title: Dalby, Queensland

text: Water and sewerage treatment services are provided by Western Downs Regional Council. The town has made a ground-breaking deal with nearby gas companies by taking water from gas fields. It has been noted that the town will have a definite water supply for at least another 30 years, taking into account demographic trends.


title: Dalby, Queensland

text: Western Downs Regional Council operates a public library at 107 Drayton Street. It is open 10am to 5.30pm Monday to Friday and 10am to 12.30pm Saturday. Dalby Library has two Creative Studios which have the latest in content creation tools, professional equipment and software, music production and recording, and digital production and editing to help create and share projects.


title: Dalby, Queensland

text: The Springvale Kupunn branch of the Queensland Country Women's Association meets at 52 Cunningham Street.


title: Dalby, Queensland

text: Dalby has a strong Rugby League history with their Junior Rugby League Team, The Dalby Devils, that participate in to Toowoomba Junior Rugby League. Dalby has a Senior Rugby League Team in the Toowoomba Rugby League known as The Dalby Diehards. Condamine has a rugby union team which compete in the Darling Downs Rugby Union competition, against such teams as the University of Southern Queensland Rugby Union Club, Toowoomba Rangers Rugby Union Club, Toowoomba City Rugby Club, Roma Echidnas, the Condamine Cods, the Dalby Wheatmen, the Goondiwindi Emus, the Warwick Water Rats and the University of Queensland Rugby Union Club (Gatton Campus).


title: Dalby, Queensland

text: Dalby has a monument to the "Cactoblastis cactorum" in a park by the Myall Creek which runs through the town. The Argentinian caterpillar successfully eradicated the prickly pear in the 1920s.


title: Dalby, Queensland

text: Dalby has a humid subtropical climate ("Cfa" in the Köppen climate classification) and being located just to the west of the Great Dividing Range it is hotter and less humid in summer and colder and drier in winter than nearby locations on the other side of the range. Dalby has had a recording weather station since 1893, but that was replaced in 1992 by another station at the Dalby Airport. The town's highest recorded temperature was 45.6 °C (114.1 °F) on 4 December 1913, while the coldest was −7.2 °C (19.0 °F) on 5 July 1895. The annual rainfall is 681.2 mm (26.8 in), the majority of which falls as thunderstorms in the summer months.


title: Dalby, Queensland

text: Dalby experienced its worst floods since 1981 in late December 2010. The town's water purification system was flooded, resulting in water restrictions that have hampered clean-up efforts. 112,500 litres (24,700 imp gal; 29,700 US gal) of water were transported to the town of 14,000 residents. In early March 2013, Dalby received another severe flood, cutting the town in two after 122 mm (4.8 in) of rain was recorded over a few days. Flood waters peaked at 3.21 meters and a number of homes received water damage.


title: Boris Malenko

text: Lawrence J. Simon (June 28, 1933 – September 1, 1994), better known by the ring name, Boris Malenko (), was an American professional wrestler and professional wrestling trainer. He is best known for his appearances with Championship Wrestling from Florida and Big Time Wrestling in the 1960s and 1970s as a Russian heel. He was the father of professional wrestlers Joe Malenko and Dean Malenko.


title: Boris Malenko

text: Simon was born in Newark, New Jersey and raised in Irvington, New Jersey. As a teenager, Simon competed at amateur wrestling in YMCAs. Before becoming a professional wrestler, he worked as a truck driver in the Garment District in New York City.


title: Boris Malenko

text: Simon made his professional debut in 1955 as "Larry Simon", wrestling in the Eastern United States. In 1957, he joined the Dallas, Texas-based promotion Big Time Wrestling under the ring name "Crusher Duggan", winning the NWA Texas Heavyweight Championship later that year.


title: Boris Malenko

text: On July 19, 1961, Simon unsuccessfully challenged Buddy Rogers for the NWA World Heavyweight Championship in Jacksonville, Florida.


title: Boris Malenko

text: In September 1961, Simon joined in the Minneapolis, Minnesota-based American Wrestling Association. He adopted the persona of "Otto Von Krupp", a German wrestler who wore jackboots and a swastika on his back. Simon formed a tag team with Bob Geigel, with the duo winning the AWA World Tag Team Championship in November 1961, holding it until Simon left the promotion in January 1962.


title: Boris Malenko

text: In 1962, playing upon Cold War tensions, Simon adopted the persona of "Boris Malenko", an agent of the Soviet Union. He was occasionally billed as "The Great Malenko"; a pun, with "Malenko" being Russian for "little", or as "Dr. Malenko" or "Professor Malenko". He built his career in South Florida, where his gimmick made him a hated heel among the Cuban population. Over the next decade, he held the NWA Florida Heavyweight Championship twice, the NWA Florida Tag Team Championship twice, the NWA Southern Heavyweight Championship (Florida version) once, the NWA Southern Tag Team Championship (Florida version) once, and the NWA Brass Knuckles Championship (Florida version) eight times. His main rivals included Eddie Graham, Wahoo McDaniel, Johnny Valentine, Joe Scarpa, and José Lothario. In an angle in 1966, after Malenko bloodied Sammy Steamboat by biting his ear, Eddie Graham stormed the ring and punched Malenko's dentures out of his mouth, then crushed them.


title: Boris Malenko

text: In 1970, Malenko returned to Big Time Wrestling, where he held the NWA American Heavyweight Championship and the NWA Texas Tag Team Championship. He had a heated feud with Wahoo McDaniel, with McDaniel defeating him in a hair versus hair match in July 1970. A bout between the two in the Astrodome set a longstanding attendance record. In December 1970, McDaniel defeated Malenko in a loser leaves town match, marking his departure from the promotion. During his time with Big Time Wrestling he was managed by Lord Charles Montegue.


title: Boris Malenko

text: On May 9, 1972, Malenko and Bob Roop defeated Bearcat Wright and Bobby Shane to win the NWA Florida Tag Team Championship, and six days later, Malenko defeated Wright in singles competition to win his eighth and final Florida Brass Knuckles title in Orlando. On June 24, 1972, Malenko and Johnny Weaver defeated Mike Webster and The Professional for his second run with the Florida Tag Team titles.


title: Boris Malenko

text: Malenko toured Japan with All Japan Pro Wrestling in 1973 and New Japan Pro-Wrestling in 1974. During his time with NJPW, Malenko wrestled a number of high-profile bouts with Antonio Inoki.


title: Boris Malenko

text: In the late 1970s, Malenko wrestled for the Knoxville, Tennessee-based promotion Southeastern Championship Wrestling, winning both the NWA Southeastern Heavyweight Championship (Northern Division) and the NWA Southeastern Television Championship in 1978. He became the manager of Jerry Blackwell after it was claimed he had acquired the mortgage to Blackwell's family farm, forcing him to fight on his behalf. The angle ended after Ron Garvin paid off the mortgage, freeing Blackwell to attack Malenko.


title: Boris Malenko

text: Simon, who was Jewish, had two sons, Dean and Jody, both of whom became professional wrestlers. He died in September 1994 from leukemia.


title: Behaving Badly (film)

text: Behaving Badly is a 2014 American teen sex comedy film written and directed by Tim Garrick, which is the film adaptation of the 2000 Ric Browde autobiographical novel "While I'm Dead Feed the Dog". It stars Nat Wolff and Selena Gomez alongside Mary-Louise Parker, Elisabeth Shue, Heather Graham, Jason Lee, Dylan McDermott and Cary Elwes. The movie was released on video-on-demand on July 1, 2014, before a theatrical release on August 1, 2014.


title: Behaving Badly (film)

text: Teenager Rick Stevens (Nat Wolff), has a crush on Nina Pennington (Selena Gomez). When Rick realizes that Nina broke up with her boyfriend Kevin Carpenter (Austin Stowell) he makes his move. He places a bet with Karlis Malinauskas (Nate Hartley), a mobster's son, that he will have sex with Nina before Arbor Day, leading to a serious chain of events from having sex with his best friend's mom (Elisabeth Shue), to having almost the whole town in jail, including Nina.


title: Behaving Badly (film)

text: Principal photography took place at John Burroughs Middle School in Los Angeles, California in August 2012. The shoot took twenty days to complete. Originally titled "Feed The Dog" since it is based on the book "While I'm Dead Feed the Dog", the film changed its name in August 2012 to "Parental Guidance Suggested" before being revised to "Behaving Badly". The third title revision was largely due to the Billy Crystal/Bette Midler film "Parental Guidance" in the 2012 holiday season having already claimed the title, causing possible confusion. Browde, the author of the original autobiographical novel, has disavowed the film as going against the source material of his book.


title: Behaving Badly (film)

text: In April 2014, it was announced Vertical Entertainment had acquired U.S distribution rights to the film. The film was released in the United Kingdom straight to video on June 9, 2014. The film was released in the United States on July 1, 2014, through video on demand, before being released in a limited release on August 1, 2014.


title: Behaving Badly (film)

text: The film received a 0% approval rate on "Rotten Tomatoes" following 17 reviews, and a score of 18/100 on "Metacritic" suggesting "overwhelming dislike."


title: John Ehle

text: John Marsden Ehle, Jr. (December 13, 1925 – March 24, 2018) was an American writer known best for his fiction set in the Appalachian Mountains of the American South. He has been described as "the father of Appalachian literature".


title: John Ehle

text: John Ehle was born in Asheville, North Carolina, the oldest of five children of Gladys (née Starnes) and John Marsden Ehle, an insurance company division director. His paternal grandparents emigrated from Wales and England.


title: John Ehle

text: He enlisted in the United States Army during World War II, serving as a rifleman with the 97th Infantry Division. Following his military service, he went on to study at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, receiving a Bachelor of Arts degree in Radio, Television, and Motion Pictures in 1949 and later a Master of Arts degree in Dramatic Arts (1953). He also served on the faculty of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill from 1951 to 1963. During his tenure at UNC-Chapel Hill, he wrote plays for the American Adventure series that played on NBC Radio and began writing his first novel.


