Fort Worth Transitional Center, a state-contracted residential facility for people who have recently been released from prison, has been plagued with bed bugs for years, state records show.
A man who was staying at the 200-bed center on North Henderson Street this spring told the Star-Telegram that conditions were difficult to live in, and that staff didn’t take his or other residents’ concerns seriously. The man asked not to be named in this article, in fear of retaliation.
“You tell them about the bed bugs and they know it because they say it’s been going on for years,” he said. “I’m just another voice that’s come in and complained about it.”
The Fort Worth reentry center is one of eight in Texas. Each houses people who have been discharged from prison but who do not have an approved home plan, according to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s deputy director of the private facilities division, Michael Rutledge. Residents live at the center long enough “to get their feet back underneath them,” Rutledge said, which could be a few months to a couple years.
The centers fall under the umbrella of the Department of Criminal Justice, but each is operated by a private vendor. Five of the state’s eight centers, including Fort Worth’s, are run by CoreCivic , a Tennessee-based private company that operates prisons and detention centers across the U.S. The company has been scrutinized for poor conditions at some of those facilities, including some housing immigrant detainees .
The state pays CoreCivic millions of dollars a year for the Fort Worth contract – $4.2 million for the 2024 fiscal year, and $4.3 million for the 2025 fiscal year. In addition, residents are required to pay 25% of their pre-tax income to defray the costs of operating the facility.
Under the contract, CoreCivic not only houses residents, but also provides them with hot meals and with various types of programming , including employment assistance, job skills training and behavioral programming. The contract also requires CoreCivic to keep the facility safe, secure and clean — including pest control at the company’s expense.
But residents have repeatedly complained that CoreCivic isn’t operating a clean facility. The Star-Telegram obtained records from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice through several public records requests.
In March 2021, according to department records, a resident told a state monitor that there were bed bugs in his room at the Fort Worth facility. The center had recently sprayed the room and given him a different bed, according to the document. Most of that complaint record, however, is focused on whether the resident was taking his medication at the time of the complaint.
Another report of bed bugs was filed in February 2022.
In one set of records, the department had residents fill out forms labeled “bed bug follow up survey.” The top of the form acknowledged that bed bugs were an active and ongoing issue.
“As part of our ongoing effort to manage your bed bug problem, it is vital that we gather some information from the resident to properly assess the progress of our program,” the form says.
Among the records that the Star-Telegram obtained, there are five completed bed bug follow-up surveys, all from June and July 2023. All five of the respondents noted that they had seen and been bitten by bed bugs within the previous week. One person wrote that they saw the bed bugs “every night” and “all over me.” That person also described the infestation as cruel and unusual punishment.
In November 2023, another resident described the facility as “infested with rats and bed bugs,” according to another document from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. That complaint also reported mildew and a lack of running water.
A CoreCivic spokesperson, in emails with the Star-Telegram, confirmed that the Fort Worth facility has had bed bugs. The spokesperson, Brian Todd, said that CoreCivic takes “a vigilant approach to pest control,” including a “heat tent” to treat residents’ belongings.
In an initial response to the Star-Telegram on July 19, Todd said that the Fort Worth facility was currently free of bed bugs. In a follow-up email four days later, he said that there had been another complaint of bed bugs at the facility.
“This reinforces our previous response that bedbug abatement is a challenge for facilities like ours, and we make every effort to prevent and address this challenge through regular surveillance and quick action when any issues are identified,” Todd wrote. “The safety and well-being of our residents and staff is our top priority.”
The resident who spoke with the Star-Telegram said that he didn’t feel that his complaints were addressed appropriately by CoreCivic. He believed the rooms were not properly sprayed, because he started getting bites after the spraying.
“They’re not trying to solve a problem, they’re trying to make it look like on paper they’ve done something,” he said.
The Star-Telegram requested records of bed bug complaints at the state’s seven other residential reentry centers for the past four years. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice provided no responsive records for other facilities, and department staff confirmed that they did not know of recent bed bug issues at any of the other facilities.
Rutledge, of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, said the department has addressed the bed bug issues at the Fort Worth facility “on several occasions” in recent years.
Rutledge said that CoreCivic has always responded quickly and thoroughly to those concerns.
Rutledge said that the department also confirms compliance through site visits, some unannounced.
Amanda Hernandez, the department’s director of communications, added that the department makes sure to address any complaints it receives about its private contractors.
“Any complaint that we get, we would take that seriously and we would investigate it and do whatever is needed to make sure that the vendor is meeting our standards,” she said.
Hernandez said in an email that the facility began “increased extermination services” in February. That was before the issues described by the resident who spoke to the Star-Telegram.
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