Criminal Law

Poll: Tough on crime messages don't resonate with critical swing voters

Posted on January 03, 2009
Last month Hill Research Consultants, a GOP polling firm based in the Woodlands, issued a public poll aimed at demonstrating to decisionmakers and the Republican base the need for the GOP in Texas to change tactics or risk a near-term toppling by Democrats in statewide elections within just a few cycles...

What happens with prison healthcare if UTMB fails to rebuild?

Posted on January 02, 2009
According to this article titled "Emergency!" by Mimi Swartz at Texas Monthly, the University of Texas System may decide not to rebuild the UT Medical Branch at Galveston after Hurricane Ike, facilities which include the hospital responsible for most of the state prison system and "telemedicine" infrastructure that serves 80% of Texas prisoners...

Houston accidents increased after installing red light cameras

Posted on January 02, 2009
There are two kinds of stories routinely published by the MSM around the New Year that both annoy me: Fluffy pieces written weeks earlier for publication while the reporter is gone, and stories that officialdom wants buried and thus releases around the slowest newsday of the year...

No Christmas truce in Mexican cartel wars

Posted on January 02, 2009
For those keeping track of the Mexican cartel wars, the new year brings with it several must-read items:Fort Wort Weekly: Border Under SeigeDrug War Chronicle: Top Ten 2008 drug policy stories (see the final three items on Latin American cartel wars)The Narcosphere: Mexico's Drug Death Toll: 8,463 and countingThe New Criminologist: Are Mexican drug cartels the #1 organized crime threat in America?Time: Confessions of a Mexican narco-foot soldierRELATED: See also the Austin Chronicle's Top Ten marijuana-related stories.

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New Year Open Thread

Posted on January 01, 2009
So long, 2008: At a minimum you gave us no shortage of blogging material and for that I am grateful.I'm going to take another day off and climb back into the blogging saddle tomorrow. Until then, use this as an open thread to discuss the most important criminal justice topics of the past year...

Whither justice reforms in a post-Craddick House?

Posted on December 30, 2008
I've been taking an "I'll believe it when I see it" approach to claims by "insurgents" in the Texas House of Representatives that they had enough votes to definitively oust Speaker Tom Craddick. But combined with seemingly every other GOP House member having announced their Speaker candidacy, the news yesterday that House Democrats released 64 anti-Craddick signatures (pdf) makes me think that, even though he's still the biggest, meanest dog in the fight, at the end of the day the pack will probably take him down...

Texas Innocence Project seeks funds after Madoff debacle

Posted on December 30, 2008
My employers at the Innocence Project of Texas (IPOT), a group dedicated to freeing innocent people from prison, took a major hit recently after the closure of the New-York based JEHT Foundation, which was a victim of the infamous Bernard Madoff ponzi scheme scandal...

Good chances for Texas needle exchange bill next year, but assume nothing

Posted on December 29, 2008
While I agree Texas has the best chance in my lifetime to pass needle exchange legislation next spring, the San Antonio Express News editorial board was counting unhatched chickens when they opined that, with long-time opponent Rep. Diane Delisi retired,Former Rep...

Shoplifting up as economy tanks

Posted on December 29, 2008
Having undertaken to identify criminal justice implications for the current economic downturn, I was interested to see this item from the New York Times about a surge in shoplifting ("As economy dips, arrests for shoplifting soar," Dec. 22):Police departments across the country say that shoplifting arrests are 10 percent to 20 percent higher this year than last...

Diversion programs worked, but who can measure how well?

Posted on December 29, 2008
This blog strongly supported initiatives by state Sen. John Whitmire and Rep. Jerry Madden in 2005 and 2007 expanding Texas' treatment and prison diversion programs by a whopping $200 million. Since then, events have unquestionably demonstrated the prescience of those landmark diversion programs, which eliminated the need for new prison building in the short term even though they aren't yet 100% rolled out...

In troubled financial times, children are the last sure-bet investment

Posted on December 29, 2008
In its message to the 81st Texas Legislature (pdf) the Children's Defense Fund smartly suggests that, in an era when few investments are reliable, investing in troubled youth to disrupt the "cradle to prison pipeline" gives a higher long-term rate of return than most other types of public spending:From the day tens of thousands of children are born, multiple risk factors converge to suck children into the prison pipeline instead of towards educational advancement and career success...

Holiday Roundup: DA Edition

Posted on December 28, 2008
Here are several stories that deserve Grits readers attention heading into the new year, several of which involve big-city DAs:Deserved kudosThe Dallas Morning News named Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins its "Texan of the Year," calling him a "transformational figure who has made a name not by securing convictions, but by clearing the way for them to be overturned...

On the limits of the justice system as tax collector

Posted on December 27, 2008
"Texas fails to collect $1 billion in fees and fines," a headline in yesterday's Fort Worth Star-Telegram read, and while unpaid college tuition makes up most of that sum, predictably Texas' "Driver Responsibility Fee" was the main criminal justice culprit:Public-safety and criminal-justice agencies assessed $884...

LBB: Texas' 2010-11 budget won't be completely strapped

Posted on December 26, 2008
With several big-ticket criminal justice items on the table during the 81st Texas Legislature - most prominently a half-billion in raises for prison staff and another 8-9 figure expense for new programs to combat contraband smuggling in prisons - many have been openly wondering whether the state will have enough money to pay for it all...

Governor's border policies aimed at 2010 GOP primary

Posted on December 26, 2008
To understand Texas' border security policy, you don't actually need to know anything about security, but it sure helps to know about elections.Since at least 2005, Texas Governor Rick Perry's re-election priorities have openly dominated Texas' border security policy...