title: John Ehle

text: Ehle's first novel, "Move Over Mountain", was published by Hodder & Stoughton of London in 1957. The following year, he returned with a biography "The Survivor: The Story of Eddy Hukov". In 1964, Harper & Row published perhaps his most well-known book, "The Land Breakers". The book is a fictional account set in the late 18th century that traces the story of the first white pioneers to settle in the Appalachian wilderness of the mountains of Western North Carolina. "The Land Breakers", out of print for several decades, was republished in 2006 by Press 53, a small imprint in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.


title: John Ehle

text: With "The Land Breakers," he started a seven-part series of historical fiction about the Appalachian region. Two of his eleven novels, "The Winter People" and "The Journey of August King", have been adapted as films.


title: John Ehle

text: Among his six works of non-fiction is the 1965 book, "The Free Men", which is a first-person chronicle of the desegregation struggle in Chapel Hill, North Carolina, at the height of the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.


title: John Ehle

text: Ehle was active in a number of social, educational, and anti-poverty projects in the state of North Carolina. From 1963 to 1964, Ehle served as special assistant to North Carolina Governor Terry Sanford, an appointment Sanford often called his "one man think tank." Sanford credits Ehle for the idea behind the statewide initiative The North Carolina Fund (a non-profit organization funded primarily by grants from the Ford Foundation to fight poverty in North Carolina). As an extension of Governor Sanford's focus on education, Ehle was instrumental in the founding of both the North Carolina School of the Arts, and the North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, among the first such state-supported high schools for the gifted and talented in the United States. He was also responsible for the founding of the North Carolina Governor's School, the first summer program of its kind for gifted students in North Carolina.


title: John Ehle

text: From 1964 to 1966, Ehle served as an adviser on President Lyndon B. Johnson's White House Group for Domestic Affairs. From 1965 to 1968, Ehle was a member of the United States National Committee for UNESCO. He also served on the National Council for the Humanities (1966–1970).


title: John Ehle

text: In the late 1960s, Ehle took over management of the Stouffer Foundation. The heiress Anne Forsyth had created this organization to provide full scholarships for Black students to attend some of the all-white "Seg academies." These private schools had sprung up around the South to help white parents keep their children out of legally mandated racially integrated public schools. Forsyth's goal was not only to benefit the few selected Black students, but also to open the minds of white students. Ehle and his wife Rosemary Harris can be heard interviewing prospective candidates, Black public school students, on surviving recordings.


title: John Ehle

text: The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Library, Manuscripts Department, maintains the John Ehle Papers, an archive which contains drafts, notes, correspondence, and other materials pertaining to Ehle's many books. The collection also includes a large collection of audio recordings of interviews, video, and photographs which document the civil rights activities observed by Ehle while he was writing "The Free Men".


title: John Ehle

text: Ehle was elected to the North Carolina Literary Hall of Fame. He has also received awards including: the Thomas Wolfe Memorial Literary Award, the Lillian Smith Book Award, the John Tyler Caldwell Award for the Humanities, and the Mayflower Award.


title: Stephen R. Donaldson

text: Stephen Reeder Donaldson (born May 13, 1947) is an American fantasy, science fiction and mystery novelist, most famous for "The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant", his ten-novel fantasy series. His work is characterized by psychological complexity, conceptual abstractness, moral bleakness, and the use of an arcane vocabulary, and has attracted critical praise for its "imagination, vivid characterizations, and fast pace". Donaldson earned his bachelor's degree from The College of Wooster and a Master's degree from Kent State University. He currently resides in Albuquerque, New Mexico.


title: Stephen R. Donaldson

text: Donaldson spent part of his youth in India, where his father, a medical missionary, worked with lepers. Donaldson attended what is now the Kodaikanal International School. He was attending Kent State University as a graduate student at the time of the Kent State shootings on May 4, 1970. Though he was not on campus at the time of the shootings, his apartment was one and a half blocks away, and he was forced to live under martial law for three days afterwards. Donaldson does not like to discuss the incident, as he finds the memories disturbing.


title: Stephen R. Donaldson

text: Donaldson is a fan of opera, and has said that he "love[s] that direct expression of passionate emotion in beautiful sound". In 1994, he gained a black belt in Shotokan karate.


title: Stephen R. Donaldson

text: Donaldson is part of the generation of fantasy authors which came to prominence in the 1970s and early 1980s. Like that of many of his peers, his writing is heavily influenced by the works of J. R. R. Tolkien. However, Donaldson's stories show a wide range of other influences, including Mervyn Peake, C. S. Lewis, Robert E. Howard, and the operas of Richard Wagner. Donaldson is also a great fan of Roger Zelazny's "Amber" novels, which were a direct inspiration for his own "Mordant's Need" series. Also, in the "Gradual Interview" section of his website, Donaldson mentions his extensive study of Joseph Conrad, Henry James and William Faulkner to further develop his narrative style.


title: Stephen R. Donaldson

text: In "Creative Cognition, Conceptual Combination, and the Creative Writing of Stephen R. Donaldson," Thomas Ward quotes Donaldson's note in "The Gap into Conflict: The Real Story": "... a fair number of my best stories arise, not from one idea, but from two." Donaldson has said, "two inert elements combine to produce something of frightening potency." For the Thomas Covenant books, when he put unbelief and leprosy together, "... my brain took fire."


title: Stephen R. Donaldson

text: Donaldson's most celebrated series is "The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant", which centers on a cynical leper, shunned by society, who is destined to become the heroic savior of another world. Covenant struggles against the tyrannical Lord Foul, who intends to break the physical universe in order to escape his bondage and wreak revenge upon his arch enemy, The Creator.


title: Stephen R. Donaldson

text: The "Chronicles" were originally published as two trilogies of novels between 1977 and 1983. According to his current publisher, Putnam's, those two series sold more than 10 million copies. A third series, "The Last Chronicles of Thomas Covenant", began publication in 2004 with the novel "The Runes of the Earth". With the second book of that series, "Fatal Revenant", Donaldson again attained bestseller status when the book reached number 12 on the "New York Times" Bestseller List in October 2007.


title: Stephen R. Donaldson

text: A science fiction epic set in a future where humans have pushed far out into space in the attempt to replace depleted resources, "The Gap Cycle" follows two concurrent story arcs. The first concerns an ensign in the United Mining Companies Police (UMCP), Morn Hyland, who is attempting simply to stay alive after being captured by a marauder named Angus Thermopyle. The second follows the Byzantine political maneuvering of the head of the UMCP, Warden Dios, as he attempts to thwart the machinations of his boss, Holt Fasner, who is the CEO of United Mining Companies (UMC) and the most powerful man in human space.


title: Stephen R. Donaldson

text: Each of the epics takes place against the backdrop of a threat to human survival itself from an alien species called the Amnion who use genetic mutation as a way to assimilate and overcome. Trade in raw materials (mostly ores) is carried out with the Amnion in exchange for technology, by both the UMC and illegals. Some illegals trade in Amnion territorial space, referred to as "forbidden space", out of bounds to the UMCP by treaty.


title: Stephen R. Donaldson

text: Donaldson wrote the series in part to be a reworking of Wagner's Ring Cycle. The "Gap" of the title refers to the faster-than-light drives used by the space vessels in order to cross great distances, an instantaneous occurrence similar to the notion of "folding" space.


title: Stephen R. Donaldson

text: The 2008 reprinting of the series combines "The Real Story" and "Forbidden Knowledge" into a single volume. According to Donaldson's website, this was done at his request.


title: Stephen R. Donaldson

text: Donaldson has stated that, when he was younger, he wrote two fan-fiction novellas: one based on Marvel Comics' Thor, and the other based on Joseph Conrad's "Heart of Darkness". These have never been published. As Donaldson grew older, he discovered that the sensation that he was "making it all up" himself was necessary for his imagination to work well. He now regards these early novellas as failed experiments in the process of discovering himself as a writer. He feels the same way about a play he wrote, whose performance at Kent State University convinced him that he was "not cut out to be a playwright".


title: Stephen R. Donaldson

text: "The Man Who" is a series of mystery novels written by Donaldson and published under the pseudonym Reed Stephens, derived from his full name, "Stephen Reeder Donaldson". Donaldson "always hated" writing under a false name, but was forced to do so by his publisher, Ballantine Books, who had a firm belief in "category publishing" and thought that readers would feel betrayed if books of such different genres were published under the name of a single author. However, the books sold poorly even when they were re-printed under Donaldson's name by Tor/Forge Books.


title: Stephen R. Donaldson

text: Donaldson has indicated that he intends to write at least one more "The Man Who" novel after completion of "The Last Chronicles".


title: Stephen R. Donaldson

text: In November 2017, the "Seventh Decimate," was released in bookstores and to online retailers. It is the first book in "The Great God's War" trilogy. It features fantasy kingdoms Amika and Belleger, who fight "against each other in a sorcery-saturated battle of mutual destruction, with a charismatic prince searching for a legendary conjuror's library."


title: Kevin Kiley (politician)

text: Kevin Patrick Kiley (born January 30, 1985) is an American politician, attorney, and former educator serving in the California State Assembly since 2016. He is a Republican who represents the 6th district, which is a northeast area outside Sacramento, composed of Sacramento suburbs, exurbs, and rural areas. Kiley was a candidate to replace California governor Gavin Newsom in a voter-initiated recall election which was held on September 14, 2021. Kiley is the representative-elect for California's 3rd congressional district, having won the 2022 election as the Republican nominee.


