Criminal Law

'New program gives prisoners chance to mother'

Posted on July 10, 2010
The title of this post is the headline to a Houston Chronicle story published today on:the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's Baby and Mother Bonding Initiative. Mandated by the 80th Texas Legislature, the program gives select state jail inmates the chance to live and bond with their newborns...

Prosecutors altering charging decisions to avoid Driver Responsibility surcharge

Posted on July 09, 2010
Criticisms of Texas' Driver Responsibility Surcharge arose at a hearing of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee yesterday on DWI policy, and Mike Ward at the Statesman reports ("Overhaul of DWI laws may be coming," July 9) that "much of the criticism came from police and prosecutors ? who in years past have championed many of the programs they now say are not working...

Judges as Grantmakers: Sharon Keller's secret soft side on indigent defense

Posted on July 09, 2010
Brandi Grissom at The Texas Tribune describes an underreported aspect of Sharon Keller's role as Presiding Judge of Texas Court of Criminal Appeals: Chair of the Texas Task Force on Indigent Defense, which has spearheaded over the last decade a remarkable expansion of public-defender offices around the state...

Driver Responsibility rule re-write due out next week

Posted on July 08, 2010
Having participated in their "working group" on the subject, I got word via email from the Texas Department of Public Safety that: "We will be proposing the revised rule [on the Driver Responsibility Program] to the Public Safety Commission at their next meeting on July 15, 2010...

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Lower utilization by 'frequent flyers' to reduce pressure on jail

Posted on July 08, 2010
In my essay on my recent Harris County Jail tour, I described how a relatively small number of "frequent flyers" account for a huge proportion of jail utilization. In reaction, Lillian Aguirre Ortiz from Mental Health America of Greater Houston forwarded me a couple of documents assessing outcomes of a pilot program at the Houston Police Department...

State Jail creators: 'Don't kill our baby'

Posted on July 07, 2010
Mike Ward at the Statesman today has an article titled "Lawmakers might scrap or revamp state jail system" which relates a development covered last week on Grits: A suggestion at the House Corrections Committee to eliminate or radically modify the state jail system...

Harris County DA Pat Lykos: Revamp state jails

Posted on July 07, 2010
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...

Proposed mental health wing at Harris jail raises question of treatment priorities

Posted on July 06, 2010
Thanks to Alan Bernstein at the Harris County Sheriff's Office for arranging a tour of the Harris jail last week, which I visited to receive a first-hand pitch regarding why Sheriff Adrian Garcia wants to expand facilities. Lt. Ronny Taylor and medical director Dr...

Red-light camera backlash brewing

Posted on July 05, 2010
Following up on the Texas Tribune's publication of statewide red-light camera revenues, the Writer Theodore Kim at the Dallas News has a pair of notable stories (thanks to the reader who notified me) on the growing public backlash against red-light cameras, highlighted most recently by a plebiscite in College Station to take them down...

NIMBYism biggest barrier to supportive housing for homeless, mentally ill

Posted on July 04, 2010
This blog frequently laments the extent to which the justice system has become the primary delivery vehicle for mental health services, so I was interested to see a couple of stories out of the Austin Statesman focused on community-based solutions. "Helping the homeless on their own terms" details the activities of a nonprofit doing field work and case management among the mentally-ill homeless, while another story describes the dearth of supportive housing options to keep such folks from cycling in and out of jail...

California Gov apologizes for graffiti removal

Posted on July 04, 2010
This story out of California cracked me up: Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger felt compelled to apologize because the state transportation department painted over years-old, patriotically themed graffiti. Fox News' coverage gave the pertinent details:Governor Schwarzenegger issued an apology Friday after California residents are up in arms that a flag mural ? paying homage to victims of the 9/11 terrorist attacks ? was painted over after the state ruled it was graffiti...

Should TDCJ be renewing contracts that might be subject to budget cuts?

Posted on July 03, 2010
A coupla stories related to private prisons caught my eye that deserve Grits readers' attention:Geo Group loses TDCJ contract to MTC, Texas Prison Bidness, and  How the recession hurts private prisons, NewsweekThe first story raises an issue that perhaps the Legislative Budget Board should consider before the Legislature meets again next year: Should TDCJ be renewing long-term private contracts when they might need to reduce private capacity because of budget cuts? In particular there are a couple of private units that have been specifically identified as possible closure targets (Dawson State Jail and a "pre-parole" unit in Mineral Wells) that both have contracts up early next year, the same time the Bridgeport facility's contract was scheduled to wrap up...

Secret government camera surveillance approved by appellate court

Posted on July 03, 2010
I've been meaning to blog about the outcome of the Texas Observer's lawsuit over access to surveillance camera footage, but it's somehow just seemed too depressing. (See Dave Mann's "For their eyes only: After 5 years and $240,000, DPS keeps Capitol video hidden," June 17...

Parole, reentry, and cutting corrections costs

Posted on July 02, 2010
A few tidbits on parole stood out from my notes from Wednesday's meeting of the Texas House Corrections Committee on prisoner reentry ...Parole board chair Rissie Owens thanked the committee for additional treatment beds and told them they were responsible for an uptick in parole rates, which is up to 31% this year, she said, and which would be (just barely) the highest rate in recent memory if it's sustained for the rest of the year...

