How much has your community spent on prison-made goods and services?

Texas is one of few states that doesn't pay incarcerated men and women anything for their work. They net $50 million for the state every year providing services like school bus repair and braille transcription. They make flags, desks-- even the chairs lawmakers sit in at the State Capitol. Find out what your community purchased between 2017 and 2022

Biggest Spenders by Category

icon representing aggregate categoryCounties
Dallas County$212,839.71
Denton County$194,579.17
El Paso County$155,486.01
Galveston County$123,843.93
Andrews County$59,264.33
Liberty County$52,783.37
Orange County$41,128.64
Lipscomb County$35,140.96
Kaufman County$31,018.82
Bastrop County$15,800.33

How This Database Was Created

Texas Correctional Industries (TCI) sales data was obtained from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice through several Texas Public Information Act requests. Customer descriptions were added by the Sugar Land Podcast team to provide context and additional search terms. Population estimates are as of July 1, 2019 and provided by the U.S. Census Bureau. Race and ethnicity statistics gleaned from the 2020 Census: Redistricting File (Public Law 94-171) Dataset. Some customer names and item descriptions were edited to make the data more reader-friendly.

Click here to download a copy of this data as it appears in the database
Click here to download a copy of the original data we received from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice

Database created by Brittney Martin and Alan Bouzek with help from Corrie Pennington and Hildy Chandler.
ABOUT

The Sugar Land podcast is a production of Dot Productions and The Texas Newsroom, a public radio journalism collaboration that includes NPR, KERA in North Texas, Houston Public Media, KUT in Austin, Texas Public Radio in San Antonio and other stations across the state.
Co-hosts: Brittney Martin and Naomi Reed
Editor: Rachel Osier Lindley
Executive Producer: Brittney Martin
Engineer and Sound Designer: Jacob Rosati
Fact Checker: Billy Brennan
Audio Editor: Bennett Smith
Music: JaRon Marshall
Recording Engineer: Jake Perlman
Producer: Rafa Farihah
Managing Editor of The Texas Newsroom: Corrie MacLaggan
Website: Alan Bouzek
SUPPORT

The podcast and website were completed with the support of a grant from Columbia University's Ira A. Lipman Center for Journalism and Civil and Human Rights with funding provided by Arnold Ventures and a grant from the Convict Leasing and Labor Project.
The nonprofit collective Lawyers for Reporters and the SMU Dedman School of Law's First Amendment Clinic provided Dot Productions with pro bono legal assistance.

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