Electric Fences Coming To Five State Prisons

Texas department of criminal justice seal from the TDCJ Twitter account.
Texas department of criminal justice seal from the TDCJ Twitter account.

One way the state prison system plans to address employee shortages is to add electric fences.

$28 million dollars of contracts were approved during the December 9, 2022 meeting of the state prison board to install nearly six miles of electric fences as recommended by director Bryan Collier and facilities director Ron Hudson.

Collier said the electric fences would reduce staffing by 500 FTE positions by transferring employees out of towers into other places.

Hudson said the electric fences would be checked daily. And the contractor is required for the first two years to respond to any problems within four hours.

The electric fences will be connected to emergency power generators. And during outages, perimeters will be staffed until power returns.

The contracts that were approved December 9 apply to the Clements Unit near Amarillo, the Telford Unit near New Boston, the Connally Unit near Kenedy, and the Coffield and Michael units near Tennessee Colony.

Click below to hear comments from the December 9, 2022 Texas board of criminal justice business and financial operations committee meeting.

 

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