Issue Position: Record as Sheriff

Issue Position

The Facts

Within three years, Adrian Garcia took a Sheriff's office $58 million in the red into a budget surplus.
Adrian Garcia reduced inmate deaths in jail from 16 to an average of 11 a year over the course of his time as Sheriff. (Source: TX Commission on Jail Standards, TX Attorney General's Office)
During his term, Adrian Garcia kept the Jail inmate suicide count to half the national average at less than 2 deaths per year. (Source: DOJ)
Adrian Garcia took over as Sheriff with an overcrowded Jail population of 11,300 inmates, which he cut to 8.800, while preventing crime from increasing. (Source: Harris County Criminal Justice Coordinating Council, HHJC, FBI)
Adrian Garcia created strategic initiatives, special counseling and courses for prostitutes, sex trafficking victims, pregnant women and military veterans that reduced recidivism rates by 75% compared to average for the entire jail population. (Source: UH Downtown Criminology Dept., staff reports) (video: https://t.co/VCluhmxF2S?ssr=true)
Adrian Garcia ended the practice his predecessor started of shipping overflow inmates to jails in Texas and Louisiana while keeping a lid on crime and saving taxpayers $60 million. (Sources: Houston Chronicle articles, county budget documents)
As sheriff, Adrian Garcia eliminated unnecessary staff overtime payments at the jail, reducing overtime to $5 million a year from $30 million. (County budget documents)
Adrian Garcia's improvements in mental health programs for Harris County Jail inmates were highlighted by the National Commission on Correctional Health Care by naming the Jail's Mental Health Unit as the 2013 National Program of the Year.
As sheriff, Adrian Garcia adopted a set of policies described in national media as one of the most comprehensive law enforcement approaches to LGBT issues affecting the housing of inmates as well as how sheriff's office employees treat the public and each other. Adrian Garcia believes, "discrimination or harassment of any kind based on sexual orientation or gender identity is strictly prohibited."
In 2012, the Chronicle said: "Sheriff Garcia has accomplished this through hard work and a certain fearlessness against an entrenched, good ol' boy way of doing things that may have made life comfortable for some people in the sheriff's office, but not for the people of Harris County."
In 2012, the Chronicle said: "By providing alternatives to jailing mental health patients or non-violent offenders, the sheriff has implemented policy that not only makes fiscal sense, but humanitarian sense as well."
In 2012, the Chronicle said: "Sheriff Adrian Garcia has demonstrated how local government is supposed to work."

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