Texas jails aren’t meeting deadlines to free inmates, costing some counties thousands in settlements

Michele Deitch, a leading criminal justice expert who directs the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab at the University of Texas at Austin, said the state could do more to address the issue: have the Texas Commission on Jail Standards implement a requirement that jails release inmates when they’ve completed their sentence.

The Fourteenth Amendment bans the government from taking away a person’s freedom unfairly and arbitrarily. Having a standard would spell out what this constitutional right means to jails and what steps they need to take to avoid overdetention, instead of facing lawsuits after the harm has happened, according to Deitch.

“It’s more preventative,” she said.