Arrested in Texas, dead in Louisiana: Private-prison transfers raise accountability concerns

HOUSTON (CN) — Last January, Houston resident Erik Carlson was arrested and charged with unlawfully possessing a firearm. As is typical for people facing charges, he was booked into the county jail.

As is much less typical, Carlson was then transferred not just to a different facility but out of state, to the for-profit LaSalle Correctional Center in Olla, Louisiana. There, after falling sick, Carlson was denied medical care and ultimately died as a result, his family claims in a lawsuit filed last month in Louisiana federal court.

The lack of adequate medical care continued despite pleas not only from Carlson but from fellow inmates and medical staff, the family says in their complaint. Instead, they say prison officials told Carlson to buy over-the-counter medicines from the commissary.

When a nurse finally did see him, she noted that his mouth was severely swollen, “to the extent that his tonsils, throat and epiglottis were not visible.” Officials agreed to transfer Carlson to a hospital, but he went into cardiac arrest and died in transit, just 29 years old.

His cause of death, according to an autopsy: strep throat.

Twenty people died in Harris County jails in 2025, an increase over the previous year. So far this year, there have already been two deaths. Those numbers are sadly below average for county jails in the United States, which see around 167 deaths for every 100,000 inmates, according to Justice Department data from 2019.

And yet, these numbers do not include inmates outsourced to other facilities like LaSalle, according to the Texas attorney general’s office, which maintains records on in-custody deaths. 

If those deaths were included, it’s unclear what the full count would be. LaSalle did not respond to requests for comment for this story. Since LaSalle is a private company, public records requests filed in both Texas and Louisiana turned up no additional data, either.

Carlson’s family’s lawsuit comes as Harris County faces growing scrutiny over overcrowding at its jails and the substandard conditions that often result. 

Depending on perspective, transfers to other facilities are either an attempt at a solution or just another part of this bigger issue. 

Currently, Harris County is outsourcing around 1,200 inmates to prisons run by for-profit LaSalle Management Co., including more than 600 sent to the facility in Olla, said Jason Spencer, a spokesperson for the Harris County sheriff’s office. Compare that to the more than 8,500 detainees currently held in actual county custody. But LaSalle has faced troubles of its own, including more than 20 wrongful-death lawsuits since 2013. Rather than helping safeguard inmates, critics say that relying on these third-party companies creates new risks and transparency issues.

It’s a problem, the Carlson’s family says, that Harris County officials either knew or should have known about. Their lawsuit names several defendants, including LaSalle, the Harris County sheriff’s office and Sheriff Ed Gonzalez.

“Harris County knew that facilities run by LaSalle, including the Olla facility, kept residents in conditions that fell far below state standards,” the family says in their suit, filed on Jan. 21 of this year. They noted that LaSalle and other for-profit partners “have a documented history of failing to provide adequate medical care to detainees.”

Sam Harton, an attorney with the Chicago firm Romanucci & Blandin who is helping represent the Carlson family in their suit, said that with lawsuits like these, her firm hopes to hold these institutions accountable and discover how deep these unconstitutional policies and practices go at LaSalle and Harris County. Last April, the firm filed a similar lawsuit against LaSalle and Harris County following the death of another inmate, Jaleen Anderson, at the same facility.

While no amount of legal damages can bring back a loved one, Harton said suits like these can still be an important tool for accountability, including by changing the cost-benefit equation for companies like LaSalle.

“Lawsuits are very powerful but very limited in their scope,” she said. Still, “I think that our lawsuit is important, in the sense that this company needs to be hit where it hurts.”

For the past several years, Harris County has been continuously out of compliance with minimum state jail standards. As of at least December, it still is, according to a report from the Texas Commission on Jail Standards.

In its report, the commission noted multiple issues, including fire-code violations at the county’s main jail and failures to transport inmates to scheduled doctor’s appointments or the emergency room.

Hoping to address overcrowding, Harris County officials have signed partnerships with for-profit detention centers willing to house inmates.

In 2022, county commissioners approved a $69 million deal with LaSalle, which runs 18 facilities including ICE detention centers across Arizona, Georgia, Louisiana, New Mexico and Texas, according to its website.

In 2023, they entered a similar contract with CoreCivic despite a wide range of concerns that had recently been raised by Tennessee regulators. Late last year, Harris County ended its contract with CoreCivic, citing budget issues, bringing Texas inmates home from Mississippi.

Even before Carlson’s death, these for-profit facilities have faced a slew of allegations, including for wrongful death, medical malpractice and neglect.

LaSalle did not respond to any questions for this story, including requests for information on how many inmates have died at its Olla facility. Even so, Carlson is not the first or only Houston resident to die after being transferred there. Also on the list are Jaleen Anderson, 29, and Billie Davis, 35.

Since 2013, dozens of inmates have died in LaSalle’s care, according to data from the nonprofit Texas Justice Initiative, Loyola University’s Incarceration Transparency project and ICE news releases.

Bianca Tylek, executive director of the nonprofit prisoner advocacy group Worth Rises, says that when it comes to for-profit prisons, mismanagement can actually feed their bottom lines.

