The MacNeil/Lehrer Report; Texas Prisons on Trial

ROBERT MacNEIL: Good evening. The State of Texas has the largest prison system in the country, and depending on your viewpoint, it is the most successful and efficient prison system anywhere, or the best example of slavery remaining in this country. For a month now the controversial Texas system has been on trial before a federal judge in Houston. Seven prisoners are challenging the system, and have a powerful ally in the U.S. Justice Department. What is really on trial is a tough-minded philosophy of corrections, and the case is being watched by corrections officers across the nation. In several states federal judges have already ruled that prison conditions violated prisoners` constitutional rights and have taken those prisons out of state hands. Civil rights suits are pending in several more states. The way the Texas case is decided will affect how prisons are run in most other states. Tonight, with Jim Lehrer in Houston, Texas prisons on trial. Jim?

JIM LEHRER: Robin, the Texas prison system is not only the largest, it`s also among the cheapest and the safest. Its 23,000 inmates are housed and worked in fifteen separate units on 102,000 acres in southeast Texas at a cost of just over seven dollars a day per prisoner, a fourth or fifth what it costs most northern states. It has the lowest violence rate -three or four murders a year, a fraction of what occur in prison systems one third or even smaller in size. Much of this is attributed to a basic work ethic that dominates its philosophy and everyday operation. Over half of the prisoners work out in the fields doing manual agricultural labor; another ten percent work in one of the prison`s twenty-one industries -- refurbishing school buses, making clothes in its textile mill, putting state records in computers, and so on. The system is virtually self- sufficient. There is tight security, rigid discipline, cleanliness in clothes, body and quarters, a strong emphasis on education.

To some, as Robin said, it all adds up to the best prison system in the country; to others, a dehumanized regimentation that operates through fear. It is this basic argument that underlies the trial over specific complaints now under way here in Houston.One of the lawyers representing the prisoners who are challenging the Texas way of doing things is Sam Biscoe, a Dallas civil rights lawyer.

Mr. Biscoe, what are your and your clients` major complaints against the Texas system?

SAMUEL BISCOE: Broadly stated, our complaints are that the conditions of confinement in the Texas Department of Corrections leave a lot to be desired. A lot of the practices and policies are blatantly illegal and also inhuman. We attack the use of inmates as nurses, the use of inmates as building tenders -- that is, the use of inmates in a quasi-security guard position; we attack the system in that we allege that it does not deliver medical treatments to the inmates as it should. For example, we believe that inmates are made nurses when they have no previous medical training, no training as provided by the TDC, no guidance or supervision is provided, that the TDC has these inmates attempt to administer medical treatment to other inmates. By and large, there are no limitations placed on what they can do for other inmates.

LEHRER: What about the building tender complaint? Give me an ex-ample of that and how that is a bad thing, from your perspective.

BISCOE: Well, when you use inmates in a quasi-security guard position, we think that certain training and guidance ought to be provided. Based on the facts that we`ve been able to gather, no training is provided by the Texas Department of Corrections. We have many examples of where building tenders -- that is, inmates -- have administered beatings to other inmates with the approval and authorization of TDC officials.

LEHRER: What do you say to those who say that the Texas system is the best in the country?

BISCOE: We say that probably it is one of the best. But we see a lot of need for improvement in most of the facilities nationwide.

LEHRER: They put a great deal of emphasis in the Texas system on safety and security, keeping prisoners from beating up each other, from murdering each other, preventing sexual assaults and that kind of thing. Is that wrong, or they`re just not successful at it, or what`s your complaint there?

BISCOE: As a goal, I think there`s nothing wrong with that. In terms of whether that`s fact, we disagree with the TDC.

LEHRER: You don`t think it is as safe as they say it is.

BISCOE: Well, it may be safe compared to other facilities, but I think that behooves us to concentrate on the other facilities and try to improve all of them. We have many examples of beatings that have been suffered by inmates at the hands of TDC officials, at the hands of other inmates in the Texas Department of Corrections.

LEHRER: So it`s not enough to say that it may be the safest in the country, that`s still not safe enough, is that what you`re saying?

BISCOE: It`s not enough, right.

LEHRER: What about the policy of the TDC, the Texas Department of Corrections, literally forcing everyone to work? Do you object to that?