title: Kevin Kiley (politician)

text: Kiley grew up in the Sacramento area, where his father was a physician and his mother was a special education teacher. He attended local public schools, including Cavitt Junior High School and Granite Bay High School, where he was valedictorian.


title: Kevin Kiley (politician)

text: He graduated with an undergraduate degree from Harvard University in 2007, completing a thesis titled "The Civil Rights Movement and the Reemergence of Classical Democracy". Upon graduation, he became a teacher in Los Angeles through Teach for America, teaching for two years at Manual Arts High School while earning his teaching credentials at Loyola Marymount University. In 2008, he was recognized as a national debate champion while participating as a member of the Loyola debate team.


title: Kevin Kiley (politician)

text: Kiley later attended Yale Law School, worked as an editor of the "Yale Law Journal", and clerked at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York. He returned to California to join the law firm Irell & Manella, where he helped prepare an intellectual property theft case for T-Mobile against Chinese technology company Huawei that was the basis for a federal criminal investigation. He was an adjunct professor at the University of the Pacific McGeorge School of Law.


title: Kevin Kiley (politician)

text: In 2016, Kiley was elected to the California State Assembly. In May 2016, Kiley told "The Sacramento Bee" that he supported then-Ohio Governor John Kasich in the 2016 United States presidential election. In 2018, Kiley authored legislation to make it easier for students to transfer school districts.


title: Kevin Kiley (politician)

text: After winning a second term in the State Assembly, Kiley ran for the State Senate in California's 1st District. He finished second in the primary, but lost the runoff to fellow Assemblyman Brian Dahle. Soon after the start of the new legislative session, Kiley introduced legislation to close for private use a controversial DMV office that exclusively catered to state legislators and staff. In a statement to "The Sacramento Bee", Kiley said: "This is supposed to be a government of the people, by the people and for the people, not an oligarchy where a gilded political class enjoys privileges that aren’t available to the people that we represent."


title: Kevin Kiley (politician)

text: According to the Associated Press, Kiley is "a conservative who often flirts with the fringes of the GOP". He has said climate change is real, but opposed Gavin Newsom's executive orders requiring all new vehicles in California to be zero emission by 2035 and banning oil-drilling by 2045. He is a supporter of charter schools. Kiley introduced legislation to ban local and state governments from implementing vaccine requirements. After Joe Biden won the 2020 election and Donald Trump refused to concede while making claims of fraud, Kiley refused to say whether Biden won the 2020 election legitimately. Kiley has said his position is to "stay out of national politics altogether", and that, "National politics is a distraction that is used frankly by those in power in Sacramento (as) kind of a smokescreen for their own failures."


title: Kevin Kiley (politician)

text: Though he voted to authorize $1 billion of emergency pandemic spending for Governor Gavin Newsom in March 2020, saying "to trust in Governor Newsom’s leadership and listen to his guidance", Kiley later said Newsom "made a mockery of that trust" and alongside fellow California legislator James Gallagher, successfully sued in June 2020 to remove Newsom's emergency powers (though the ruling was overturned on appeal), and was influential in the campaign to recall Newsom, publishing a book in January 2021, titled "Recall Gavin Newsom: The Case Against America's Most Corrupt Governor."


title: Kevin Kiley (politician)

text: On July 6, 2021, Kiley announced that he would be running as a candidate for Governor of California in the 2021 recall election. According to the "New York Times", he was one of the "more moderate Republican recall candidates," while the "Los Angeles Times" deemed him and John Cox as the "more traditional conservatives" in the recall election, which ultimately failed to remove Newsom from office.


title: Kevin Kiley (politician)

text: Kiley indicated his support for school choice during the campaign and said teachers unions in the state were too powerful (with the California Teachers Association having been Newsom's top donor), to the detriment of students. Though vaccinated against COVID-19, Kiley pledged to overturn vaccine and mask mandates implemented by Newsom, if he became governor.


title: Kevin Kiley (politician)

text: In 2020, Kiley urged passage of his bill that would require the potential successor of then-candidate for vice president and Senator Kamala Harris to be elected by California's voters and not by gubernatorial appointment; he reiterated that view during the 2021 gubernatorial recall campaign by pledging to allow voters to pick a replacement for Senator Dianne Feinstein if he became governor and her seat became vacant. Kiley would later flag a constitutional issue with the appointment of Alex Padilla by Governor Newsom to replace Kamala Harris and Padilla's expected service until January 2023, since the U.S. Constitution stipulates that such appointees serve "until the people fill the vacancies by election".


title: Kevin Kiley (politician)

text: After lawmakers in the state assembly passed a bill to address the issue that would require voters to select two senators for the same seat: one to serve in the lame-duck session from November 2022 to January 2023, and another for the term January 2023 to January 2029, Kiley said Newsom should have called a special election to fill Harris's seat much earlier, and that the bill would solve the problem in "the most undemocratic way possible". Newsom eventually signed the bill, which meant California's voters had to simultaneously vote for the Senate seat for both the lame-duck term and the next congressional term.


title: Kevin Kiley (politician)

text: On December 29, 2021, Kiley announced he would run for the U.S. House in California's newly redrawn 3rd congressional district, which includes all or parts of Inyo, Sacramento, Mono, Alpine, El Dorado, Placer, Nevada, Sierra, Yuba, and Plumas counties.


title: Kevin Kiley (politician)

text: Kiley was elected to serve California's 6th State Assembly district three times: in 2016, 2018, and 2020. He won with 64% of the vote, 58% of the vote, and 59% of the vote, respectively. In 2021, he ran as a replacement candidate and got 6th place with 3.5% of the vote.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: The Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) is a department of the government of the U.S. state of Texas. The TDCJ is responsible for statewide criminal justice for adult offenders, including managing offenders in state prisons, state jails, and private correctional facilities, funding and certain oversight of community supervision, and supervision of offenders released from prison on parole or mandatory supervision. The TDCJ operates the largest prison system in the United States.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: The department has its headquarters in the Brad Livingston Administrative Headquarters in Huntsville and offices at the Price Daniel Sr. Building in downtown Austin.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: In 1848, the Texas Legislature passed "An Act to Establish a State Penitentiary", which created an oversight board to manage the treatment of convicts and administration of the penitentiaries. Land was acquired in Huntsville and Rusk for later facilities.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: The prison system began as a single institution, located in Huntsville. A second prison facility, Rusk Penitentiary, began receiving convicts in January 1883. Before the "Ruiz v. Estelle" court case, the Texas Department of Corrections had 18 units, including 16 for males and two for females.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: Various administrative changes where the organization of the managing board of the department occurred over the next 100 years.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: In 1921, George W. Dixon of "The Prison Journal" published a report on the Texas Prison System facilities. His article stated that the prisons were among the most "brutal" in the world. Dixon said that the prisons featured corporal punishment such as whipping, beatings, and isolation.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: In July and August 1974, a major riot at the Huntsville Walls prison resulted in the murder of two hostages. This was not a riot, but an escape attempt in which the whole Huntsville Unit was shut down. Inmates were Fred Gomez Carrasco, Rudolpho Domingez and Ignacio Cueves.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: In 1979," Ruiz v. Estelle" found that the conditions of imprisonment within the TDC prison system constituted cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the United States Constitution. The decision led to federal oversight of the system, with a prison construction boom and "sweeping reforms ... that fundamentally changed how Texas prisons operated."


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: In 1989, the TDCJ and the Board of Criminal Justice were created. The board is composed of nine members appointed by the governor with the advice and consent of the senate to six-year, overlapping terms. This new agency absorbed functions of three state agencies - the Texas Department of Corrections, the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, and the Texas Adult Probation Commission.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: In the 1980s, the government of Texas began building more prisons. During that decade, impoverished rural communities viewed the prisons as a boon, as they provided jobs.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: In 1987, the Texas State Board of Corrections voted to build two new 2,250-inmate maximum-security prisons in Gatesville and Amarillo and several 1,000-inmate medium-security prisons in Liberty County, Marlin, Snyder, and Woodville. The TDC units in Amarillo and Snyder were the first ones located outside of Central Texas and East Texas.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: James Anthum "Andy" Collins, the executive director of the TDCJ from April 10, 1994, to around December 1995, became a consultant for VitaPro, a company selling a meat substitute that was used in Texas prisons. Shirley Southerland, a prisoner at the Hobby Unit, stated that her fellow prisoners discovered that the VitaPro product was intended for consumption by canines. Collins arranged for VitaPro to be used while he was still the head of the TDCJ. Collins had awarded a $33.7 million contract to the company. Robert Draper of the "Texas Monthly" accused various TDCJ board members and state officials in the early to mid-1990s of capitalizing on the rapid expansion of Texas prisons – from 1994 to 1996 the number of prisoners almost doubled and the number of the prison units increased from 65 to 108 – and trying to establish favorable business contracts and/or get prisons named after them. Draper reasoned, "If [Allan B. Polunsky] and other board members didn't care about ethics, why should Andy Collins?"


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: According to a December 2007 survey of prisoners from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics, five TDCJ units, Allred Unit, Clemens Unit, Coffield Unit, Estelle Unit, and Mountain View Unit, were among those in the United States with the highest numbers of reported prison rape cases in 2006. In 2007, the TDCJ reported a total of 234 reported sexual assaults in its prisons. Michelle Lyons, the TDCJ spokesperson, said, "The actual reports we have are not consistent with the results in the survey, but because it's anonymous, there's no way for us to verify that additional number."


