drug enforcement efforts appear to be growing. Within the 2025 fiscal 12 months, the OIG created a statewide, 14-person Strike Pressure Workforce to concentrate on stopping contraband and reported the workforce arrested 87 folks.

In April 2025, seven correctional officers and 9 prisoners on the Barry B. Telford Unit in far northeast Texas have been arrested for allegedly working collectively to smuggle in contraband. In April of this 12 months, TDCJ introduced the arrests of two former correctional officers and 5 others for allegedly utilizing drones to convey medicine and cell telephones into the Mark W. Michael Unit in East Texas. In Might, one other “large-scale operation” involving drones used to ferry contraband over jail partitions on the southeastern Memorial Unit ended with the arrests of 1 former guard and eight others. 

“We now have heightened efforts to discourage, detect and disrupt the stream of contraband and unlawful narcotics from coming into TDCJ services,” Coleman, the inspector basic, mentioned in a press launch after a kind of busts. 

In 2025, TDCJ officers detected greater than two dozen drone smuggling makes an attempt, in contrast with simply three in 2023. Coleman denied the Observer’s request for an interview.

Drone-related smuggling isn’t restricted to Texas. TDCJ officers say jail safety efforts have been hampered by federal guidelines which have till lately prohibited them from intercepting or interfering with drones. In July, a brand new interim federal rule expanded that authority to state prisons and jails. 

D’Mitri Davis remembers being known as to the unit’s entrance constructing on a summer season day in 2024. He thought he’d be getting a brand new picture taken for his ID.

In actuality, he was being summoned as a result of a grand jury had handed down a felony cost for his having a contraband mobile phone a 12 months prior. He’d already frolicked in solitary confinement and wasn’t anticipating issues to escalate.

“It’s like all the pieces stopped, slowed down,” Davis mentioned. “I assumed I used to be simply doing good.”

As a substitute, he turned one of many suspected smugglers caught up in TDCJ’s makes an attempt to curb drug use. 

Being caught with medicine ranks as one of many highest-level offenses in TDCJ, on par with escape, rioting, and sexual abuse. Prisoners can get bumped to a extra restrictive safety stage, lose visitation privileges, and forfeit “good time” that they’ve accrued to cut back their sentences, amongst different sanctions. 

In 2020, TDCJ recorded 3,939 disciplinary circumstances associated to medicine. In 2025, that quantity rose to 9,232. Much less widespread are circumstances, like Davis’, that contain new felony fees and years added onto prisoners’ sentences. 

Davis didn’t battle the brand new cost in opposition to him, regardless that extra time behind bars definitely wasn’t what he wished. 

He has an 8-year-old son he’s by no means hugged. His girlfriend was pregnant when he obtained arrested, and he’s been thought of too high-risk for a contact go to since then. At one level, his son mentioned that he didn’t suppose Davis beloved him, since Davis had footage along with his different youngsters however none with him. 

Davis spent his personal childhood in a Galveston housing mission known as Cedar Terrace. As a child, he mentioned, he used to attempt to get on digital camera when the information crews got here by to do a narrative on violence, robberies, or medicine. From time to time, he’d sleep on the ground to keep away from stray bullets which may come via the partitions. 

“I all the time despised medicine as a result of my mother was as soon as addicted, however I rotated and began dealing what I despised,” he wrote to the Observer. He by no means wished to be like his personal father, who wasn’t round to information him or his siblings, together with his half-brother Decide. 

Not lengthy after assembly, Davis and Decide have been separated. TDCJ moved them to totally different models throughout the state. They’re not capable of talk anymore, and Decide feels the loss. “I like him and miss him to the underside of my coronary heart,” he wrote the Observer in a current message. 

Decide feels extra alone now and continues to make use of sporadically. 

“I’m nonetheless harm as a result of I left the individual I actually felt beloved by. … I’m doing my finest to shake [the drug habit], it’s actually arduous,” he wrote. “However I’m going to do it.”  

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