Suicides in Texas Prisons Have Dramatically Increased

Prison suicides in the state have nearly doubled over the last four years (art by Zeke Barbaro / Getty Images)

Jennifer Rodriguez estimates that her daughter, Brooklyn Hogrell, spent 85% of her time in prison struggling with depression. Hogrell could feel a depressive episode coming on, Rodriguez said. When she did, she would become desperate and cut her arms and plead with corrections officers to be moved to a psychiatric ward. And she would call her mother on her prison-issued tablet.

“We were extremely close,” Rodriguez said. “I’ve always been able to talk to her and calm her down. We would talk about different things, like how to stay positive and focus on what she was doing to get home. And she would tell me, 'Mom, it’s just so hard in here because the officers are so rude and the other inmates are always talking crap.’ I would say, 'Just put your headphones on, try to ignore everybody, don’t entertain the arguments.’”

Brooklyn dropped into another episode in early April but this time she couldn’t talk to her mother. Her tablet had been taken away by prison authorities as punishment for engaging in a three-person call, Rodriguez said. Rodriguez tried to reassure Brooklyn with multiple texts each day, texts that prison workers would print out and deliver. But she learned on April 17 – first from inmates, then from the warden of the prison – that her daughter had been taken to a hospital after attempting suicide. Brooklyn Hogrell was pronounced dead two days later at the age of 21.

Hogrell’s suicide is part of a disturbing trend. Data from the Texas Justice Initiative shows that prison suicides in the state have nearly doubled over the last four years, from an average of 28.6 a year from 2005-2019 to 56 a year from 2020-2023. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice, the agency that runs the prisons, told us it tracks suicides but that we would need to submit a public information request to get its numbers. However, a TDCJ spokesperson emphasized that “one suicide is one too many” and said the agency’s self-harm prevention program is reducing attempted suicides. Here, the spokesperson did provide numbers, saying that since August 2021 the number of attempted suicides has declined from 171 to 117 per month.

Brooklyn Hogrell, who died at age 21 (courtesy of Jennifer Rodriguez)

TJI reports 12 suicides so far this year, but advocates say the number will probably rise as incomplete autopsies are finalized. Michele Deitch of UT’s Prison and Jail Innovation Lab listed the commonly understood reasons for the increase in suicides. “Understaffing certainly contributes to people dying by suicide, because incarcerated people are not being adequately supervised or checked frequently enough or because staff can’t get to them quickly enough after an attempt,” Deitch said. “There are also increased numbers of people with mental health issues who are incarcerated and not receiving proper care. Suicide can also be a reflection of despair: People are not hopeful that they’re going to get out of prison someday. And then there’s a correlation with suicides going up during the summers, which suggests that the extreme heat, and how miserable that is, contributes as well.”

Rodriguez said Hogrell had struggled with severe depression, anxiety, and PTSD since being raped at the age of 8 in her hometown of Abilene. Hogrell received counseling and psychiatric care but was arrested as a 13-year-old for marijuana possession and placed in a Texas Youth Commission detention facility the next year for violating parole. This initiated a series of clashes with corrections officials culminating in a 10-year sentence for assaulting a public servant. Upon turning 18, Brooklyn was moved from TYC custody to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s Lane Murray unit west of Waco.

Hogrell was housed in administrative segregation at Lane Murray, meaning solitary confinement. That was required for her participation in the unit’s Mental Health Therapeutic Diversion Program, Rodriguez said. She believes the isolation of solitary confinement contributed to her daughter’s depression and anxiety.

“It was way worse to be in [solitary confinement] than to be out in general population,” Rodriguez said. “They would go weeks without even being taken to shower. They would go weeks without getting out of their cell for rec or anything. And even people that don’t have mental health issues, they begin having mental health problems, depression or anxiety, because you’re locked into a little room for so long.”

Brittany Robertson, who monitors prison conditions as a member of Texas Prisons Community Advocates, said she has reviewed public information requests from TDCJ that suggest solitary confinement is involved in a disproportionate number of the suicides in prison. She said the unpleasant conditions of solitary affect not only the inmates but also the correctional officers, which contributes to TDCJ’s inability to hire more COs to overcome the staffing crisis, which, in turn, makes the system less safe as a whole.

“It’s not only the deaths, but also what it’s doing to the staff that are there,” Robertson said. “I’m hearing that pickets [officers who supervise other guards] are being left unmanned, and the pickets are the ones who are supposed to be in control of all the doors and the first ones to respond to an emergency situation. So that’s going to reduce the response time in an emergency, which, right now, they’re stating is about 15 to 20 minutes.”

TDCJ told us COs are required to check on inmates at least every 30 minutes and that they did in Hogrell’s case. “An investigation into the incident revealed that staff did conduct their 30-minute rounds during this incident and operated within policy,” the agency said. Rodriguez does not believe it. “If the rounds were done when they were supposed to be done, Brooklyn would have been found in time,” she said. “There’s no way she was checked on within 30 minutes.”

Rodriguez told us she has decided to speak publicly about Brooklyn’s suicide to draw attention to the failings of Texas’ prison officials. “I just want them held accountable,” she said. “I just want them to know that I know that they could have helped her, they could have saved her. And they didn’t. They failed my daughter. And I’m sure they’ve failed hundreds of people. It’s just not right.”