Our County Jail is having some problems with fights in the jail. The Sheriff has asked me to file these cases as domestic violence since all the inmates live together. Technically I guess he may be correct but I'm having a problem seeing involuntary residence as a family or domestic household. Does anyone have any thoughts in the subject.

If you want a bit of statutory construction to help you out of this:

Family Code 71.005- "Household" means a unit composed of persons living together in the same dwelling...

Well, prisoners are persons, and they are living together, but is the county jail a dwelling?

It's not defined in the Penal Code or the Family Code. However, the Property Code defines a dwelling as:

quote:

"Dwelling" means one or more rooms rented for use as a permanent residence under a single lease to one or more tenants.

Texas Property Code Sec. 92.001(a).

So is it a dwelling? Well, ask your sheriff if there's a lease agreement the prisoners are a party to.

Of course, the definition in the Property Code applies only to that particular chapter, and we know that the definition in the family code has to be more expansive otherwise it wouldn't be family violence so long as you *owned* the household in which you were beating your roommate... But that at least gives you some ammunition for your intuition that it shouldn't apply in an instance of forced cohabitation.

You can also look at Morgan v. State, Nos. 10–10–00367–CR, 10–10–00371–CR, 2011 WL 4837721, at *9 for the only appellate discussion I can find on "dwelling." (Spoiler: It's exactly what you would think it is, and you wouldn't think a jail qualifies.)