BISCOE: We do not object to that; in fact, we encourage it. Most of the inmates with whom we`ve talked would like to be outside working eight hours a day. We do not believe, though, that inmates who are not physically able to work in the fields eight hours should be forced to do so. We think that presently the medical -- physical examinations that are conducted are not sufficient; many inmates medically unfit for field work are forced to do it. We find also that writ writers -- that is, inmates who have filed civil rights lawsuits -- are subjected to very hard field work when medically they are not physically fit to do so.

LEHRER: Texas officials say that they are providing the kind of prison system that the people of Texas want. Do you agree with that?

BISCOE: Yes and no. I believe, first, I say yes because I don`t think that the people of Texas are fully cognizant of the kind of day to-day activities that go on at the Texas Department of Corrections. I

believe that the only way the lawyers get this information is by virtue of the lawsuits that have been filed by a small number of inmates. The TDC is basically a closed society; I think that probably every prison in this country is virtually a closed society. I say no because I believe that if the average Texan knew that the person sentenced to five years would be subjected to the kinds of practices that we`re attacking, then probably that person would say, "No, this is not the kind of punishment that I meant when I sent John Doe to prison for five years."

LEHRER: All right; thank you. The other side now, from the man many consider the architect of the modern-day Texas prison system. He`s George Beto, director of the Texas Department of Corrections from 1962-72, now a Distinguished Professor of Corrections at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville, which is the home base of the prison system. Dr. Betowas a college president before joining the Texas prison system. Obviously, Dr. Beto -- and Mr. Biscoe, you would agree here too, I`m sure -we`re not going to be able to try the lawsuit here tonight and you`re in no position to respond to what`s happening there now, I assume; but the general comments that Mr. Biscoe makes, the general complaints -- first of all, the use of building tenders who submit punishment and beatings to other prisoners. What is the policy of the Texas prison system on the use of building tenders?

GEORGE BETO: Building tenders are used -- actually, they`re glorified porters; they`re also an institutionalized snitch. They`re inmates who by their attitude have indicated they`re on the side of the administration and are an extremely effective force in curbing forced homosexuality, an extremely important force in keeping the strong from preying on the weak generally. It sometimes amuses me, and it`s a little ironic, I think, that the same people who attack the building tender system are those individuals who want you to hire ex-offenders as guards, who want participatory management on the part of inmates in the prison system. There`s a certain inconsistency there. Recently I called the prison, even though I haven`t been there for six years, to get some statistics, and I find that building tenders proporationately have as many disciplinary reports filed against them as the general inmate population. They`re not a select few, they`re not above the law; they`re a positive force for good within the department. I would admit that occasionally a mistake is made in designating a building tender, but only the director of classification, not the individual warden, can designate a building tender. You make mistakes in hiring employees, too.

LEHRER: What about the complaint on health services? Mr. Biscoe says that inmates are operating as nurses without proper medical training, that sort of thing.

BETO: Well, Mr. Biscoe`s statement is an allegation. At least, from my experience, which was that of ten years, the medical treatment was adequate.I wish the average citizen in this state could have as adequate medical treatment as an inmate does. When I was there -- and I`m confident the number is much higher now -- we were sending between seventy-five and a hundred and fifty inmates a week to either John Sealy or the medical center here in Houston for either diagnostic purposes or for specialized treatment. Use of inmate nurses is a misnomer. I was always concerned about the number of geriatrics we had in prison and made a serious effort to remove them from the prison into rest homes, until it was pointed out to me that nursing homes couldn`t give these inmates the type of individualized care that they were getting in the prison system.

LEHRER: Let`s go to some of the underlying things. Mr. Biscoe implied some of them, and some of them, as you know, have been written about extensively in terms of criticizing the Texas prison system and some of its concepts. For instance, why is the discipline so strict? Is that a basic decision that was made by you and others that this is the way to maintain order in a prison? How important is that?

BETO: I think it`s extremely important. If society sends a man to prison -- and I`d rather that society didn`t, but it has decided to do so -- if society sends a man to prison, it has an overriding obligation to protect him. If my son were in prison I`d want him protected; I wouldn`t want him raped, I wouldn`t want him beat up. And the only way you can protect those people is by having strict discipline. Whenever you have people living in the congregate -- and in Texas you have almost 25,000 unhappy people living in the congregate -- you have to have rigid discipline in order to maintain safety.

LEHRER: Why do you force everyone to work?

BETO: Texas doesn`t force everybody; only those who are medically fit.

LEHRER: Okay.

