You would think that people sentenced to life or virtual life in prison would be anxiously awaiting the day that a parole board grants them freedom. But I see a different picture inside Lane Murray Unit, the Texas women’s prison where I am incarcerated. Those of us freed by the parole board often have nowhere to go, and continue to sit in prison until we are essentially kicked out to fend for ourselves.
In my unit, B.T. has been incarcerated since the age of thirteen. As a youth, she was confined under the Texas Youth Corrections. At seventeen the state transferred her to adult custody under the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ). After serving nineteen years of a twenty-five-year sentence, she was granted parole in March 2024. Technically and legally free, she remains sitting in prison—because she has no home to go home to.
This is a common occurrence. In Texas, when a prisoner makes parole, they will only be released once they have an address that has been approved by prison administrators. If they have no family, friends or loved ones they can parole home to, they must look into halfway houses or transitional housing. If they are unable to find anything, they are forced to wait until their sentence is “maxed out.” (Someone’s “max date” is the day on which their entire original sentence would be complete.) At that point, the prison releases them to the streets.
From talking with numerous women preparing to go home, it’s clear that the prison does not provide them with adequate support in this search. Incarcerated people and their loved ones must struggle on their own to see if beds in transitional housing are available. And even if they are, they still need to navigate the process of getting that housing approved by corrections officials.
If, for lack of approved housing where they can serve out their parole, a prisoner maxes out their sentence, they are at that point released—essentially dumped outside the prison walls—and left to their own devices to find housing, work, food, everything. Unsurprisingly, many end up in shelters or homeless. It’s no wonder that of the roughly 40,000 Texans released from state prisons every year, nearly half are rearrested within three years, and 15–20 percent return to prison. Again and again, I see people leave prison who are vulnerable to unemployment, homelessness, and illness.
In B.T.’s case, she never experienced adulthood. Incarcerated since she was a tween, she never worked a real job, paid a bill, filed taxes, drove a car, or rented an apartment. She didn’t attend, let along graduate, high school, and instead attained her GED under Texas Youth Corrections. With no family and no home, her only outside connection was a pen pal, whom she had met through an online pen-pal site. Her pen pal searched the Internet for halfway and transitional homes she could parole to. While her pen pal struck luck with Oxford House of Texas, B.T. could not parole out successfully until a deposit fee was paid. Her pen pal paid the $250 fee—more money than had passed through B.T.’s hands in her entire life.
According to the TDCJ Rehabilitation Policy, prisoners are to have a reentry case manager assigned to them ninety days prior to going before the parole board or before their max sentence date is reached. These reentry case managers, working under TDCJ’s Reentry Department, are to assist with finding stable housing, to provide job resources, to help with enrolling in government benefits programs, and to assist with securing official documentation—such as a birth certificate, ID, and social security card—on the day of their release.
During that ninety-day period, incarcerated people are ideally working with their case manager to come up with a plan for success, stability, and safety upon release. The case manager gives access to, or listings of, halfway and transitional homes, plus information about jobs and government benefits. However, due to understaffing of case managers, this support is far from holistic and many needs fall through the cracks.
Family and loved ones often have to fill the gap and help significantly with reentry plans. But if an incarcerated person doesn’t have outside support, they are basically stranded, with no way to answer basic questions of where they will go and how they will support themselves when they get there. Having to fend for themselves, they are especially at risk once released from prison.
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Linda G., another incarcerated woman I know, faced this impossible situation. After nearly seventeen years of incarceration in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice—sixteen of which were in solitary confinement—Linda was granted parole in late 2023. But she wasn’t able to leave prison until this spring, two years later than she should’ve.
Linda did not have regular access to a reentry case manager, despite the fact that she suffered from severe mental illness that have been exacerbated by her time in solitary confinement. The University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) was unable to have her admitted into an outpatient mental health facility. Halfway houses wouldn’t accept her due to her medical history. She searched for shelters in cities across the state, including San Antonio, Corpus Cristi, Dallas–Fort Worth, Waco, Houston, and El Paso, with only a limited guide from the prison’s law library. Like all of us, she had no access to the Internet while incarcerated, and phone calls cannot be made out to people who aren’t on her preapproved phone list. Linda was eventually able to secure a bed in a transitional house, but only because a woman who had been reincarcerated on a parole violation (for not being able to pay her parole fees) told her about an open bed.
Before Linda left, she didn’t have high hopes for her future. “I don’t think I’ll live longer than two months,” she told me. With no safe place, no job, and no resources, she’ll more than likely become a sex worker again to support herself, which is what initially landed her in prison.
“I don’t have a home, and if I can’t find a job I’ll have to sell my body and I don’t want to do that ever again,” she said. “I was raped and beat several times when I was on the streets. I question whether or not I should just kill myself now to save myself from all the troubles.”
As for B.T., she was nervous yet happy to be finally freed. She was anxiously planning and had a lot of looming challenges. Oxford House would charge her $200 a week for housing, but she didn’t yet have a job or prior job experience. She still needed hygiene necessities and clothes to survive. She’s afraid of a world she has yet to explore. She initially planned on going to the Social Security office to sign up for government assistance for mental health disability. But with all the governmental funding cutbacks, she decided to just try to find a decent job and work, building a new life.
I see many people like B.T. return to prison. With a system that is set up for incarcerated people to fail, no wonder recidivism is alarmingly high in Texas.
In Texas, instead of letting people “wait out” their max date, incarcerated people should receive real, holistic assistance from TDCJ. To reduce recidivism, the prison must bring a sense of stability—not stress and anxiety—for the moment an incarcerated person walks out the gates of prison into an unknown world.
Source image: Blake Wheeler / Unsplash