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: In 2008, the TDCJ planned to install cell phone-jamming devices at its units, but encountered resistance from cell phone companies.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: In 2014, the Human Rights Clinic of the University of Texas School of Law released a report stating that the temperatures in many TDCJ units are too high over the summer and that at least 14 inmates had been killed by the heat since 2007. In 2013, the TDCJ had signed a deal for a climate-controlled housing system for pig breeding; this was worth $750,000. In response, John Whitmire of the Texas State Senate stated, "the people of Texas don't want air-conditioned prisons, and there's a lot of other things on my list above the heat. It's hot in Texas, and a lot of Texans who are not in prison don't have air conditioning." That year, a federal judge declared that the TDCJ is making it impossible for Muslim inmates to practice their religion.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: The Texas Board of Criminal Justice oversees the TDCJ. The board selects the executive director, who manages the TDCJ. The members of the board are appointed by the Governor of Texas.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: The Correctional Institutions Division, which operates secure correctional facilities for adults, has its headquarters in the Brad Livingston Administrative Headquarters in Huntsville. TDCJ-CID, formed in 2003, was a merger of the Institutions Division, the Operations Division, the Private Facilities Division, and the State Jail Division.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: The division operates prisons, which are facilities for people convicted of capital offenses and people convicted of first-, second-, and third-degree felony offenses, and state jails, facilities for people convicted of state jail felony offenses. Before the 2003 formation of the Correctional Institutions Division, the Institutional Division operated prisons and the State Jail Division (TDCJ-SJD) operated state jails. As of 2010, of the counties in Texas, the five with the highest numbers of state prisons and jails were Walker, Brazoria and Coryell (tie), and Anderson and Liberty (tie).


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: As of 2001, prisons may be named after people who are dead or who are still alive, and namesakes have included Governors of Texas, TDCJ employees, members of the Texas House of Representatives, mayors, police officers, and judges. In previous eras, prisons were only named after deceased TDCJ employees and state governors. By the 2000s, so many new prisons were being built that the TDCJ had to change its naming policy.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: Regional offices of the CID are: Region I, headquartered in Huntsville; Region II, headquartered on TDCJ prison property in Anderson County, near Palestine; Region III, headquartered on the property of the Darrington Unit in Brazoria County, near Rosharon; Region IV, headquartered in the former Chase Field Industrial Complex (a TDCJ property) in Beeville; Region V, headquartered in Plainview; and Region VI, headquartered on TDCJ property in Gatesville.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: Most of the TDCJ prisons are located in the historic cotton slavery belt around the former location of Stephen F. Austin's colony. Counties that have housed adult correctional facilities, such as Brazoria, Fort Bend, Polk, and Walker, once had slave majority populations. Many of the largest prison farms and prison properties in the state, including Goree Unit, the Jester units, Polunsky Unit, the Ramsey units, and Wynne Unit, are located in those counties. The state of Texas began building adult prisons outside of the historic cotton belt in the 1980s.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: Some units have employee housing; most employee housing was constructed prior to the TDCJ's early to mid-1990s prison expansion. As of 2008, of the 22 units that are staffed below 80% of their employee capacities, eight (36%) of the units have officers' quarters. As of that year, the TDCJ requested funding from the Texas Legislature for three 80-bed officers' quarters to be built next to three prisons that the agency considers to be "critically staffed."


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: An employee who obtains a residence in a state-owned house on or after September 1, 1997, pays $50 per month during the fiscal year of 1998, and for each subsequent year, 20% of the fair market rental valuation of the property. A resident of state-owned bachelor officers' quarters or a renter of a state-owned mobile home lot pays $50 per month.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: The Texas Prison System purchased its first prison farm in 1885. The oldest TDCJ units still in operation, originally established between 1849 and 1933, include Huntsville Unit (1849), Wynne Unit (1883), Jester I Unit (1885, brick building in 1932), Vance (Harlem/Jester II) Unit (1885, brick building in 1933), Clemens Unit (1893), Ramsey (I) Unit (1908), Stringfellow (Ramsey II) Unit (1908), Central Unit (1909, rebuilt in 1932), Goree Unit (1907), Darrington Unit (1917), Eastham Unit (1917), and Scott (Retrieve) Unit (1919).


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: In addition, the Hilltop Unit uses buildings from the former Gatesville State School, a juvenile correctional facility, making the Hilltop Unit's prison facility the third-oldest correctional facility still-used in Texas after the Huntsville and Jester I. The largest TDCJ prison is the Coffield Unit, with a capacity of 4,021 inmates. The largest female prison is the Christina Crain Unit, with a capacity of 2,013 inmates.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: Originally, many Texas prison farms had no cells; the prisoners were housed in racially segregated dormitory units referred to as "tanks". In the 1960s, the Texas Prison System began referring to the prisons as "units". Chad R. Trulson and James W. Marquart, authors of "First Available Cell: Desegregation of the Texas Prison System", said that the word unit was a euphemism that probably was intended to refer to progressive penal practices, professionalism, and a distancing from a legacy of racism.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: State jails house inmates convicted of state jail felony offenses, which include lower-level assault and drug, family, and property offenses. In addition the Texas Board of Criminal Justice designated state jails as transfer units for individuals who are bound for prisons. Individuals in a state jail who are convicted of a state jail offense must be held for at least 75 days and may not be held longer than 2 years. Individuals may not parole or have mandatory supervision release from state jails.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: The state jail felony classification was created in 1993 as part of a reformation of sentencing laws. In July 1998, Texas had 18 state jails (including six privately operated facilities) with 9,023 state jail felons and 14,940 people awaiting transfer to prisons. During that year, 53.3% of state jail felons were convicted of possession or delivery of a controlled substance. As of 1998, 85% of the state jail felons had prior arrest records, and 58% of the state jail felons had previously never been incarcerated.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: The highest level of educational programming available in state jails are general equivalency diploma classes.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: The TDCJ operates three psychiatric units, including Jester IV Unit, Skyview Unit, and the John Montford Psychiatric Unit. As of March 2013, the units are at capacity. Brandi Grissom of the "Texas Monthly" said, "So acute is the need for psychiatric prisoners that if Texas built a fourth facility, it would be full as soon as it opened."