BETO: Fifty percent of those men who come to prison had no sustained record of employment prior to their coming there; they were job drifters. For the first time in their lives they`re introduced to a work program that approximates that in the free world. It`s not make-do work. I think your figures on the number in agriculture is too high; on our best day, out of that 24,000 or 25,000 we never had more than thirty-four, thirty-five hundred in the line doing agricultural work, and more are in industry. But they`re introduced to productive and constructive work. I think that`s important, it`s part of American society.

LEHRER: Gentlemen, we`ll be back. Robin?

MacNEIL: Many of the suits challenging prison conditions around the country have been initiated by the American Civil Liberties Union National Prison Project. Its executive director is Alvin Bronstein, an attorney who is regarded by many in this field as Mr. Prisoners` Rights. Mr. Bronstein, compared to other prison systems it sounds as though Texas has something to boast about: in its own terms, it works. What do you object to in that system?

ALVIN BRONSTEIN: Well, assuming that it works -- and we could argue about that -- but assume that the Texas Department is running an efficient prison system, one that is run cheaply, one where they control what goes on, where there`s little violence, where there`s no idleness, where there is quiet; that`s an efficient prison system in their eyes, the Nazi concentration camps were more efficient. There was less violence, there was less idleness, it was run more cheaply. The question is, what are they giving up in terms of human values to run a prison system like that? Probably the best description has been provided to me by a prisoner from Texas who I`ve been corresponding with for a number of years, a man by the name of Frank Lahey, he says, "They turn out great prisoners but broken people. They`re running a giant slave plantation there." At a great human cost, they are dehumanizing, depersonalizing people at the expense of running a secure, efficient prison system. What that does, when people come out, is not prepare them for coming out.

MacNEIL: How do they compare, the products of the Texas system, with the products of other state systems in the country?

BRONSTEIN: Well, first of all it`s a little hard to compare; Texas tends to keep people in prison for a long, long time. An awful lot of them don`t ever see daylight. But in terms of comparing, say, with the State of Minnesota, which has the complete opposite philosophy -- they believe that the way to run a peaceful prison system is to treat people justly and fairly and as closely as possible to the way they would be treated on the outside-- people are coming out as more likely to be productive citizens than they do when they come out of Texas.

MacNEIL: Turning now to the suits that you and the ACLU have been involved in in a number of states, are these suits an end in themselves, or are they a tactic in a larger battle?

BRONSTEIN: They`re a tactic in a larger battle, obviously, in one sense: the suits have a number of objectives; one is clearly to make these institutions human. Most of them that we have looked at are just beyond any level of human dignity and need to be brought up to some minimum standard. Secondly, one of the things that we try to prove -- and George Beto has admitted this in terms of Texas -- there are so many peo ple there that don`t belong there; and one of the thrusts of these lawsuits is to force the states to develop alternatives to incarceration for the people who should not have been there in the first place.

MacNEIL: Is your objective a totally federal -- or federal-administered -- system, or a system with federal standards?

BRONSTEIN: No, we have challenged the federal prison system as often as we have challenged state systems. In my opinion, the federal system is not the model to be emulated by the states.If we want to emulate anything, we can emulate the Scandinavian countries or Holland or the State of Minnesota. It is not a federal takeover at all. But the federal courts have to uphold the Constitution; that`s what the object of these lawsuits is.

MacNEIL: What do you say to people who would say, as I guess many might in Texas, we have the kind of prisons we want?

BRONSTEIN: I don`t think that`s true. I don`t believe that George Beto or the present commissioner, Jim Estelle, can prove to you or me that fifty- one percent of the people in Texas have voted for that kind of a prison system. But they know better. They are supposed to be the leaders; they are the experts. They should be telling the people of Texas what they ought to be having, and not following what they believe_ the people of Texas want.

MacNEIL: From your studies of prisons around the country, do you believe that Texas is the worst system in the country?

BRONSTEIN: No, I do not think it`s the worst; it`s one of the scariest systems. You go through the Texas prison system and you never see a prisoner who looks at you in the eyes. Prisoners walk there looking down at the ground, because that`s what they`re expected to do in this kind of slave system; but it is safer than many other systems, it is cleaner than many other systems, there is less idleness than many other systems. So it`s not necessarily the worst, but it is a frightening model to emulate.

