Texas Agency Says It Needs $1 Million To Hand Over Records On Prison Sexual Assault

Here we go again. Want to keep citizens away from their requested public records? Do what you can to ensure they can't afford it.

Nathanael King sent a request via Muckrock to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. He was seeking records on all investigations of alleged sexual abuse in Texas prisons. Either the problem with prison sexual abuse is completely out of hand or the Texas DCJ really really really wants to keep King from seeing these investigative records.

Our request for investigations of sexual assault in Texas correctional facilities since 2013 returned a price tag of $1,132,024.30 from the Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ), which says there are more than 260,000 pages of responsive documents that would require more than 61,000 hours to process.

Considering the agency had pretty much already told King it wouldn't be turning over a ton of info thanks to a wide variety of exemptions, the cost estimate seems completely unhinged from reality. Obviously, very few private parties have a million in cash laying around for public records fees. I'm sure this is what the DCJ is counting on. A great majority of detailed info will be stripped and the agency has agreed to turn over only "basic information" on 2,000 cases. Apparently each case averages around 130 pages requiring nearly 15 minutes per to "process."

All told, the Department suggests it will take nearly 3,000 hours just to search for responsive documents. From there, it's on to the pricey processing and a fee request that would make Texas oil magnates balk. To its credit, the Texas Attorney General suggested it might be less expensive to ask another agency entirely for the information King is seeking.

The Office of the Attorney General recommended filing with the Prison Rape Elimination Act offices, who subsequently requested a far more reasonable, though still costly, $551.39 for copies of their division level audits of the Safe Prisons/PREA program since 2016.

Safe Prisons Program Management Office records report that in 2016 alone, the OIG opened 238 sexual assault cases in state-run facilities and another 4 in private prisons.

Of course, $500 only gets you a little more than a year of reports that only cover Inspector General investigations, rather than every investigation opened by state prisons for the last four years. The Department can't seriously be thinking of allocating 61,000 hours to this task so the fee estimate is mainly there to discourage King from pursuing this request any further.