June 25, 2026
Corrections officers and medical personnel in jails are considered first responders, said Michele Deitch, a former Texas prison monitor and director of the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab at the University of Texas-Austin. When a jail consistently makes emergency calls for outside help, she added, it suggests that larger, systemic problems are likely going unaddressed.
“If there's a crisis going on, whether it's a fight or a medical situation, they're supposed to have the people on-site to deal with that. It just seems odd to me that they need to reach outside the jail to have someone deal with an emergency,” Deitch noted.