About Me

Grits for Breakfast is the private weblog and nom de plume of Scott Henson, a former journalist turned opposition researcher/political consultant, public policy researcher and blogger. Here's the short version of how I got here:

In college, I worked at The Daily Texan and co-founded an alternative magazine called Polemicist with a max circulation of 15,000 that featured investigative journalism aimed at the university. After leaving UT Austin without a degree to become associate editor at the Texas Observer, I grew weary of journalism and turned to more exciting electoral politics, performing opposition and defensive research for 68 political candidates in Texas between 1993-2004, as well as technical writing for several government agencies and nonprofits.

I also served a brief stint in the mid-'90s as a data specialist (or some such title) at the Texas State Medicaid Office, where I was primary author of the second edition of a publication called "Texas Medicaid in Perspective," colloquially known as "The Pink Book," essentially a primer for legislators, staff and opinion leaders on the sprawling, byzantine, multi-billion dollar program. (That's where those "technical writing" gigs came from.)

Until recently, all of my criminal justice reform work was performed as a volunteer, mostly in the political off-season. I became engaged in the subject after helping victims respond to a serious police brutality incident in my own neighborhood in Austin in 1995. In 1998, I was a co-founder of a local political action committee, the Sunshine Project for Police Accountability, which successfully campaigned for Austin's current Police Monitor and Oversight Board, for all the good it did. From 2000 to 2006 I was director of the Police Accountability Project at the ACLU of Texas, working on statewide issues and promoting several pieces of successful legislation on their behalf.

Though I've worked professionally in politics my whole adult life, I wasn't paid for criminal justice activism until 2003 as a contractor in a grant-funded project. In 2004, I stopped accepting electoral campaign clients and began to focus exclusively on public policy work at ACLU of Texas. In 2006, I left ACLU and began taking contract and freelance work. In 2008 I became a consultant for the Innocence Project of Texas. (Aside from occasional honoraria from speaking gigs, that's the only client I have whose interests coincide with the topics covered on this blog.)

Like my criminal justice activism generally, Grits for Breakfast started as a hobby and it's still done on time nobody's paying me for, but it's long ago bled over into a lot of the issues that affect my professional work. (I also maintain a personal blog called Huevos Rancheros.) Even so, I've retained Grits' independent status as a private weblog because I want it to be place to discuss ideas in all their nuance, not just a spokesblog for this or that organization. The problems facing the criminal justice system are enormous, and we need unfettered, creative thinking to identify solutions that can work for everybody and keep us safe and free. It's my sincere hope that Grits contributes to that process in some small way.

Thanks for stopping by.