Will DPS get a "law enforcement integrity unit"?

Posted on December 24, 2008
State Sen. John Carona has thrown down the gauntlet on law enforcement malfeasance, filing SB 388 which would establish a new "integrity unit" at the Texas Department of Public Safety to investigate police corruption.I've been complaining about Gov. Perry's pork-barrel border security program, mostly because it failed to do exactly what Sen...

Grapevine fans give early Christmas gift to TYC football team

Posted on December 23, 2008
This story from Sports Illustrated about a remarkable high school football game last month between a Grapevine Faith and the team from TYC's Gainesville unit literally made me weep:It was Grapevine Faith vs. Gainesville State School and everything about it was upside down...

Pre-holiday link dump

Posted on December 23, 2008
Because I'm too lazy to write full posts about each of them, here's pre-holiday link dump of stories that deserve Grits readers attention. Give me your thoughts on any or all of them in the comments:Juarez crime harms El Paso coffersThe City of El Paso can measure the harm from decreased international bridge traffic to and from its troubled sister city, Juarez, by watching the money dry up in its city coffers: income from tolls makes up 3-4% of the city budget...

Better border strategies needed for journalist, witness protection, unmasking corruption

Posted on December 22, 2008
The War on Drugs from its inception has been marked by a stubborn futility in the face of overwhelming failure, but these days some of the proposals to combat Mexico's cartels are laughably pointless, like the Dallas News' suggestion last weekend to protect journalists reporting on the drug war...

Duncan, Ellis championing cause of innocent man who died in prison

Posted on December 22, 2008
On the innocence front, state Senators Robert Duncan (R-Lubbock) and Rodney Ellis (D-Houston) say they'll team up during the 81st Texas Legislature to extend compensation to families of innocent inmates who died in prison before they were exonerated, creating a mechanism to formally clear the name of those unhappy souls who did not live to see their innocence proven...

"The quality of mercy is not strain'd," particularly when it doesn't have to do any heavy lifting

Posted on December 22, 2008
Shakespeare wrote that "a href="http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/25269.html"Sweet mercy is nobility's true badge/a," and that "a href="http://www.quotationspage.com/quote/25240.html"The quality of mercy is not strain'd ... it becomes the throned monarch better than his crown/a...

Lawyers for polygamist Moms top Texas Lawyer's "Impact Players"

Posted on December 22, 2008
Texas Lawyer magazine has a href="http://www.law.com/jsp/tx/PubArticleTX.jsp?id=1202426903361"given its annual "Impact Player of the Year" moniker/a to attorneys they've dubbed "The Mom Squad" who represented the fundamentalist Mormon parents in the Great Eldorado Polygamist Roundup this spring, particularly highlighting the work of Julie Balovich and Amanda Chisholm from Texas Rio Grande Legal Aid...

DPS' legislative wish list

Posted on December 20, 2008
A little birdie forwarded me a list of bills the Texas Department of Public Safety is requesting from the 81st Texas Legislature, so I uploaded it into a Google document format which readers a href="http://docs.google.com/View?docid=dchtq928_31d8xq5266"can view here/a...

Wichita Falls punishing victims of graffiti crime

Posted on December 20, 2008
Wichita Falls is the latest city to a href="http://texomashomepage.com/content/fulltext/?cid=27241"declare a "zero tolerance" policy for graffiti/a (which one imagines will work about as well as the "zero tolerance" policy regarding a href="http://gritsforbreakfast...

TCJC: Jails need technical assistance to reduce unnecessary overcrowding

Posted on December 19, 2008
As part of their participation in the Sunset review process for the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition:recently launched an anonymous online survey targeted towards Texas Sheriffs, County Court Judges, and Jail Administrators...

Dynamics of Overcriminalization

Posted on December 19, 2008
Last weekend I wondered aloud why the first response in this country to every social problem always seems to involve more cops, courts and punishments. So later in the week I was delighted to see some of those themes more ably developed in two top-notch posts by criminal defense attorneys Mark Bennett and Scott Greenfield, both of whom offered useful and important discussions that, taken togther, at least partially explain the overcriminalization dynamic...

West Texas locals view TYC as jobs program

Posted on December 18, 2008
During prison building boom in the '90s, Texas pols came to view new prison units as a way to prop up the economy in depopulating rural areas, hoping to slow the rapid urbanization that transformed the state in recent decades.br /br /However, siting corrections units in remote, rural areas created many practical problems: It's difficult to find staffing, even more difficult to find medical specialists or mental health providers, and for juvenile corrections there's little access to specialized programming that might help kids succeed...

CCA rejects death penalty cases over Brady violations: What statutory changes might deter withholding exculpatory evidence?

Posted on December 18, 2008
Here's something you don't see everyday, a href="http://crimeblog.dallasnews.com/archives/2008/12/two-death-row-inmates-get-good.html"from the Dallas News Crime Blog/a:br /blockquoteTwo death row inmates received favorable rulings from the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals on Wednesday, a rare occurrence, but particularly unusual because of the reasons: possible prosecutorial misconduct...

JEHT Foundation closure a blow to criminal justice reform

Posted on December 17, 2008
News came on Monday that the JEHT Foundation, a philanthropic charity out of New York that has funded a great deal of criminal justice reform work in Texas and around the country, will cease giving grants and close its doors in January because their money was invested with a href="http://www...

Sunset Testimony: Merger ignores underlying TYC trends, biggest barriers to improvement

Posted on December 17, 2008
span style="font-style: italic;"The Sunset Commission will accept written comments about the proposed merger between TYC and TJPC and other subjects addressed in the Sunset report through 5 p.m. on Friday. You can send public comments to sunset@sunset...

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