![]() ![]() If 38 percent of the officers are female, 38 percent of the sergeants should be, too.įRESH LOOK AT ISSUES: New inspector general takes the helm in June You just have a culture of indifference, the good-old-boy system as they call it, said Lance Lowry, a Huntsville corrections officer and former union president. Moving up, about 25 percent of captains, 26 percent of lieutenants, and just 21 percent of majors and assistant wardens are women. Higher ranks are even more male-dominated. More than 44 percent of TDCJ employees are female, but those numbers include administrative assistants, librarians, attorneys and the high-ranking officials overseeing it all.Įven fewer guards - just 38 percent of the more than 22,000 corrections officers -are women. The numbers reinforce that Texas prisons are still a hard place to be a woman. We have a lot of women that move up through the ranks” TDCJ officials, however, say that sort of workplace environment is a thing of the past.Īny days of a male-dominated culture are long gone, said Lorie Davis, director of TDCJ s Institutional Division and the highest-ranking woman in the agency. And they follow a $250,000 settlement reached by the department last year in a lawsuit accusing a male lieutenant of raping an officer he supervised - a claim reminiscent of former assistant director Sammy Buentello, who retired in 2004 amid criminal charges and a high-dollar lawsuit by multiple women accusing him of sexual harassment and assault. ![]() The latest allegations come amid the rise of the #MeToo movement, which has focused a national spotlight on allegations of sexual abuse and harassment. One female employee said she and other women guards picked jobs working around inmates to avoid having contact with the men who supervised them. ![]() Some women told the Chronicle of enduring lewd comments or inappropriate contact from co-workers. You think it’s the inmates you have to worry about, said one former employee, who asked not to be identified, but it’s actually the people you work with. Three of the 10 highest-paid employees in the prison system and about 25 percent of wardens are women, according to a Houston Chronicle analysis of 2017 state data.īut female officers also have to contend with harassment from coworkers, masturbating inmates and fear of retaliation if they complain, according to lawsuits, state records and interviews. More than a decade after a sexual assault scandal rocked the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, the agency is still a boys club plagued by sexual harassment and a culture that makes it difficult for women to get promoted despite efforts to bring them into the ranks, according to more than a dozen current and former employees. Still a boy's club: Texas prison system faces allegations of harassment, discrimination ![]()
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