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: The State Classification Committee and designated Classification and Records Office staff members assign each institutional prisoner to his or her first unit after the prisoner completes his or her tests and interviews; offenders are not allowed to choose their units of assignment. The state assigns each state jail offender to the unit closest to his or her county of residence.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: Death-row offenders and offenders with life imprisonment without parole enter the TDCJ system through two points; men enter through the Byrd Unit in Huntsville, and women enter through the Reception Center in Christina Crain Unit, Gatesville. From there, inmates with life without parole sentences go on to their assigned facilities. Male death-row offenders go to the Allan B. Polunsky Unit, and female death-row offenders go to the Mountain View Unit.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: The prisoner transportation network of the TDCJ is headquartered in Huntsville. As of 2005, the network has 326 employees, including 319 uniformed employees. The TDCJ's regional prisoner transportation hubs are located in Abilene, Amarillo, Beeville, Huntsville, Palestine, and Rosharon. Of the transportation hubs, the Central Region hub in Huntsville transports the largest number of prisoners to the greatest number of units. The Abilene hub controls the largest land area.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: Prisoners in the general population are seated together, with prisoners handcuffed in pairs. Prisoners in administrative segregation and prisoners under death sentences are seated individually; various restraints, including belly chains and leg irons, are placed on those prisoners. Each prisoner transport vehicle has two urinals and two water dispensers. As of 2005, all of the transportation vans and half of the chain buses have air conditioning.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: The Texas Department of Criminal Justice has the "Offender Orientation Handbook," a guidebook explaining the rules prisoners are required to follow, posted on its website in English and Spanish. Individual prisoners receive formal orientations and copies of the manual after undergoing initial processing. The manual has 111 pages of rules of behavior. It is intended to establish governance over all aspects of prison life. The prison rule system is modeled on the free-world penal system, but it does not have judicial review and rights. The number of regulations has increased due to court orders, incidents, and managerial initiative.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: Robert Perkinson, author of "" (2010), wrote that the "Offender Orientation Handbook" "encapsulates the weary institutional dream of imposing perfect discipline on potential chaos" and that the "sweeping and tedious rules" "cover a bewildering range of restrictions and obligations." As examples Perkinson referred to the "no fighting," "offenders will brush their teeth daily," and "horseplay is prohibited," which he refers to, respectively, as "sensible," "well meaning," and a "catchall." Perkinson said that in practice, "totalitarian order" is not established in the prison because the "churlish" inmates do not have the inclination and "often," the reading ability to follow the "finer dictates" of the handbook, and the correctional officers, "moderately trained, high-turnover stiffs earning Waffle House wages," do not have the energy and time to enforce the rules strictly. According to Perkinson, the handbook is never consistently or fully enforced, but it is invoked by officials whenever a daily conflict occurs.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: In case of an escalated dispute, officers submit a "case" and an inmate or multiple inmates appear in front of a court described by Perkinson as "makeshift." Perkinson explains that several federal court orders have shaped the prison courts, which "have all of the trappings of adversarial justice," including a defense counsel (a correctional officer appointed by a presiding major), physical evidence, and witnesses. According to Perkinson, though, "the house [(the prosecution)] rarely loses." Jorge Renaud, a man who served as a prisoner in Texas's state prisons, said usually when an inmate is charged with a prison offense, the sole question to be determined is the severity of the punishment to be given to the inmate.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: Smoking is prohibited at all TDCJ facilities. On November 18, 1994, the Texas Board of Criminal Justice voted to ban smoking at all TDCJ facilities, beginning on March 1, 1995. The Holliday Unit in Huntsville already had a smoking ban in place prior to the TDCJ system-wide ban.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: Offenders in all TDCJ units wear uniforms consisting of cotton white pullover shirts and white elastic-waist trousers. The TDCJ requires prisoners to wear uniforms so they can easily be identified and to prevent correctional officers from forming associations and giving preferential treatment to any prisoners. The TDCJ retired clothing with belts and buttons and introduced trousers with expandable waists. Shoes worn by prisoners may be issued by the state or purchased from the commissary.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: Male prisoners must be clean-shaven, unless they have been approved to grow a 1/2 inch religious beard, a provision that went into effect August 1, 2015. Usually their hair is required to be trimmed to the backs of their heads and necks. TDCJ-CID says that "Female offenders will not have extreme haircuts." In 2016, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that religious inmates such as Muslims are allowed to grow 4-inch beards as well as wear religious clothing, so long as prisoners do not hide contraband. Inmate with longer hair are inspected by shaking their hair with their fingers. Prisoners must have hair cut around their ears. Native American prisoners, since 2019, received the right to wear long hair after court action.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: Robert Perkinson, author of "Texas Tough," says that the uniforms make prisoners "look like shapeless hospital orderlies." Jorge Renaud, a former prisoner, states that the uniforms are part of the prison system's depersonalization process.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: The TDCJ reviews books to determine whether they are appropriate for prisoners. In 2010, the agency disclosed that it reviewed 89,795 books, with 40,285 authors represented. The agency did not disclose how many of those books were banned. The system's banned list includes some novels that were written by National Book Award winners, Nobel laureates, and Pulitzer Prize-winners, and some books of paintings made by notable artists. The "Austin American-Statesman" and the "Houston Press" compiled lists of some books that have been banned by the TDCJ, noting some are considered classics of the literary canon.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: The TDCJ uses regional release centers for male prisoners. Most male prisoners are released to be closer to their counties of conviction, approved release counties, and/or residences. Male prisoners who have detainers, are classified as sex offenders, have electronic monitoring imposed by the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, and/or have certain special conditions of the Super Intensive Supervision Program are released from Huntsville Unit, regardless of their counties of conviction, residences, and/or approved release counties.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: Regional release facilities for men include the Huntsville Unit, the William P. Clements Jr. Unit near Amarillo; the Hutchins State Jail in Hutchins, near Dallas; the French M. Robertson Unit in Abilene; and the William G. McConnell Unit near Beeville. All female prisoners who are not state jail prisoners or Substance Abuse Felony Punishment Facility prisoners are released from the Christina Crain Unit (formerly the Gatesville Unit) in Gatesville. Rick Thaler, the director of the Correctional Institutions Division, predicted in 2010 that the Huntsville Unit, which serves as the regional release center for greater Houston, would remain the TDCJ's largest release center despite the decrease of traffic of released prisoners.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: State jail offenders are released from their units of assignment. All people released receive a set of nonprison clothing and a bus voucher. State jail offenders receive a voucher to their counties of conviction. Prison offenders receive $50 upon their release and another $50 after reporting to their parole officers. Released state jail offenders do not receive money. Inmates in Substance Abuse Felony Punishment Facilities are also directly released.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: Prior to September 2010, most male prison offenders were released from the Huntsville Unit. Throughout the Huntsville Unit's history, 90% of the male prison offenders in the TDCJ were released from the Huntsville Unit. House Bill 2289 by Jerry Madden, which created the regional release system, specified that prisoners will not be regionally released if the TDCJ believes that it is not in the best interest of the prisoner or that regional release of that prisoner would threaten the safety of the public. According to the bill, the implementation date was September 1, 2010. Male inmates with health and mental health difficulties and sex offenders are still universally released from Huntsville.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: The TDCJ houses male death-row inmates in the Polunsky Unit and female death-row inmates in the Mountain View Unit. The Huntsville Unit is the location of the state of Texas execution chamber. The Polunsky death row has about 290 prisoners. As of March 2013, eight male death-row prisoners are housed in Jester IV Unit, a psychiatric unit, instead of Polunsky.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: The state of Texas began housing death-row inmates in the Huntsville Unit in 1928. In 1965, the male death-row inmates moved to the Ellis Unit. In 1999, the male death row moved to Polunsky. In the 1923-1973 period, Texas state authorities had three female death-row inmates; the first, Emma "Straight Eight" Oliver, was held at Huntsville Unit after her 1949 sentencing, but had her sentence commuted to life imprisonment in 1951. Mary Anderson, sentenced to death in 1978, was held at Goree Unit. Her death sentence was reversed in 1982, and the sentence was changed to life.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: The University of Texas Medical Branch provides health care to offenders in the eastern, northern, and southern sections of Texas. The Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center provides health care to offenders in the western part of Texas. In addition, private corporations provide healthcare services. Hospitalized offenders may go to the Hospital Galveston Unit, the Montford Unit in unincorporated Lubbock County, or area hospitals.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: In 1993, Texas State Comptroller John Sharp proposed that the TDCJ end its healthcare department and transfer responsibilities to the universities to reduce costs. During that time, most TDCJ prison units were in south and east Texas, and UTMB was to provide for the care of 80% of the managed care for TDCJ, while Texas Tech was to provide the remaining 20%. In September 1994, UTMB and Texas Tech took responsibility for 3,000 healthcare workers and a $270 million budget. In 2011, the board considered ending its contract with UTMB and having regional hospitals provide care for prisoners. In 2018, the department said it needed an additional $281 million in its 2020 budget to provide the required minimum amount of health care. To save money, the department rarely provides prisoners dentures, finding it cheaper to simply produce a blended diet in such cases.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: As of 2017, 2.3 million incarcerated Americans depend on prisons for their healthcare. These incarcerated individuals face limited access to medical exams and prescriptions medications compared to the general population as they are not eligible for Medicaid while incarcerated. On top of that, inmates face fees for seeking medical treatment. In 35 states, inmates have medical co-payments which come out of their commissary accounts (made up of prison job payments and contributions from their family). The copays are enforced to prevent inmates from abusing the healthcare system, however, it becomes a burden on inmates whose job makes little to no money and can become a financial strain on the family.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: In some prisons, the healthcare is private which can drastically change how inmates are treated. As of 2012, more than 20 states switched over to private health care providers in order to cut back on costs. These states don't have to provide benefits and pension costs to state workers, since they are hiring private companies, which significantly reduces the price they pay. However, this calls into question the quality of care inmates receive and many human rights groups in addition to federal judges are investigating these private companies.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: The TDCJ has a 120-bed medical facility at University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston. In 1987 the Texas Legislature voted in a ban on most cosmetic surgery for prisoners, and UTMB began denying such in 1989.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: The two largest private prison companies, CoreCivic (formerly known as Corrections Corporation of America) and the CEO Group, run over 170 correctional facilities. In Texas, they have five facilities. These companies keep their operating costs low by using less dollars than allocated per inmate, especially in the area of Healthcare. Additionally, these companies and similar ones, avoid taking inmates over 65 or with chronic illnesses. When they can't avoid it, they improvise ways to make it hard for the inmate to receive medical care. Specifically, CoreCivic has a history of denying hospital requests and punishing inmates when they make repeated requests. Additionally, the records of private prisons are not subject to public access laws. For these reasons, access to health care in private prisons is something that must require more scrutiny.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: Requesting care in prison systems involves a simple procedural checklist that must be met in order to see any type of medical professional. Firstly, an incarnated person must fill out Sick Call Request form that should be answered within a 48-hour time period. After 48 hours, If there is no response, the person is to advance to fill out an I-60 form which states general issues faced. If the process continues to yield no approval, a Step 1 Grievance is to filled out. This level of documentation is very strictly reviewed. Continuing to hear no response for an extended period of time indicates the time to advance to a Step 2 Grievance. After these options, the prisoner may now file a lawsuit for ‘exhausting administrative remedies.’


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: A Sick Call Request form is a specified form that is specific towards what was wrong with the inmate medically. The progression to an I-60 form leads to a more generalized form that addresses seeing a doctor, contact visit, address changes and the like. A Step 1 Grievance are very strict and viewed very critically with certain guide-lines such as: only one problem can be addressed per grievance, only one grievance per week, must be reported within 15 days, and must be written with proper language. This form alone may take up to 40 days to be processed. A Step 2 Grievance is directly reviewed by TDCJ health committee and will have a response by 35 days. If these options are still not satisfactory, the inmate is then allowed to file a lawsuit because he/she has "exhausted administrative remedies."


