Bernstein responds to “Jail Misery”

I guess I missed this one, but on November 19, the Houston Press published a story called Jail Misery by Randall Patterson that was about Monte Killian, an HIV-positive person who had recently spent time in the Harris County jail. Much like an earlier article by Patterson called Jail Hell, it painted an extremely unflattering picture of the conditions, procedures, employees, and in this case treatment of medically needy inmates at the jail. And also like that earlier article, Alan Bernstein, the Director of Public Affairs for the Harris County Sheriff’s Office and a former Houston Chronicle reporter, disputed numerous points in the story. In this case, he has written a lengthy rebuttal, which you can see here to offer his critique. According to an email he sent me with the doc, the Press is going through his memo to “separate any factual errors from what it terms writing style complaints.” Anyway, you can see what he has to say, and we’ll see what the Press may have to say in response.

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