MacNEIL: Thank you. Another expert on American prisons is Bruce Jackson, who`s written six books on the subject, five of them based on his research in Texas prisons. Jackson is adjunct professor of law at the State University of New York at Buffalo. He`s expected to testify for the Texas Department of Corrections at the Houston trial. Mr. Jackson, having heard the other three views, what do you see, briefly, are the strengths and weaknesses in the Texas system?

BRUCE JACKSON: Let me say first, I have never been in a penitentiary, of the fifty or sixty that I have been in, that I have not thought was an abominable place in which to live. I don`t know of any good or nice or decent prisons. I think the whole idea of living in a penitentiary is itself an abomination. The problem prison managers have is they are stuck with the rejects and the exiles that come to them from other civic and social agencies. It is one thing to blame prison managers for overcrowding; I think that`s rather a foolish kind of place to put the blame. You can`t blame the prison managers for the crime that goes on; the only thing you can blame them for are things that are under their control. What Texas tries to control for is the violence that they think is continually present in their population. Texas inmates currently -- I looked through some lists -- about two thirds of the inmates are for crimes of violence or potential violence. To say that Texas keeps its people in a slave system for years longer than other people is really nonsense. Most people in Texas prisons are out in two years or less. The amount of time served by the average convict in Texas is pretty close to the national average. Texas courts and juries send people down with bizarre, extraordinary sentences; Dallas for a while was sending them down with 5,000 and 10,000 year sentences. But the prison happens to be one that is the most generous with good time in the country; it is prohibited by law from paying convicts for work, but it is not prohibited from giving good time and it gives more than just about any other state. I think the business of safety in the institution -- it`s been mentioned several times -- I don`t think it`s a trivial issue. One is living among a number of fearful people in a penitentiary. The fact that most are behaving well, and most behave well most of the time and most of them perhaps are totally decent now, does not make anyone feel any safer. There is a lot of violence in prisons. Minnesota, for example, has a homicide rate of something like 126 per hundred thousand. California has a homicide rate in the penitentiary of 77 per hundred thousand. The national average, outside in the free world, is only about 9.6. Texas has a homicide rate of slightly under six per hundred thousand. If I were an inmate that would matter to me.

MacNEIL: How do the prisoners feel about it? Have you had an opportunity to in your various researches to talk to some who`ve been in those prisons in Texas as well as others?

JACKSON: Yes, I have. There are two halves to that answer. First I should say that any prisoner who`s in his right mind hates it, as anyone would hate prison. Now, there are a few people who don`t hate prison, who manage to get out and do things to get themselves put back in again because it`s the only place that they`re safe; for some people prison becomes the only home they know, and that`s one of the worst crimes of imprisonment -- not brutality; it`s teaching people how to live in that kind of environment and no other.

I say most people hate it -- I know inmates who hate other places more. I`ve done work in several states. People who are strong and tough tend not to like Texas, because Texas is a very hard place to hustle it.

There`s no dope in Texas. It`s hard to pimp in Texas. Things that you can do in New York or California, say, with relative ease do not go on in Texas. Weak inmates tend to, if not like it, at least feel better about being there.

MacNEIL: In a recent article, finally, in The Nation, you say that Texas is the lead domino. If the Justice Department, to use your phrase, "gets" Texas, every other state would be vulnerable to federal takeover. Why is Texas the first domino, and why is it so important?

JACKSON: Because Texas, I think, is-- as has been said several times -- as far as prisons go really a good prison system. That doesn`t mean that it is good in an ultimate sense of the word. But in the context of American prisons it is the safest, it is the cleanest, there is the least amount of corruption, there are no inmate gangs. The business about the building tenders depends who you talk to, and there`s a lot of argument about that testimony. And I`ve never been in a prison, by the way, in which there were not inmates used by the administration to help run it. To talk about that as if that were something special in Texas really distorts the issue.

MacNEIL: But why is it the lead domino?

JACKSON: Because it is, compared to the others, so apparently good. If you can win a massive lawsuit resulting in a court order that imposes very strict conditions, detailed conditions on a state like Texas, it`s very easy to go in and get such orders in other states which are, in most regards, far dirtier.

MacNEIL: Thank you. Jim?

LEHRER: Mr. Biscoe, what do you think of Mr. Jackson`s view of the Texas prison system?

BISCOE: I believe that the inmates with whom Mr. Jackson talked were not the ones that I`ve been chatting with over the last four years.

