texas prison system facts
Oscar Byron Ellis, director of a state prison farm in Tennessee, was hired as general manager, later director, of the Texas prison system; working from his base in Huntsville, he implemented a reform program that brought fundamental changes in the management of Texas prisons.erman L. Crow, Political History of the Texas Penal System, 1829â1951 (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Texas, 1964). Steve J. Martin and Sheldon Ekland-Olson, Texas Prisons: The Walls Came Tumbling Down (Austin: Texas Monthly Press, 1987).