My sister and my brother live in or near a small town in north Texas named Nocona. Near this town is the county seat of Montague county, Montague! Montague (pronounced mon-tage. Long 'a' in tage and silent 'e') is a very small, rural community of not very many folks. I took a trip to Austin to attend one of my nephew's wedding and my sister told me some very 'unique' things were going on in the Montague County Jail.
In this small, rural community of not very many folks is a high-tech Texas county prison. This prison, up until January 2009, was virtually run by the inmates. Inmates having sex with guards. Inmates with cell phones. Inmates learning how to make meth in prison. Inmates making weapons out of nails. Cell doors that didn't lock but the prisoners didn't escape because they had drugs, sex, and recliners in prison. Why leave?
The prior sheriff appeared to have ignored the jail and its conditions. In fact, the feds have even charged him with having sex with female inmates and, on at least one occasion, he forced a female to have sex with him or he would trump-up drug charges and send her to jail. Also, several of the jailers are being charged with various offenses including abusing prisoners (having sex with them), providing contraban to prisoners (including drugs and cell phones), and various other offenses.
At one time last year, an inmate wrote a note explaining how his jailer (a female) was abusing him by having sex with him in the prison - on numerous occasions.
The new sheriff in town closed the jail only hours after taking office in January and moved the inmates to better-run jails in neighboring towns. He determined that the jail was unsafe for the jailers.
Now this small county had to spend a bunch of money to get this jail back into a condition where the inmates and jailers were safe.
AND, Montague make local, state, regional, and national news! Whoopee! Montague's jail crisis even made the Drudge report today!
Only in Texas.
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