Inmate Racial Integration: Achieving Racial Integration in the Texas Prison System

DOI10.1177/0032885502238683
Date01 December 2002
Published date01 December 2002
Subject MatterArticles
10.1177/0032885502238683THE PRISON JOURNAL / December 2002Trulson, Marquart / INMATE RACIAL INTEGRATION
INMATE RACIAL INTEGRATION:
ACHIEVING RACIAL INTEGRATION
IN THE TEXAS PRISON SYSTEM
CHAD R. TRULSON
University of North Texas
JAMES W. MARQUART
Sam Houston State University
After nearly threedecades, there has been a revival of interest in the racialintegration
of inmates in prisons. In light of what has been done, the literature still questions
whether racial integrationpolicies, either forced or voluntary, can be implemented at
the practical level.This article examines the process of achieving racial integrationin
the Texasprison system. This review focuses on the court’s rolein forcing racial inte-
gration, the organizational responseto integration, the unit-level process of integra-
tion, and the general impact of an integrationpolicy in Texas prisons. Ultimately,this
article concludes that racial integration can be realized at the practicallevel in the
contemporary prison.
Recently, much attention has been paid to the racial integration of prison
inmates. This attention has come in the form of examining the response of the
courts to racial integration (Hemmens, 2000; Slate, Johnson, & Hemmens,
1999), inmate perceptions of racial integration (Hemmens & Marquart,
1999), the outlook of wardens on the racial integration of inmates
(Henderson, Cullen, Carroll, & Feinburg, 2000), and the impact (e.g., result-
This is a revised version of a paper delivered at the 2000 annual meeting of the American
Society of Criminology, San Francisco, CA. This research wassupported by the Texas Depart-
ment of Criminal Justice under Research Agreement No. 016-R99. Points of view are those of
the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the position of the TexasDepartment of Criminal
Justice. The authors gratefully acknowledge the support and hospitality of countless Texas
Department of Criminal Justice employees, especially that of Ron Steffa, Wendy Ingram,
Sherman Bell, and Amy Clute. The authors also appreciate the assistance of Cindy Moors and
Harriet Brewster of the College of Criminal Justice at Sam Houston State University.We also
would like to thank two anonymousreviewers for their insightful comments and perspectives on
earlier versions of this article.
THE PRISON JOURNAL, Vol. 82 No. 4, December 2002498-525
DOI: 10.1177/0032885502238683
© 2002 Sage Publications
498
ing violence) of an integration policy in prisons (Trulson& Marquart, 2002).
Despite the resurgence in the literature, after nearly 25 years of dormancy
(Bartollas, Miller, & Dinitz, 1976; Carroll, 1974, 1977, 1982; Irwin, 1980;
Jacobs, 1982; Walker, 1985), the debate concerning whether inmates should
be racially integrated,whether they can be integrated, and how theyare to be
integrated continues (Henderson et al., 2000). Ultimately, the contemporary
literature on racial integration questions whether integration policies might
“be too difficult in the end to implement at the practical level” (Henderson
et al., 2000, p. 307). As such, research on the racial integration of inmates has
failed to address, among other things, the route to achieving racial integra-
tion—to the extent it can be achieved at all.
This article addresses the evolution of racial integration in the second-
largest correctional system in the country—the Texas prison system.1Inte-
gration in Texas prisons has spanned nearly 25 years by way of a massive
class action civil suit—Lamar v.Coffield (1977). The first section of this arti-
cle describes the journey from segregation to integration in Texas prisons,
focusing on the process and the degree of racial integration facilitated by one
of the most sweeping integration cases decided in the nation. Second, this
article includes a comparative perspective of integration in Texas to other
state prison systems in light of what is known about racial integration nation-
wide. Finally,this article examines the impact and aftermath of such a policy
in terms of interracial and intraracial prisoner violence.
METHODS
This article draws heavily from three sources of data to describe the pro-
cess of achieving racial integration in Texas prisons. First, pertinent court
documents were obtained from the district clerk’s office in Houston, Texas,
and provided a rich source of information about the Lamar v.Coffield (1977)
case. These documents were used to construct the process of forcing integra-
tion on the Texas prison system from the legal side. Second, documents
obtained from the Texas prison system’s Department of Classification and
Records provided a rich source of information about the actual integration
process in Texasprisons. We were allowed full access to a wealth of informa-
tion such as court documents, internal studies, compliance reports, and train-
ing manuals, including numerous policies and procedures all relating to
Lamar v. Coffield (1977). These documents were used to examine how the
Texasprison system achieved racial integration internally as an organization
over the long term.
Trulson, Marquart / INMATE RACIAL INTEGRATION 499

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