Texas Prison Overdose Deaths Rose From 4 to 131; No New Treatment Money

Confirmed overdose deaths inside Texas prisons climbed from four in 2020 to at least 131 in 2025, and in the budget the Texas Department of Criminal Justice sent to lawmakers for the 2028–29 biennium, the agency requested no additional money to expand drug rehabilitation. Instead, it asked the Legislature to "maintain current funding levels" for substance use treatment, chaplaincy, reentry coordinators and other rehabilitation and reentry programs.

Because that request is flat while costs rise, the practical effect would be a decline. The same programs also sit inside a mandated 3 percent reduction in spending across state departments, a cut TDCJ has separately asked lawmakers to reverse.

What the request says, and what it leaves out

The appropriations language reviewed by the Texas Observer asks lawmakers to hold rehabilitation and reentry spending steady for the next biennium. It does not propose a treatment expansion, a new medication-assisted treatment capacity line, or additional clinical staffing, even as the agency's own death count has risen by more than thirtyfold in five years.

TDCJ's budget proposal does warn that cutting salaries and wages would affect the programs prisons can provide. "The cumulative effect of potential budget reductions eliminating or reducing educational, treatment, and other inmate-related activities would also impact security negatively by increasing idleness and decreasing opportunities for self-improvement," the proposal states.

Agency spokesperson Hannah Haney told the Observer that the budget request "does reflect meaningful investments in rehabilitation," and said funds were "redistributed to expand substance-use education" and other programs. Asked where that redistribution appears in the budget document, Haney did not respond.

The money went to interdiction instead

Where the agency did ask for new spending is contraband control. The request includes roughly $40 million for drone detection technology and contraband detection equipment — mail scanners, metal detectors and chemical tests — plus additional staff for contraband monitoring teams.

The aerial threat is real and growing: TDCJ detected more than two dozen drone smuggling attempts in 2025, up from three in 2023. But drones still account for only a small fraction of the drugs entering Texas prisons. Visitors carry drugs in, some arrive through the mail, and packages are sometimes thrown over yard fences at night.

A significant share of the flow originates inside the workforce. In the past six years, at least 220 TDCJ employees have been charged with contraband-related crimes, including drug possession and engaging in organized criminal activity, according to the Observer's earlier reporting. The agency has reported higher staffing levels over the past year after several rounds of legislatively approved pay increases.

Two senators, two different emphases

State Senator Borris Miles, a Houston Democrat, told the Observer that enforcement alone will not change the death toll. "Funding drug interdiction alone is a misguided approach," Miles said. "The state must also address the ongoing problem of addiction in our prison system through treatment and rehabilitation, in addition to prevention."

Senator Pete Flores, the Republican who chairs the Senate Committee on Criminal Justice, has previously said he supports both punishment and treatment, along with additional funding to keep contraband out of prisons. He did not respond to a request for comment on the appropriations request.

The committee's attention to contraband was already signaled: drugs entering prisons topped its list of priorities for 2027. The Observer has also published an investigative series on what happens when states punish drug possession inside prison without funding treatment at the same time.

What treatment looks like behind the fence

Agency-run rehabilitation in Texas prisons includes mandatory classes for people on parole and specialized substance-abuse facilities. Funding for those programs has not kept pace with inflation over the past decade, and the agency has not asked lawmakers for money to significantly expand them, even as it says it is trying to reach more prisoners. TDCJ has said it is expanding peer-led programs and online resources, including a help line and educational videos.

Advocates working with incarcerated people describe a gap between the classes offered and the information that would keep people alive in a system where drugs arrive regardless of policy. "We talk to people inside who are scared to help each other for fear of lockdown; the education on what is actually poisoning people is more important than the classes for people who survive," said Maggie Luna, executive director of the Texas Harm Reduction Alliance. "People are dying, and it is all preventable."

Prisons present a specific treatment problem. Incarcerated people are at elevated risk of overdose in the days after release, when tolerance has dropped, and residential treatment and reentry programs that begin behind the fence and continue after release are the models designed for that handoff. Medications for opioid use disorder are the standard of care for people with opioid dependence, and methadone and buprenorphine in correctional settings reduce withdrawal, craving and post-release mortality, though access varies widely by state and facility.

The session ahead

Texas lawmakers convene in January 2027 for the 90th Legislature and will take up the agency's request for the following two-year budget. The choice before them is not whether to fund interdiction — TDCJ has asked for it, and the committee has made contraband a priority — but whether the same request carries money for the addiction treatment that the agency's own fatality numbers describe.

For families of incarcerated people, the numbers published so far are a single statewide total. The Observer's reporting does not break the 131 deaths down by unit, and the appropriations request does not include a line item that would let a family trace a death to a specific facility's staffing or programming.