Life on the outside proved too much for one Texas man.
Life outside of prison proved overwhelming for a Texas man, who set a house on fire months after his release so he could go back behind bars.
Randall Lee Church, 46, spent 26 years behind bars for stabbing a man to death, and when he was released in April, he found freedom too much to take. He missed his old prison job. Report by NBC Connecticut.
“Everything had gone fast forward without me,” he told the San Antonio Express-News from Bexar County Jail. “I didn’t know how to use computers or cell phones or the Internet. The weirdest thing was walking into a store, like Walmart, and have parents hide their children from me, like I was supposed to jump at them.”
On July 10, three months after his release, Church poured gasoline through a window of an empty house, then threw in flaming rags and paper towels. He admitted his crime to police and has already pleaded guilty.
Church’s original crime in 1983 was stabbing a pal named James Alfred Michael in a fight over $97 Michael, correctly, accused Church of stealing.
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Bexar County TX Commissioners’ Court voted to extend the GEO Group’s contract to manage the Central Texas Detention Facility in San Antonio, according to the SA Business Journal.
The 685-bed facility, which is owned by Bexar County, houses detainees for the U.S. Marshals Service. Boca Raton, Fla.-based GEO has managed the facility since 1988. The new contract will have an effective date of April 29, 2009, and will last for 10 years. Officials with GEO expect the latest contract will generate $11 million in annualized operating revenues for the company at full occupancy.
“The Central Texas Detention Facility plays an important role in addressing the need for federal detention bed-space along the southern border of the United States,” says GEO Chairman and CEO George C. Zoley. “We look forward to strengthening our public-private partnership with Bexar County and the U.S. Marshals Service.”
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Scores of youthful offenders are being sent straight into the adult criminal justice system — 246 of them last year alone — for crimes they committed as juveniles. Juvenile justice advocates are blaming last year’s 22 percent spike on a reform effort launched two years ago that was designed to protect younger offenders.
After the Texas Youth Commission sex abuse scandal in 2007, state officials decided the agency would no longer handle offenders 19 to 21 — a move intended in part to protect younger children from older youths. “It’s pretty simple,” said Jill Mata, Bexar County’s chief juvenile prosecutor. “If we didn’t have enough time to work with these kids within the juvenile justice system (before they turned 19), then we were faced with no option but to certify them as adults.” Bexar County certified 28 juveniles as adults last year, a 75 percent jump from a year earlier. Tarrant County certified 11 juveniles as adults last year, nearly triple the number from a year earlier. Harris County saw a more modest rise in adult certifications since the TYC reforms passed in 2007, from 74 cases in 2007 to 76 last year …
Texas allows juveniles as young as 14 to stand trial as adults for capital and first-degree felonies. Fifteen-year-olds can stand trial as adults for any kind of felony. TYC ombudsman Will Harrell, who in a recent report highlighted the increase in adult certifications last year, would like to see the age limit restored to 21. But with key lawmakers vowing to further reduce TYC’s already dwindling population — calling the troubled agency a lost cause — it’s not clear if there will be an appetite for raising TYC’s maximum age past 18. “We’re not going to change anything at this stage,” said Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee. “We need a greater sampling before we determine that there’s a cause and effect. I’m not convinced.”
More information in the San Antonio Express-News.
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The Bexar County TX Jail failed its annual inspection for the sixth time in eight years — for reasons ranging from overcrowding to low water pressure and broken intercoms.
The Texas Commission on Jail Standards, the state agency charged with overseeing detention centers, noted seven “areas of non-compliance” in its report, which was released Friday after a three-day inspection. The jail was also docked for not annually testing all officers and inmates for tuberculosis, multiple maintenance-related issues and failure to document hourly visual checks of inmates by certain jailers.
Chief Deputy Sheriff Rolando Tafolla [pictured right] said that while the Sheriff’s Office is ultimately responsible for all issues that arise within the jail, he maintained that the areas of non-compliance were largely outside of its control. “They are things that can be corrected. Unfortunately, we did not pass,” said Tafolla, who served as interim sheriff for about 18 months after former Sheriff Ralph Lopez was forced to resign. “We have a big jail, and there are a lot of problems.”
Much more in the article at the Express-News.
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