The Political Dynamics of Justice Reform in The U.S.

IV. Mass Incarceration
and The Prisoner Dilemma in Texas
Texas Fails To Confront Mass Incarceration
WHEN TEXAS INMATE DAVID RUIZ filed a handwritten petition to sue the Texas
Department of Corrections in 1972, it led to a landmark case that turned on whether
Texas prisons violated the United States Constitution’s prohibition of cruel and unusual
punishment. In 1980, a federal court judge in Tyler, Texas, sent shockwaves through
the Lone Star State by ruling that they did.
Ruiz v. Estelle initially spurred some important penal reforms, as the Texas
Department of Corrections found itself under the supervision of federal judge William
Wayne Justice, whose ruling exhaustively documented the department’s violations of
prisoners’ rights—before stating in his conclusion that “it is impossible for a written
opinion to convey the pernicious conditions and the pain and degradation which
ordinary inmates suffer within TDC prison walls.” Justice mandated that Texas had a
constitutional duty to relieve massive overcrowding, as well as conditions that deprived
prisoners of basic guarantees of safety and health. But this widely celebrated prisoners’
rights decision ultimately contributed to the construction of a much larger penal system
in Texas that today is one of the toughest places to serve time in the United States.
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