“There's only really two ways to drive your bottom line or profitability, which is either by increasing revenue or decreasing expenses,” Tylek told Courthouse News. “When you increase revenue, that generally means that you have more people in your facilities, and when you're decreasing expenses, it just means you're spending less to take care of them.”

That hasn’t stopped officials across the country from handing over detainees to these companies. According to The Sentencing Project, 27 states and the federal government use prison corporations like LaSalle to house tens of thousands of individuals.

The numbers are particularly stark when it comes to migrant detainees, around 90% of whom are held at private facilities, according to the American Civil Liberties Union. President Donald Trump’s so-called “Big, Beautiful Bill” carved out additional funding to imprison migrants. As CoreCivic’s stock prices surged following Trump’s 2024 election victory, CEO Damon Hininger told shareholders the company was “perfectly aligned with the demands of this moment.”

While the growth of the for-profit industry may be a boon for investors, advocates stress that it doesn’t change liability when it comes to the public agencies responsible for inmates. Even when transferred to an out-of-state private company, detainees like Carlson are technically still in the custody of Harris County. 

“These counties contract with these companies for a reason,” Harton said. “They are responsible for the consequences of those actions.”

Deaths like Carlson’s have created a paradoxical situation for Harris County authorities. While increasing funding and upgrades at public county jails could reduce the need for transfers, they’ve also lost the confidence of many advocates, who question whether county law-enforcement can adequately care for inmates at all. 

According to advocacy groups like the Texas Jail Project, the main Harris County Jail in downtown Houston holds more mentally ill Texans than any other facility in the state. According to county data, almost 80% of the current jail population faces mental health issues.

In recent months, Harris County authorities have proposed a range of solutions, including more staffing and a medical wing.

“We have identified nonhousing space in the jail that could be repurposed for expanded medical services,” Jason Spencer, the sheriff’s department spokesperson, said in an email. “We are working with Harris Health to determine the best use.”

Although more funding and upgrades could improve conditions for detainees, advocates are calling foul on these plans.

“Anything inside a jail will continue to be opaque,” Krish Gundu, co-founder and executive director of the Texas Jail Project, told Courthouse News in an email. “It will only have to meet minimum jail standards, which do not have any standards of care for medical [care].” She stressed that calling a jail wing a hospital would not necessarily guarantee that it operated at the level of a hospital.

As other county services face budget cuts, Gundu said it was disappointing to see local officials once again pouring millions into incarceration. 

Just this month, Harris County commissioners approved $1 million for a feasibility study related to proposed jail upgrades. Separately, they also approved $1.5 million for a “jail infrastructure planning and governance” project.

“This idea that a jail feasibility study will somehow help us build a ‘humane’ jail is not only naive but grossly misleading,” Gundu said. “The walls and floors of the jail are not killing and harming people. It's the inherent culture of a punitive system whose sole purpose is to dehumanize people. And that cannot be fixed by building a new jail." 

Many of the criticisms heard in Harris County echo those made about America writ large: that the United States locks up too many people, and that law-enforcement authorities should not be solely responsible for mental-health care.

Just a week after Carlson’s family filed suit, another family sued Harris County authorities, also alleging systemic neglect and failures at the county jail.

Diagnosed with schizophrenia in 2019, Kristopher McGregor, a former safety for the University of Houston’s football team, repeatedly ended up in jail as his mental health deteriorated. During stays at the jail, “Kristopher did not eat or drink, resulting in chronic malnutrition and life-threatening illness,” his family says in their own lawsuit. “Kristopher’s schizophrenia also prevented him from seeking medical care when he needed it.”

In January 2025 — the same month Carlson was arrested — McGregor was also booked on suspicion of misdemeanor theft. 

Unlike Carlson, he was held in the main county facility rather than taken to Louisiana. Like Carlson, he contracted a strep throat infection that soon escalated into a medical crisis.

McGregor’s mental-health issues prevented him from seeking treatment, his family says in their suit, which names Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez and Harris County Jail Medical Director Naomi Lockett as defendants. Despite this, the family argues that jail and medical staff should have been able to clearly see that he was ill.

Weeks later, on Jan. 29, McGregor was found on the floor of his cell, disoriented and struggling to breathe. He was taken to the hospital. At that point, though, his family says he was starving and dehydrated, with an advanced infection that had already spread to his respiratory system, kidneys and bloodstream. He died of sepsis the next day at 39 years old.

“The jail entrusted with his care failed him and did not make sure he was healthy and OK,” McGregor’s mother Citterece McGregor said in a press release following the lawsuit’s filing. “Kristopher’s death was completely preventable. We love you, Kris, and we miss you dearly.”

At Harris County commissioners’ meeting in January to discuss jail funding, parents of deceased Harris County inmates showed up to make their voices heard. Erik Carlson’s mother Kim Carlson Lewis was there, joined by Sarah Knight, the mother of Jaleen Anderson.

“Everyone saw my son and Kristopher suffering, but no one took any action to save either of their lives,” Kim Carlson Lewis told commissioners. “I’m told it's simply the culture in a jail” — and that, she argued, “cannot be solved with more staffer training. Our hard-earned money is better spent on solutions training that can keep people like Kristopher and Erik out of jail.”