LEHRER: Well, let`s take the specific comment that he made; he said about the low violence rate, the low murder rate that if he were an inmate that would mean a lot to him. Does it not mean a lot to your clients, the inmates that you represent, the safety angle?

BISCOE: Well, I think it does mean a lot to the inmates that we represent, but I think we ought to be mindful that the information or data that he has to work with was probably provided by the Texas Department of Corrections, the same officials that we basically attack in the lawsuit, not that we attack personally but that we believe are responsible for the policies and practices that basically are inhuman and illegal. I think it important, further, that we are not opposed to discipline per se, but the question is how should the discipline be enforced? I don`t think that the Texas prison is the safest system in the country; if it is, that`s because of the use of force, brutality at the hands of prison officials as well as other inmates. That`s basically what we`re talking about.

LEHRER: Dr. Beto, you heard the point that Mr. Bronstein made; he quoted someone else as saying that in Texas you folks turn out model prisoners but broken human beings.

BETO: My answer to that would be, as Professor Jackson pointed out, that the average inmate is not there long enough to be a broken human being. And there are thousands of citizens in Texas who are products of that system who are not broken human beings. I wonder whether Mr. Bronstein has ever visited that prison system.

LEHRER: Let`s ask him. Mr. Bronstein, have you ever visited that prison system?

BRONSTEIN: Yes, but not in the last few years, Dr. Beto.

LEHRER: What would he have seen that he should have seen had he visited, Dr. Beto?

BETO: I don`t think he would have seen broken spirits, broken people.

LEHRER: What is your evidence of broken people coming out of the Texas prison system? The example you used was that people don`t look you straight in the eye there. Is there anything else?

BRONSTEIN: I travel around, as Dr. Beto knows, to most of the prison systems in the country, I talk with most of the prison officials in the country, including people from Texas; we get hundreds of letters a month from the Texas prison system, we get 500 letters a week from prisons all over. And based upon what everyone has told me in the last three years about the Texas prison system, based upon all of the material I`ve read in connection with the present lawsuit, which we`re not involved in, I think my opinion on what goes on there is pretty accurate. I think also there have been some rather loose facts -- the comparisons that Texas is the safest and cleanest system, I don`t know where you got your facts, Mr. Jackson, but that`s not the facts I know of, and...

LEHRER: What are your facts on the cleanest and the safest?

BRONSTEIN: Well, clearly Minnesota is heads and shoulders in everyone`s, I think probably even in Jim Estelle`s eyes, over any system in the country. I don`t know where you got that murder rate in the State of Minnesota, it just is not a fact.

JACKSON: It`s from the U.S. Justice Department.

BRONSTEIN: They`re not the facts I`ve seen. I`ve been in Minnesota in the last three weeks.

LEHRER: Well, what do you say the violence rate or the murder rate is in Minnesota compared to what Mr. Jackson says?

BRONSTEIN: Well, it`s less than the rate in Texas, so it would be about one thirtieth the rate that Mr. Jackson quoted a moment ago.

LEHRER: Obviously we`re not going to resolve that one tonight.

BRONSTEIN: The key issue, though, is whether you achieve all the things that Texas says they`ve achieved by this total control, this rigid discipline that Dr. Beto mentioned before, or whether you achieve it by treating people as real human beings, or whether you pay them real wages, as they do in Minnesota, whether you prepare them for coming back into society by not debilitating them, both economically, physically, mentally, psychologically; whether you really believe that they are still citizens or whether they are something less than citizens; whether you want them to build your criminal justice center, as the prisoners in Texas have built for Dr. Beto, whether you want them to build a big plantation house with the big white columns, as they`ve done for Commissioner Estelle, or whether you really want them to come back as real human beings.

LEHRER: Dr. Beto, how do you respond to that? You have ten seconds, sir.

BETO: Well, I think you`re turning out productive citizens. I don`t have any objections to prisoners building a criminal justice center at the university. They built a $20 million building, received a lot of training while they were building it at a cost of approximately six million dollars. They learned while they were doing it.

LEHRER: All right; we have to leave it there, I`m sorry. Robin?

MacNEIL: I`m sorry our time is up. We`ll obviously watch and see what happens in that trial in Houston. Thank you, both gentlemen in Houston; good night, Jim.

LEHRER: Good night, Robin.

MacNEIL: And thank you both here. That`s all for tonight. We`ll be back tomorrow night. I`m Robert MacNeil. Good night.