Houston police chief to cops: Don't talk to defense counsel

Posted on July 02, 2010
Murray Newman over at Life at the Harris County Criminal Justice Center circulates a memo from Houston Police Chief Charles McLelland barring Houston police officers from speaking with defense attorneys, even on minor traffic violations, without permission from the prosecutor...

The contract: A reasonable alternative to adjudicating low-level offenses?

Posted on July 02, 2010
Before I leave the subject of Wednesday's House Corrections Committee meeting, one more idea from Harris County DA Pat Lykos that might be more widely applicable. She said her office has instituted community supervision by "contract" with some 2,200 juveniles in lieu of formal adjudication, saying it's not really true that juvenile records are closed...

Housing tax credits support landlords that discriminate against ex-inmates

Posted on July 02, 2010
State Rep. Harold Dutton relayed the story on Wednesday of an 80 year old man in his district who had committed a violent offense 50 years ago and was recently released after a long sentence. Now, as an elderly person, the fellow can't find housing because of his prior conviction...

DPS balking at issuing driver licenses to inmates

Posted on July 01, 2010
It'll be awhile before the Department of Public Safety begins to comply with HB 2161 by state Rep. Sylvester Turner which passed last year in the 81st Texas Legislature, to judge by testimony from DPS Director Steve McCraw at yesterday's House Corrections Committee hearing...

Dropping the baton: Is recidivism the wrong metric for measuring reentry success?

Posted on July 01, 2010
At yesterday's House Corrections Committee hearing, Dee Wilson of TDCJ's new Reentry division likened the failures of the criminal justice system to a dropped baton in a 4x100 relay. Cops hand inmates off to jails who hand them off to probation or prison, she said (probation can also "hand them off" to prison), then prison hands them off either to parole or to society at large through direct discharge...

Last Tulia defendant sees case overturned by Texas CCA

Posted on July 01, 2010
Here's a coda to the "Tulia" episode worth noting, via the Amarillo Globe-News ("Decade old conviction overturned," July 1):The state's highest criminal appeals court on Wednesday overturned the aggravated robbery conviction of a man arrested during the Tulia drug sting more than a decade ago...

Detox centers instead of jail? Harris DA offers creative solution to intractable problem

Posted on June 30, 2010
Harris County District Attorney Pat Lykos was especially full of excellent ideas today, as mentioned in the previous post, but in particular I should highlight her suggestion that the state authorize "detox centers besides jail," so that every intoxicated person doesn't automatically become a criminal defendant...

The end of state jails?

Posted on June 30, 2010
Of several notable moments over the last day or so I want to share with readers from my trip to Houston, first on this list has to be Chairman Jim McReynolds of the Texas House Corrections Committee questioning whether the state jail system has "outlived" its usefullnes, and the surprisingly warm reception the notion received at the committee's hearing in Houston this morning...

Help support Grits coverage with contribution

Posted on June 29, 2010
I'm headed to Houston today, primarily to attend a House Corrections Committee hearing tomorrow morning on reentry services, but also to take up Alan Bernstein from the Harris County Sheriff's Office on his offer of a jail tour, in which he will make the case why Harris County needs to expand their facilities...

What if any impact on Texas from extension of Second Amendment by SCOTUS to the states?

Posted on June 29, 2010
Yesterday the US Supreme Court decided that the Second Amendment right to bear arms applies to the states. As Matthew Scarola at SCOTUSBlog put it, "Today?s opinion in McDonald v. City of Chicago means that for the first time, state and local governments? gun regulations must comport with the Second Amendment?s protection of the right 'to keep and bear Arms...

Make crime labs independent from law enforcement

Posted on June 28, 2010
Reacting to news of serious problems at the Houston PD fingerprint lab prompted attorney Patrick McCann to author a thoughtful column in the Houston Chronicle ("Let's get experts to test evidence," June 26) that advocates making crime labs independent from law enforcement...

Out4Life

Posted on June 28, 2010
An op ed column by state Rep. Jerry Madden and the former Virginia Attorney General in the Austin Statesman on Saturday begins with the following analogy regarding reentry:No rational parent would toss the car keys to a teenager who has never driven before and expect him to drive through traffic without causing casualties...

The politicization of grief at Dallas PD

Posted on June 27, 2010
I've avoided before now discussing a terrible incident in Dallas which occurred last week, where the son of Dallas' brand-spanking new police chief, David Brown, shot and killed two people including a Lancaster police officer following what's being described as a "psychotic breakdown...

Saturday Roundup

Posted on June 26, 2010
Here are a few items that caught my attention recently even if I don't have time to focus on each of them:Don't consent to searchesFrom Robert Guest: "Don't consent to searches: Not guilty edition."Criminalizing dissatisfied education consumersThe trend toward criminalizing truancy continues in Gilmer...

Capital cases confirm shifting vote patterns on CCA

Posted on June 26, 2010
About a week ago I posed the question, "Is Sharon Keller's influence waning on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals?," focusing on a couple of recent Fourth Amendment cases in which the Presiding Judge was in the minority. Now via the prosecutors' association user forum I notice a related article from the June 16 San Antonio Express-News ("Death penalty winds shifting on high court") identifying a similar trend in capital cases...

LBB: Prison population flat for years to come, unless Texas cuts diversion programming

Posted on June 25, 2010
After legislative leaders said possible prison closures depend in part on the Legislative Budget Board's estimate of how many beds will be needed, I've looking forward to the publication of LBB's inmate population projections (pdf) that were released today covering fiscal years 2010-2015...

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