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: Care through these methods is possible but is still a timely cost. Depending on how the prisoner is, the time between signing a form and receiving medication can mean life or death.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: Even though there is a defined process for requesting medical care in prison systems, the prisoner is still trying to fill out theses forms while considered ‘sick.’ Along with this, the prisoners are expected to cover the costs associated with filing out these expensive papers. For the first healthcare visit in a year, an inmate will be charged one-hundred dollars to their trust fund. However, there are still instances where the inmate would not have to attend to cost of care such as chronic illnesses, follow-up visits, emergency treatments, etc.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: Most visits to a medical professional costs inmates $2–8, in which they use they copay to relief these costs. At first, this rate sounds not too harsh but an important factor to put in is how much inmates earn. For most inmates, a wage is consistent of maybe a few cents per hour. This small set could mean that it would take an inmate a very long time before a "checkup" can be "bought". Fortunately though, care is not restricted if one does not have the necessary funds.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: Additionally, University of Texas Medical Branch (UTMB) decided that the easiest and most cost-effective way to dole out prescription medications to inmates was to distribute it from their own pharmacy. This pharmacy is based in an unmarked building in Huntsville, TX and serves 130 facilities throughout the state, including juvenile facilities, by filling over 20,000 prescriptions per day. Orders are sent out through an electronic medical record system and are processed with custom made conveyor belts and automated machines. The pharmacy has a 24-hour next-business-day turnaround ensuring medications can get to inmates as soon as possible.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: Healthcare in Texas was mostly straight forward. Not much of it was changed over time due to its simplicity. One aspect that did change was how the cost of healthcare for incarcerated persons fluctuated.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: An issue that was prominent in prison systems was the associated costs with treatment. For this reason, the Correctional Managed Health Care Committee (CMHCC) was established in 1993. This committee focused their attention to the rising costs of healthcare today and how that effects inmates inside custody. The CMHCC hopes to open a statewide managed health care plan giving offenders the ability to afford care with timely access.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: The decline of mental health treatment within detainees has become a major concern in the prison system, especially in the Texas prison departments. While the Texas Department of Criminal Justice claims that most of its facilities are capable of treating mental health issues, this does not seem to be the case. Texas provides at least 20% of inmates mental health treatment and this small percentage could be explained by the shortage of volunteers and staff to provide these mental treatments. There is also failure to recognize mental symptoms and make a correct diagnosis for these detainees. Lack of mental aid has increased serious assaults and violent behaviors in which most of these cases have been declined by the Bureau of Prisons for “privacy reasons.” Policies have been changed by the Bureau of Prisons to increase check-ins by once a month or weekly. However, the TDCJ has attempted to minimize these issues as best as it can. Detainees are offered guidelines on how to manage their stress and sanity before being released to the public. In terms of support and care, there is the Offender Grievance Program that allows offenders to communicate with faculty staff about questions, regards, or concerns associating with their sentence. In addition, the TDCJ Ombudsman Program makes referrals to an agency staff to help resolve problems and answer questions regarding a specific offender. The Peer Recovery Support Services hold classes to allow prisoners to help one another recover from their issues. Those that obtain a certificate from the program are eligible to work or volunteer as a Peer Recovery Support Specialist. This further build a community-based environment where prisoners can understand each other's mistakes and problems and cooperate as a team to provide solutions to better themselves. Specific programs are held for detainees that are of a particular background and history. The Chaplaincy Program is a nondiscriminatory program that permits prisoners to pursue their religious faiths, reconcile relationships, and strengthen families. The program offers mentoring, space for spiritual growth, pastoral care, life skill classes, accountability/support groups, etc. Similarly, the “InnerChange” Faith-Based- Pre-Release Program functions in the same way as the Chaplaincy Program to further help detainees recover well. For younger offenders, the Youthful Offender Program aids young offenders with special needs to the Mentally Retarded Offenders Program (MROP) or Physically Hanicapped Offenders Program (PHOP). Regular youth offenders are placed in interdisciplinary programming established on a weekly schedule, including:


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: Leisure activities are meant for enhancing potential life skills post-release and allowing inmates an opportunity to complete one or two activities of their choice. In terms of recreation and fitness, inmates have the chance to participate in structured fitness sessions that offer regular and moderate levels of exercises monitored by staff. Staff members are to take into account the kind of activity the detainee wants to do, the amount of time spent on that activity, and given permission. These fitness sessions occur in the “Big Yard,” where gym equipment is stored and common past time favorites are held, such as volleyball, baseball, softball, wrestling, basketball, tennis, handball, boxing, and soccer/futbol. The yard is surrounded by a barbed-wire fence for extra supervision. During a detainee's time in prison, they are given a physical assessment that focuses on cardiovascular endurance, flexibility, body fat percentage, and dynamic strength.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: To further sharpen community-building skills, inmates are eligible to run special fitness and health events, including:


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: In addition to these health events, inmates have the opportunity to educate themselves in other health and sanity organizations. Staff will provide discussions concentrating on:


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: Ultimately, prisoners are able to utilize these resources to make them better returning members of society.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: The Correctional Institutions Division has eight main facilities, including five prisons and three state jails, that house women; Five of the women's units, including four prisons and one state jail, are in the City of Gatesville. Jorge Renaud, author of "Behind the Walls: A Guide for Family and Friends of Texas Inmates", said that female prisoners in the TDCJ generally "undergo the same tribulations, are affected by the same policies, must adhere to the same regulations, and are treated the same by TDCJ staff."


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: Originally, women were housed in the Huntsville Unit. Beginning in 1883, women were housed in the Johnson Farm, a privately owned cotton plantation near Huntsville. After Governor Thomas Mitchell Campbell took office in January 1907, he moved the women from Johnson to the Eastham Farm (now Eastham Unit) to try to protect women from predatory prison guards.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: For a period in the early 20th century, Eastham housed women before a sexual abuse scandal caused the Texas prison system to move women closer to Huntsville. Before the prisons in Gatesville opened in the 1980s, women in the Texas prison system were housed in the Goree Unit in Huntsville.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: In 2010, a study from the National Women's Law Center and the Rebecca Project for Human Rights ranked the Texas prison system as giving "B+" care to women. A 2018 report by the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition stated that women in the TDCJ have fewer career-training and employment programs available than men; women had only two certification programs, while men had 21.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: In 2019, the Texas Senate passed a bill, allowing inmates to have access to a greater variety of feminine hygiene products. They have access to various sized tampons and pads and can receive up to 10 free products per day.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: There is currently no standard policy for what happens when a woman gives birth while incarcerated, because


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: only recently have states begun to ban the shackling of pregnant women during active labor and childbirth. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice has created an initiative in collaboration with the University of Texas Medical Branch, called BAMBI (Baby and Mother Bonding Initiative). Within this program, eligible offenders will be provided with an opportunity to bond and form attachments, "...which is important to healthy growth and development, socialization, and psychological development during the infant’s formative years, while in a safe and secure environment." However, all mothers within this program are only allowed to remain in it for 12 months. After this period they must have completed their sentence, and be prepared to transition back into society. The University of Texas Medical Branch found through their research with the BAMBI program that, "As the number of women giving birth in prisons continues to trend upward, the need for more programs to promote [the] best outcomes for both mother and infants is crucial."


