George John Beto (January 19, 1916 – December 4, 1991) was a director of the

Texas Department of Corrections The Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) is a department of the government of the U.S. state of Texas. The TDCJ is responsible for statewide criminal justice for adult offenders, including managing offenders in state prisons, state jails, ...

(TDC), a criminal justice expert in

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, a professor, and a Lutheran minister. He was previously the president of

Concordia Lutheran College , motto_translation = Without the Lord, all is in vain , established = 1946 , type = Independent, co-educational, day & boarding , denomination = Lutheran , slogan = , principal = Anton Prinsloo , key_people = , chaplain ...

in Austin and of

Concordia Theological Seminary The Concordia Theological Seminary is a Lutheran seminary in Fort Wayne, Indiana. It offers professional, master's degrees, and doctoral degrees affiliated with training clergy and deaconesses for the Lutheran Church–Missouri Synod (LCMS). His ...

in Springfield, Illinois.

Early life

Beto was born in Hysham, Montana, on January 19, 1916. He was raised in

Bloomington, Indiana Bloomington is a city in and the county seat of Monroe County in the central region of the U.S. state of Indiana. It is the seventh-largest city in Indiana and the fourth-largest outside the Indianapolis metropolitan area. According to the Mo ...

Texas Department of Corrections

Beto was appointed to the Texas Prison Board in 1953 by

Allan Shivers Robert Allan Shivers (; October 5, 1907 – January 14, 1985) was an American politician who served as the 37th governor of Texas. Shivers was a leader of the Texas Democratic Party during the turbulent 1940s and 1950s and developed the lieutena ...

and became director in 1961. In his career, he greatly expanded the industry of prison-manufactured goods, and oversaw the construction of new prison facilities. Beto advocated for the establishment of a school district serving prisoners; in 1969 the

Texas Legislature The Texas Legislature is the state legislature of the US state of Texas. It is a bicameral body composed of a 31-member Senate and a 150-member House of Representatives. The state legislature meets at the Capitol in Austin. It is a powerful ar ...

authorized the establishment of the Windham School District. During his career Beto received awards for his management of the TDC. :''Although many inmates admired him for his willingness to communicate with them, they also regarded him as a stern disciplinarian, a "preacher" with "a baseball bat in one hand and a Bible in the other."''

Criticism

Beto was a master of publicity and well-regarded by the media for his modernization of prisons. However, he faced criticism by those criticizing his cruel and unusual punishment of prisoners and denial of prisoners' access to their attorneys. Towards the end of Beto's career as the head of TDC, attorney Frances Freeman Jalet assisted Fred Cruz and other prisoners who were planning legal challenges to the TDC system. On two occasions Beto banned her from the TDC units, but court orders forced the TDC to let her back in. Beto then arranged to have three trustees sue Jalet in federal court; the lawsuit said that Jalet incited revolutionary violence and imperiled the lives of the prisoners. Beto lost the lawsuit and was ordered to pay $10,291 to Jalet and the prisoners, and $27,825 for their attorney fees, with the judge commenting that "...Beto instituted reprisals against Mrs. Cruz and … her clients, for reasons totally unrelated to considerations of proper prison administration." In the 1972

U.S. Supreme Court The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...

case '' Cruz v. Beto'', the court upheld a Free Exercise claim of discrimination against a

Buddhist Buddhism ( , ), also known as Buddha Dharma and Dharmavinaya (), is an Indian religion or philosophical tradition based on teachings attributed to the Buddha. It originated in northern India as a -movement in the 5th century BCE, and ...

prisoner, Fred Cruz. In early 1972 Beto announced that he planned to resign from TDC, but was still director on June 29, 1972, when prisoner David Ruiz filed a handwritten petition against conditions of confinement in Texas prisons that became '' Ruiz v. Estelle'' - the most enduring prisoners'-rights suit in the nation's history.

Later life

He was then a professor of criminal justice at Sam Houston State University in Huntsville for several years. Upon retirement from that position, he moved to Austin, where he died about a year later of a heart attack. Beto is buried in the

Texas State Cemetery The Texas State Cemetery (TSC) is a cemetery located on about just east of downtown Austin, the capital of the U.S. state of Texas. Originally the burial place of Edward Burleson, Texas Revolutionary general and vice-president of the Republic of ...

in Austin.

Legacy

Two

Texas Department of Criminal Justice The Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) is a department of the government of the U.S. state of Texas. The TDCJ is responsible for statewide criminal justice for adult offenders, including managing offenders in state prisons, state jails ...

prisons, the

Beto Unit The George Beto Unit (B) is a men's maximum security prison of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice located in unincorporated Anderson County, Texas, US. The unit is located along Farm to Market Road 3328, south of Tennessee Colony. The ...

and the Beto II Unit (now the Louis C. Powledge Unit) in Anderson County, were named after Beto, as is the Criminal Justice Center at Sam Houston State University.

References

External links

*
Walking George: The Life of George John Beto and the Rise of the Modern Texas Prison System
" ''

University of North Texas Press The University of North Texas Press (or UNT Press), founded in 1987, is a university press that is part of the University of North Texas The University of North Texas (UNT) is a public research university in Denton, Texas. It was founded as ...

''
George John Beto
" - Beto Chair Lecture Series Archives, Sam Houston State University
The Love Story That Upended the Texas Prison System
- Texas Monthly - by Ethan Watters - Oct. 11, 2018 Robert T. Chase, We Are Not Slaves: State Violence, Coerced Labor, and Prisoners Rights in Postwar America, University of North Carolina Press, 2020 https://uncpress.org/book/9781469653570/we-are-not-slaves/ {{DEFAULTSORT:Beto, George 1916 births 1991 deaths People from Hysham, Montana Penologists People from Bloomington, Indiana