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Harris County DA Pat Lykos: Revamp state jails

I called Harris County DA Pat Lykos today, seeking answers to four questions that seemed to have been left tantalizingly open after last week's House Corrections Committee hearing: 1) Her view on the proper role of state jails, 2) what she meant by her call to fundamentally overhaul how mental illness is treated in the justice system, 3) a more detailed description of her view of what a "detox center" that's an alternative to jail would look like in practice, and 4) whether "contracts" such as her office uses with juveniles might be effective as a tool for getting intoxicated people into detox center? To her credit, Lykos said these questions were too big to answer with mere "sound bites" on a phone call, declaring that would be "disrespectful" to the gravity of the topics, and asked permission to craft written response and get them to me "in a week or so...continue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on July 07, 2010 (boomark / email).