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: On average, about 250 babies are born to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. The Santa Maria Hostel provides a residential setting for these mothers and their infants.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: However, compared to other states, Texas' prison nursery system is limited in accessibility to mothers and infants. Texas has one of the highest populations within its prisons, but resources to women and their infants is still limited.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: On September 1, 2009, two laws were passed in the 81st Texas legislature. One prohibited the use of restraints on female prisoners during childbirth. The other asked that the counties write and implement procedures in regards to the health of their pregnant inmate population. Another law was passed in 2019 that stipulated that pregnant inmates cannot be shackled at all during their pregnancy or when they are recovering after childbirth. As there is no set policy for how long a mother can remain with her infant after birth, the other proposal that has yet to be passed would allow 72 hours of bonding time if the inmate does not qualify for the BAMBI program. Also, it mandates more formal training for officers to protect the physical and mental safety of pregnant inmates.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: Prison nurseries are imperative for both the wellbeing of the child and the mother. The CDC reported that infant mortality rates for "...babies separated from their incarcerated mothers is 7.9 infant deaths per 1,000 live births for Hispanic inmates and 14.3 for Black inmates. By comparison, the national infant mortality rate is 5.96 deaths per 1,000 live births." Thus, there is also a racial component to the treatment of pregnant women within the Texas prison. This may have to do with the fact that Texas prison healthcare does not offer screenings and treatments for high-risk pregnancies. They also lack resources to implement policy to give expectant mothers advice on nutrition, activity level, and safety. In addition, records of pregnancies and deliveries do not have to be written, and thus this could be another factor to explain the higher infant mortality. Unfortunately, in the general population within Texas, black non-Hispanics families were disproportionately affected by infant mortality. The prison trend follows the societal trend of infant mortality, which shows that there are disparities both within the prison system and the general population in terms of healthcare and preventative care.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: The TDCJ maintains training academies in Beeville, Gatesville, Huntsville, Palestine, Plainview, and Rosharon. Trainees who do not live within a commuting distance to the training academies take state-owned housing, only if room is available.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: In 1974, the TDC had about 17,000 prisoners; 44% were black, 39% were non-Hispanic white, 16% were Hispanic and Latino, and 1% were of other races. About 96% were male and 4% were female. At the time, all 14 prison units of the TDC were in Southeast Texas.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: The TDCJ Parole Division supervises released offenders who are on parole, inmates in the preparole transfer program, and inmates in the work program. The division also investigates proposed parole plans from inmates, tracks parole eligible cases, and submits cases to the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles. The division does not make decisions on whether inmates should be released or whether paroles should be revoked. The TDCJ Parole Division has its central office in Austin.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: The parole division contracts with several agencies which operate halfway houses. Organizations that contract with the TDCJ include GEO Group (previously Cornell Corrections), Southern Corrections, Wayback House, E.P. Horizon Management, L.L.C., and Avalon. As of 2004,e nine halfway houses are in Texas. According to state law, former prisoners must be paroled to their counties of conviction, usually their home counties, if those counties have acceptable halfway-housing facilities available. Most counties do not have such facilities available. As of 2004, three facilities accept sex offenders and parolees from other counties; they are the halfway houses in Beaumont, El Paso County, and Houston.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: The Ben A. Reid Community Corrections Center, a halfway house operated by GEO and previously operated by Cornell, is located in the former Southern Bible College facility in Houston. As of 2004, the facility housed almost 400 parolees; 224 of them were subject to sex offender registration. Because of aspects of state law and because of a shortage of halfway houses, almost two-thirds of the sex offenders were from outside of Harris County. Reid is the largest of the three halfway houses that take sex offenders and out of county parolees, so Reid gets a significant number of paroled sex offenders.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: Cornell operates a halfway house in Beaumont, which as of 2004 houses 170 people. Horizon Management, L.L.C. operates the El Paso facility in unincorporated El Paso County, which houses 165 people. In addition, Wayback House operates the Wayback House in Dallas, E.P. Southern Corrections operates the Austin Transition Center in Austin, and Avalon operates the Fort Worth Transitional Center in Fort Worth.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: The Community Justice Assistance Division supervises adults who are on probation. In 1989, the 71st Texas Legislature began using the term "community supervision" in place of the term "adult probation." CJAD has its central office in the Price Daniel, Sr. Building in Austin.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: In the 1990s, Governor Ann Richards created enrichment programs for prisons. Michael Hoinski of the "Texas Monthly" stated that they "had helped spawn a golden age of paño-making in Texas." The programs were ended during the terms of Governors George W. Bush and Rick Perry, and "paños" are now prohibited in the TDCJ.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: The Human Resources Division serves the AGENCY. As of August 23, 2010, the Human Resources Headquarters moved to Suite 600 of 2 Financial Plaza in Huntsville. The division was located at 3009 Texas State Highway 30 West.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: The Rehabilitation Divisions Program operates programs to rehabilitate prisoners. The division is headquartered in Huntsville.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: Texas Correctional Industries, a division of the TDCJ, was established in 1963 when the Prison Made Goods Act, Texas Senate Bill 338, passed. The division manages the production of prisoner-made products.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: Texas state senator John Whitmire served as chair of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee from 1993 to present. With Texas representative Jerry Madden, chairman of corrections since 2005, Whitmire helped institute prison reform in the state. The creation of drug rehabilitation programs, the reduction of sentencing for drug crimes, an increase in the number of parole officers and the creation of special courts for specific crimes helped to reduce the state prison population and even led to the first prison closures in state history.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: Historically, "The Echo" was published in the Huntsville Unit. Prisoners served as the staff and the reader base. It began publication in 1928. As of 2009, it was mostly published continuously, although some periods occurred when the newspaper was not published.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: In 2001, after the escape of the Texas 7, TDCJ officials stated that the room where the newspaper was published was a security risk and suspended the publication. The TDCJ fired the four prisoners who previously were responsible for composing the issues, and the control over the publication was passed to the Windham School District.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: The Windham School District provides offenders of the TDCJ with educational services. The district was created in 1969 to provide adult education in Texas prisons. The district was the first school system of its size to be established within a statewide prison system. Windham is one of the largest correctional education systems in the United States, providing educational programs and services in most TDCJ facilities. The school district is a separate and distinct organization from the TDCJ.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: Since the inception of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, 65 officers and one canine have died in the line of duty.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: Uniformed staff wear the Class A grey uniform and pant or Class B blue polo shirt and grey BDU pant. Honor Guard officers wear a ceremonial dress uniform similar to other law enforcement agencies with the TDCJ badge on the left chest area. Badges are not issued to officers outside of the Honor Guard except to assistant wardens and above; however, correctional officers are not prohibited from purchasing and displaying the badge on belts, jackets, or nonuniform clothing. Correctional training officers (academy training) wear red polo shirts as an optional uniform, which has correctional training-specific patches. Canine (K9) officers have been authorized to wear TDCJ K9 T-shirts as an optional uniform with the BDU pants. Outside field officers are permitted to wear dark grey jeans and a white TDCJ issued cowboy hat. Officers are required to wear black-colored belts with their uniforms. Officers are allowed to bring their own holsters and belt for carrying equipment that is issued by TDCJ. All equipment including OC spray, handcuffs, radios, and weapons is issued by TDCJ.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: The uniformed staff wore brown uniforms with black ties from 1955 to 1969. Female officers wore blue uniforms with a red ascot and were also available in a dress from 1969 to 1980. Black ties continued to be a part of the grey uniform until being removed from the uniform during the 1980s. Officers were issued metal badges for their shirts and hats until 1990, when fabric patches replaced them. Camouflage jackets and hats were briefly issued in the early 1980s, but were discontinued due to their illegible appearance.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: The TDCJ has its headquarters in Huntsville. The administrative facility, known as the Brad Livingston Administrative Headquarters, and previously BOT Complex (for its former owner, see below), is located at Spur 59 off Texas Highway 75 North. The complex also faces Interstate 45. The complex includes the Central Region Warehouse and the Huntsville Prison Store. The Texas prison system had been headquartered in Huntsville since Texas's founding as a republic, and the TDCJ is the only major state agency not headquartered in Austin, the state capital.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: The complex was originally owned by Brown Oil Tools, a subsidiary of Baker Hughes. Completed in 1981, the plant had a price tag of $9 million. The plant was built to replace the company's Houston plant. The plant employed 200 people. In 1987, Baker Hughes announced that it would close the plant and consolidate its operations to facilities in Houston; the company said that the Huntsville facility's large capacity caused it to be less efficient at lower operating levels. Judith Crown of the "Houston Chronicle" described the plant as "relatively modern" in 1987. TDCJ purchased the BOT Complex in 1989.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: Historically, the Huntsville Unit served as the administrative headquarters of the Texas Prison System; the superintendent and the other executive officers worked in the prison, and all of the central offices of the system's departments and all of the permanent records were located in the prison.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: In the two decades leading to 2011, many proposals were placed in the Texas Legislature to move the TDCJ headquarters to Austin. One reason why the proposals failed was because Huntsville-area prison officials opposed the move. In the 1990s, John Whitmire, a member of the Texas Senate, made an effort to have the TDCJ headquarters moved. During the last state legislative session before September 1, 2011, Texas House of Representatives member Jerry Madden decided not to ask for the TDCJ headquarters to be moved to Austin.


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: In August 2011 Whitmire told the "Austin American Statesman" that he would bring up the idea of moving the TDCJ headquarters to Austin during the next legislative session. Whitmire argued that while a Huntsville headquarters made sense when all of the prison units were in east and south Texas, since the TDCJ now has facilities around the entire state, the TDCJ headquarters should be consolidated in Austin. Steve Ogden, another state senator, said that a headquarters move is "not going to happen while I'm in office."


title: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

text: The Captain Joe Byrd Cemetery, the state's main prison cemetery, is where prisoners not claimed by their families are buried. It is located on of land on a hill, from the Huntsville Unit and in proximity to Sam Houston State University. It is the largest prison cemetery in Texas. Byrd's first prisoners were interred there in the mid-1800s, and the prison agencies of Texas have maintained the cemetery since then.


title: Nasal cannula

text: The nasal cannula (NC) is a device used to deliver supplemental oxygen or increased airflow to a patient or person in need of respiratory help. This device consists of a lightweight tube which on one end splits into two prongs which are placed in the nostrils and from which a mixture of air and oxygen flows. The other end of the tube is connected to an oxygen supply such as a portable oxygen generator, or a wall connection in a hospital via a flowmeter. The cannula is generally attached to the patient by way of the tube hooking around the patient's ears or by an elastic headband. The earliest, and most widely used form of adult nasal cannula carries 1–3 litres of oxygen per minute.


title: Nasal cannula

text: Cannulae with smaller prongs intended for infant or neonatal use can carry less than one litre per minute. Flow rates of up to 60 litres of air/oxygen per minute can be delivered through wider bore humidified nasal cannula.


title: Nasal cannula

text: A nasal cannula is generally used wherever small amounts of supplemental oxygen are required, without rigid control of respiration, such as in oxygen therapy. Most cannulae can only provide oxygen at low flow rates—up to 5 litres per minute (L/min)—delivering an oxygen concentration of 28–44%. Rates above 5 L/min can result in discomfort to the patient, drying of the nasal passages, and possibly nose bleeds (epistaxis). Also with flow rates above 6 L/min, the laminar flow becomes turbulent and the oxygen therapy being delivered is only as effective as delivering 5–6 L/min.


title: Nasal cannula

text: The nasal cannula is often used in elderly patients or patients who can benefit from oxygen therapy but do not require it to self respirate. These patients do not need oxygen to the degree of wearing a non-rebreather mask. It is especially useful in those patients where vasoconstriction could negatively impact their condition, such as those suffering from strokes.


title: Nasal cannula

text: A nasal cannula may also be used by pilots and passengers in small, unpressurized aircraft that do not exceed certain altitudes. The cannula provides extra oxygen to compensate for the lower oxygen content available for breathing at the low ambient air pressures of high altitude, preventing hypoxia. Special aviation cannula systems are manufactured for this purpose.


title: Nasal cannula

text: Since the early 2000s, with the introduction of nasal cannula which uses heated humidification for respiratory gas humidification, flows above 6 LPM have become possible without the associated discomfort, and with the added benefit of improving mucociliary clearance.


title: Nasal cannula

text: High flows of an air/oxygen blend can be administered via a nasal cannula to accurately deliver high volume of oxygen therapy. Respiratory gas humidification allows the high flows to be delivered comfortably via the cannula. Nasal high-flow therapy can be used as an effective alternative to face mask oxygen and allows the patient to continue to talk, eat and drink while receiving the therapy.


title: Nasal cannula

text: Definition: Non-invasive delivery of oxygen air mixture delivered via a nasal cannula at flows that exceed the patient's inspiratory flow demands with gas that has been optimally conditioned by warming and humidifying the gas to close to 100% relative humidity at body temperature.


title: Nondisjunction

text: Nondisjunction is the failure of homologous chromosomes or sister chromatids to separate properly during cell division (mitosis/meiosis). There are three forms of nondisjunction: failure of a pair of homologous chromosomes to separate in meiosis I, failure of sister chromatids to separate during meiosis II, and failure of sister chromatids to separate during mitosis. Nondisjunction results in daughter cells with abnormal chromosome numbers (aneuploidy).


title: Nondisjunction

text: Calvin Bridges and Thomas Hunt Morgan are credited with discovering nondisjunction in "Drosophila melanogaster" sex chromosomes in the spring of 1910, while working in the Zoological Laboratory of Columbia University.


title: Nondisjunction

text: In general, nondisjunction can occur in any form of cell division that involves ordered distribution of chromosomal material. Higher animals have three distinct forms of such cell divisions: Meiosis I and meiosis II are specialized forms of cell division occurring during generation of gametes (eggs and sperm) for sexual reproduction, mitosis is the form of cell division used by all other cells of the body.


