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: Grits for Breakfast

On the sources of volitional jail overcrowding in Bexar County: Why solve a problem when you can create one?

Bexar County District Attorney Susan Reed must pride herself on an overcrowded jail, because she's insisting on policies that keep it needlessly full.Bexar County jails probationers based on flawed drug tests and insists on jailing petty pot smokers - often for only a few hours - even when the jail is jam packed. Meanwhile, Bexar keeps more misdemeanor defendants in jail pending trial than any other big Texas city. Virtually the entire jail overcrowding problem in Bexar is volitional, representing choices by the DA and judges instead of trends based on criminal activity.A TV news station in San Antonio ran a feature questioning why Bexar County law enforcement agencies haven't been using new authority to issue citations for certain low-level misdemeanors approved in HB 2391 in the 80th (2007) Texas Legislature: "My hope is in the long term a substantial number will take advantage of it," said Rep...continue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on July 14, 2008 (boomark / email).