TDCJ

Ms. Corwin,

We are writing in response to your August 12th Public Information Request for communications between 1/1/2018 to present documenting solicitations by any business or industry groups to employ individuals recently incarcerated and/or supervised by TDCJ.

Searching for these records would be extremely labor-intensive because the scope of records to be searched is incredibly broad. We are writing to ask if you are willing to narrow the scope of your request. For example, limiting the search to emails would allow us to perform an electronic search for records.

Additionally, even if you restrict the request to an email search, the scope of records would be very broad. Can you identify specific search terms you would like us to use?

Please note, if by the 61st Day after the date of this letter, no written response is received from you, your open records requests will be considered withdrawn pursuant to Texas Government Code, § 552.222.

Thank you,

Office of the General Counsel-TDCJ
P: (936) 437-6700

The information contained in this email and any attachments is intended for the exclusive use of the addressee(s) and may contain confidential, privileged, or proprietary information. Any other use of these materials is strictly prohibited. This email shall not be forwarded outside the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Office of the General Counsel, without the permission of the original sender. If you have received this material in error, please notify me immediately by telephone and destroy all electronic, paper, or other versions.

Ms. Corwin,

The search parameters you provided us would capture approximately 63 million emails, and the file size would be over 25 terabytes. It would be extraordinarily time-consuming and burdensome to review those emails to find the responsive information you are seeking. In fact, the file size itself is likely too large to download and review.

Can you further limit the scope of your request? For example, if there is a particular business or industry group whose records you are seeking, then we could include that business or industry group's name or email domain in the search.

Please note, if by the 61st Day after the date of this letter, no written response is received from you, your open records requests will be considered withdrawn pursuant to Texas Government Code § 552.222.

Thank you,

Office of the General Counsel-TDCJ
P: (936) 437-6700

The information contained in this email and any attachments is intended for the exclusive use of the addressee(s) and may contain confidential, privileged, or proprietary information. Any other use of these materials is strictly prohibited. This email shall not be forwarded outside the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Office of the General Counsel, without the permission of the original sender. If you have received this material in error, please notify me immediately by telephone and destroy all electronic, paper, or other versions.

Ms. Corwin,

Sorry for the delay in getting back to you. The term "manufacturing" appears in the name of one of our divisions, and therefore will dramatically increase the number of search result produced. Are you willing to exclude the term "manufacturing?"

Please note, if by the 61st Day after the date of this letter, no written response is received from you, your open records request will be considered withdrawn pursuant to Texas Government Code § 552.222.

Thank you,

Office of the General Counsel-TDCJ
P: (936) 437-6700

The information contained in this email and any attachments is intended for the exclusive use of the addressee(s) and may contain confidential, privileged, or proprietary information. Any other use of these materials is strictly prohibited. This email shall not be forwarded outside the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Office of the General Counsel, without the permission of the original sender. If you have received this material in error, please notify me immediately by telephone and destroy all electronic, paper, or other versions.

Ms. Corwin,

We are still processing your request, and we anticipate having an updated cost estimate for your in the next couple of weeks.

Thank you,

Office of the General Counsel-TDCJ
P: (936) 437-6700

The information contained in this email and any attachments is intended for the exclusive use of the addressee(s) and may contain confidential, privileged, or proprietary information. Any other use of these materials is strictly prohibited. This email shall not be forwarded outside the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Office of the General Counsel, without the permission of the original sender. If you have received this material in error, please notify me immediately by telephone and destroy all electronic, paper, or other versions.

Ms. Corwin,

We ran a search based on the criteria in your September 28th email, and we did not include the term "manufacturing" as instructed in your September 29th email. Our IT Division has advised us that the search criteria will produce approximately 40,800 emails and is more than 85 gigabytes of data. Reviewing these emails would be very costly and time consuming. We are working to obtain a better understanding of which terms are resulting in such a voluminous amount of responsive information. We hope to have some clarity next week, but we wanted to let you know we are continuing to work on this request. We expect to have an update within one week.