title: Nondisjunction

text: Ovulated eggs become arrested in metaphase II until fertilization triggers the second meiotic division. Similar to the segregation events of mitosis, the pairs of sister chromatids resulting from the separation of bivalents in meiosis I are further separated in anaphase of meiosis II. In oocytes, one sister chromatid is segregated into the second polar body, while the other stays inside the egg. During spermatogenesis, each meiotic division is symmetric such that each primary spermatocyte gives rise to 2 secondary spermatocytes after meiosis I, and eventually 4 spermatids after meiosis II. Meiosis II-nondisjunction may also result in aneuploidy syndromes, but only to a much smaller extent than do segregation failures in meiosis I.


title: Nondisjunction

text: Division of somatic cells through mitosis is preceded by replication of the genetic material in S phase. As a result, each chromosome consists of two sister chromatids held together at the centromere. In the anaphase of mitosis, sister chromatids separate and migrate to opposite cell poles before the cell divides. Nondisjunction during mitosis leads to one daughter receiving both sister chromatids of the affected chromosome while the other gets none. This is known as a chromatin bridge or an anaphase bridge. Mitotic nondisjunction results in somatic mosaicism, since only daughter cells originating from the cell where the nondisjunction event has occurred will have an abnormal number of chromosomes. Nondisjunction during mitosis can contribute to the development of some forms of cancer, e.g., retinoblastoma (see below). Chromosome nondisjunction in mitosis can be attributed to the inactivation of topoisomerase II, condensin, or separase. Meiotic nondisjunction has been well studied in "Saccharomyces cerevisiae". This yeast undergoes mitosis similarly to other eukaryotes. Chromosome bridges occur when sister chromatids are held together post replication by DNA-DNA topological entanglement and the cohesion complex. During anaphase, cohesin is cleaved by separase. Topoisomerase II and condensin are responsible for removing catenations.


title: Nondisjunction

text: The spindle assembly checkpoint (SAC) is a molecular safe-guarding mechanism that governs proper chromosome segregation in eukaryotic cells. SAC inhibits progression into anaphase until all homologous chromosomes (bivalents, or tetrads) are properly aligned to the spindle apparatus. Only then, SAC releases its inhibition of the anaphase promoting complex (APC), which in turn irreversibly triggers progression through anaphase.


title: Nondisjunction

text: Surveys of cases of human aneuploidy syndromes have shown that most of them are maternally derived. This raises the question: Why is female meiosis more error prone? The most obvious difference between female oogenesis and male spermatogenesis is the prolonged arrest of oocytes in late stages of prophase I for many years up to several decades. Male gametes on the other hand quickly go through all stages of meiosis I and II. Another important difference between male and female meiosis concerns the frequency of recombination between homologous chromosomes: In the male, almost all chromosome pairs are joined by at least one crossover, while more than 10% of human oocytes contain at least one bivalent without any crossover event. Failures of recombination or inappropriately located crossovers have been well documented as contributors to the occurrence of nondisjunction in humans.


title: Nondisjunction

text: Due to the prolonged arrest of human oocytes, weakening of cohesive ties holding together chromosomes and reduced activity of the SAC may contribute to maternal age-related errors in segregation control. The cohesin complex is responsible for keeping together sister chromatids and provides binding sites for spindle attachment. Cohesin is loaded onto newly replicated chromosomes in oogonia during fetal development. Mature oocytes have only limited capacity for reloading cohesin after completion of S phase. The prolonged arrest of human oocytes prior to completion of meiosis I may therefore result in considerable loss of cohesin over time. Loss of cohesin is assumed to contribute to incorrect microtubule-kinetochore attachment and chromosome segregation errors during meiotic divisions.


title: Nondisjunction

text: The result of this error is a cell with an imbalance of chromosomes. Such a cell is said to be aneuploid. Loss of a single chromosome (2n-1), in which the daughter cell(s) with the defect will have one chromosome missing from one of its pairs, is referred to as a monosomy. Gaining a single chromosome, in which the daughter cell(s) with the defect will have one chromosome in addition to its pairs is referred to as a trisomy. In the event that an aneuploidic gamete is fertilized, a number of syndromes might result.


title: Nondisjunction

text: The only known survivable monosomy in humans is Turner syndrome, where the affected individual is monosomic for the X chromosome (see below). Other monosomies are usually lethal during early fetal development, and survival is only possible if not all the cells of the body are affected in case of a mosaicism (see below), or if the normal number of chromosomes is restored via duplication of the single monosomic chromosome ("chromosome rescue").


title: Nondisjunction

text: Complete loss of an entire X chromosome accounts for about half the cases of Turner syndrome. The importance of both X chromosomes during embryonic development is underscored by the observation that the overwhelming majority (>99%) of fetuses with only one X chromosome (karyotype 45, X0) are spontaneously aborted.


title: Nondisjunction

text: The term autosomal trisomy means that a chromosome other than the sex chromosomes X and Y is present in 3 copies instead of the normal number of 2 in diploid cells.


title: Nondisjunction

text: Down syndrome, a trisomy of chromosome 21, is the most common anomaly of chromosome number in humans. The majority of cases result from nondisjunction during maternal meiosis I. Trisomy occurs in at least 0.3% of newborns and in nearly 25% of spontaneous abortions. It is the leading cause of pregnancy wastage and is the most common known cause of mental retardation. It is well documented that advanced maternal age is associated with greater risk of meiotic nondisjunction leading to Down syndrome. This may be associated with the prolonged meiotic arrest of human oocytes potentially lasting for more than four decades.


title: Nondisjunction

text: Human autosomal trisomies compatible with live birth, other than Down syndrome (trisomy 21), are Edwards syndrome (trisomy 18) and Patau syndrome (trisomy 13). Complete trisomies of other chromosomes are usually not viable and represent a relatively frequent cause of miscarriage. Only in rare cases of a mosaicism, the presence of a normal cell line, in addition to the trisomic cell line, may support the development of a viable trisomy of the other chromosomes.


title: Nondisjunction

text: The term "sex chromosome aneuploidy" summarizes conditions with an abnormal number of sex chromosomes, i.e., other than XX (female) or XY (male). Formally, X chromosome monosomy (Turner syndrome, see above) can also be classified as a form of sex chromosome aneuploidy.


title: Nondisjunction

text: Klinefelter syndrome is the most common sex chromosome aneuploidy in humans. It represents the most frequent cause of hypogonadism and infertility in men. Most cases are caused by nondisjunction errors in paternal meiosis I. About eighty percent of individuals with this syndrome have one extra X chromosome resulting in the karyotype XXY. The remaining cases have either multiple additional sex chromosomes (48,XXXY; 48,XXYY; 49,XXXXY), mosaicism (46,XY/47,XXY), or structural chromosome abnormalities.


title: Nondisjunction

text: The incidence of XYY syndrome is approximately 1 in 800–1000 male births. Many cases remain undiagnosed because of their normal appearance and fertility, and the absence of severe symptoms. The extra Y chromosome is usually a result of nondisjunction during paternal meiosis II.


title: Nondisjunction

text: Trisomy X is a form of sex chromosome aneuploidy where females have three instead of two X chromosomes. Most patients are only mildly affected by neuropsychological and physical symptoms. Studies examining the origin of the extra X chromosome observed that about 58–63% of cases were caused by nondisjunction in maternal meiosis I, 16–18% by nondisjunction in maternal meiosis II, and the remaining cases by post-zygotic, i.e., mitotic, nondisjunction.


title: Nondisjunction

text: Uniparental disomy denotes the situation where both chromosomes of a chromosome pair are inherited from the same parent and are therefore identical. This phenomenon most likely is the result of a pregnancy that started as a trisomy due to nondisjunction. Since most trisomies are lethal, the fetus only survives because it loses one of the three chromosomes and becomes disomic. Uniparental disomy of chromosome 15 is, for example, seen in some cases of Prader-Willi syndrome and Angelman syndrome.


title: Nondisjunction

text: Mosaicism syndromes can be caused by mitotic nondisjunction in early fetal development. As a consequence, the organism evolves as a mixture of cell lines with differing ploidy (number of chromosomes). Mosaicism may be present in some tissues, but not in others. Affected individuals may have a patchy or asymmetric appearance. Examples of mosaicism syndromes include Pallister-Killian syndrome and Hypomelanosis of Ito.


title: Nondisjunction

text: Development of cancer often involves multiple alterations of the cellular genome (Knudson hypothesis). Human retinoblastoma is a well studied example of a cancer type where mitotic nondisjunction can contribute to malignant transformation: Mutations of the RB1 gene, which is located on chromosome 13 and encodes the tumor suppressor retinoblastoma protein, can be detected by cytogenetic analysis in many cases of retinoblastoma. Mutations of the RB1 locus in one copy of chromosome 13 are sometimes accompanied by loss of the other wild-type chromosome 13 through mitotic nondisjunction. By this combination of lesions, affected cells completely lose expression of functioning tumor suppressor protein.


title: Nondisjunction

text: Pre-implantation genetic diagnosis (PGD or PIGD) is a technique used to identify genetically normal embryos and is useful for couples who have a family history of genetic disorders. This is an option for people choosing to procreate through IVF. PGD is considered difficult due to it being both time consuming and having success rates only comparable to routine IVF.


title: Nondisjunction

text: Karyotyping involves performing an amniocentesis in order to study the cells of an unborn fetus during metaphase 1. Light microscopy can be used to visually determine if aneuploidy is an issue.


title: Nondisjunction

text: Polar body diagnosis (PBD) can be used to detect maternally derived chromosomal aneuploidies as well as translocations in oocytes. The advantage of PBD over PGD is that it can be accomplished in a short amount of time. This is accomplished through zona drilling or laser drilling.


title: Nondisjunction

text: Blastomere biopsy is a technique in which blastomeres are removed from the zona pellucida. It is commonly used to detect aneuploidy. Genetic analysis is conducted once the procedure is complete. Additional studies are needed to assess the risk associated with the procedure.