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In 2009, the Department of Justice unearthed piles of evidence of abuse, deaths and corruption at the Harris County jail - and then they'd gone away. But instead of improvements local officials had promised, the Houston Chronicle's own wide-ranging probe - called Jailhouse Jeopardy - revealed the county jail - one of the nation's largest - remained an extremely dangerous and violent place. The series documented dozens of preventable deaths, rampant abuse of prisoners by guards - including two guard-related homicides, unjust prosecutions launched by guards who'd abused inmates and tough judges who routinely locked up elderly and even dying defendants in one of Texas' most extreme pretrial detention policies. The series featured compelling video testimonials of violent and tragic episodes, including a widow who watched her husband die in a jailhouse restraint video, parents who lost their son after he contracted the flu in jail, a man locked up for three years after being accused of a crime by a guard who'd broken his finger and many other untold stories.