Thank you,

Office of the General Counsel-TDCJ
P: (936) 437-6700

The information contained in this email and any attachments is intended for the exclusive use of the addressee(s) and may contain confidential, privileged, or proprietary information. Any other use of these materials is strictly prohibited. This email shall not be forwarded outside the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Office of the General Counsel, without the permission of the original sender. If you have received this material in error, please notify me immediately by telephone and destroy all electronic, paper, or other versions.

Ms. Corwin,

We appreciate your patience and apologize for the delay in getting back to you. Attached is a cost estimate to produce the records based on the most recent search. Please note we do not know how many records would actually be responsive to your request. Rather, this estimate covers the labor and overhead to search through the emails captured in our electronic search, and the cost would be the same if there is ultimately one responsive email or 1,000 responsive emails.
We also want to add that the following search produced zero results: ["waste management" or "poultry" or "meat"] AND ["employ*" or "job*" or "work*" or "labor*" or "staff*" or "position*" or "business*" or "vocation*" "occupation*" or "train*"]. By contrast, the following search produced 40,807 items totaling over 85 gigabytes: ["Load Trail"] OR ["CVE"].
We have doubled-checked the search parameters and double-checked the number of search results. Please let us know how you would like us to proceed.
Thank you,

Office of the General Counsel-TDCJ
P: (936) 437-6700

The information contained in this email and any attachments is intended for the exclusive use of the addressee(s) and may contain confidential, privileged, or proprietary information. Any other use of these materials is strictly prohibited. This email shall not be forwarded outside the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Office of the General Counsel, without the permission of the original sender. If you have received this material in error, please notify me immediately by telephone and destroy all electronic, paper, or other versions.

Good morning,

We would like to schedule a phone call with you to go over your questions in the email below. Are you available this Friday in the afternoon? If not, is there a time next week that would be better for you?

Thank you,

Office of the General Counsel-TDCJ
P: (936) 437-6700

The information contained in this email and any attachments is intended for the exclusive use of the addressee(s) and may contain confidential, privileged, or proprietary information. Any other use of these materials is strictly prohibited. This email shall not be forwarded outside the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Office of the General Counsel, without the permission of the original sender. If you have received this material in error, please notify me immediately by telephone and destroy all electronic, paper, or other versions.

Ms. Corwin,

What is your availability between tomorrow and Friday for a phone conversation about you request?

Thank you,

Melissa Wiggins

Legal Assistant

Office of the General Counsel-TDCJ

P: (936) 437-6378

Melissa.wiggins@tdcj.texas.gov<mailto:Melissa.wiggins@tdcj.texas.gov>

The information contained in this email and any attachments is intended for the exclusive use of the addressee(s) and may contain confidential, privileged, or proprietary information. Any other use of these materials is strictly prohibited. This email shall not be forwarded outside the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Office of the General Counsel, without the permission of the original sender. If you have received this material in error, please notify me immediately by telephone and destroy all electronic, paper, or other versions.

Ms. Corwin,

We just wanted to send a follow up on the email below.

Thank you,

Office of the General Counsel-TDCJ
P: (936) 437-6700

The information contained in this email and any attachments is intended for the exclusive use of the addressee(s) and may contain confidential, privileged, or proprietary information. Any other use of these materials is strictly prohibited. This email shall not be forwarded outside the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Office of the General Counsel, without the permission of the original sender. If you have received this material in error, please notify me immediately by telephone and destroy all electronic, paper, or other versions.

Good morning,

Are you available for a phone call next Wednesday, January 5th or next Thursday, January 6th?

Thank you,

Office of the General Counsel-TDCJ
P: (936) 437-6700

The information contained in this email and any attachments is intended for the exclusive use of the addressee(s) and may contain confidential, privileged, or proprietary information. Any other use of these materials is strictly prohibited. This email shall not be forwarded outside the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Office of the General Counsel, without the permission of the original sender. If you have received this material in error, please notify me immediately by telephone and destroy all electronic, paper, or other versions.