Grits' Top Ten Texas Criminal Justice Stories of 2007

Time for Grits' year-end list of Texas' Top Ten Criminal Justice Stories of 2007. Let me know what other big stories deserve recollection as we close out an eventful year.

Texas Youth Commission Meltdown
It's hard to imagine a state agency enduring more turmoil than TYC has gone through this year. New administrators appointed by Governor Perry took an already troubled agency and nearly ran it into the ground. Hopefully the agency's new conservator, who's been awfully quiet since his appointment just before Christmas, will begin to clean house and move TYC in a new direction. I've written so much on this subject it would be fruitless to try to summarize the past gut wrenching year in this space, but see prior Grits TYC-related posts for an in-depth look at what's happened to this agency in 2007.

Prisons Full and Understaffed: Sentences too long and parole too rare
With Texas prisons full and unable to staff current units, the Legislature and voters approved debt to build three new prisons. However, with staffing problems unresolved, the system really must pin its hopes on increasing parole rates for low-level, non-violent offenders, which under current Board of Pardons and Parole Chair Rissie Owens have reached all-time lows. The Sunset Commission said low parole rates were the main cause of prison overcrowding in the last few years along with lengthier sentences "enhanced" by the Legislature. Now the parole board must change course and dramatically shorten prison stays for many non-violent offenders, who make up a majority of Texas prisoners, in order to free up space to keep more dangerous criminals behind bars.

Rehabilitation Re-Emphasized in Adult System
Ironically, while youth corrections moved away from a rehabilitative model toward simply warehousing youth, Texas' adult prison system took important first steps in 2007 toward embracing and funding long-ignored treatment and rehab programs. The Lege shortened probation lengths for many low-level offenders, giving them new opportunities to earn their way off probation through good behavior. In addition, local use of drug courts expanded this year - 37 different such courts statewide recently received federal pass-through support grants from the Governor. Even more importantly, the Legislature ponied up more than $200 million to expand drug treatment and intermediate sanctions facilities that give courts new tools to combat substance abuse and reduce recidivism among chronic low-level offenders.

Exonerations Inspire Dallas DA to Team Up with Innocence Project
Dallas District Attorney Craig Watkins reacted to a string of DNA exonerations in his county quite differently from his predecessor: Rather than fight fact-based exonerations tooth and nail, Watkins teamed up with the Texas Tech-based Innocence Project of Texas to ensure that every offender who's innocence could possibly be verified through DNA testing had their case independently reviewed. In an era when prosecutors like Chuck Rosenthal and Mike Nifong more frequently dominate headlines and political discourse, Watkins has been a breath of fresh air, and is fast becoming a media darling for pioneering new strategies for managing flaws in the justice system, not to mention, as the Dallas News put it, shifting the DA's Office's focus from "winning" to "justice."

Sharon Keller Disgraces Court, State
While in most states the big death penalty news in 2007 was the de facto moratorium until SCOTUS decides on the constitutionality of lethal injection procedures, in Texas the bigger controversy arose around the de jure decision to execute Michael Richard after SCOTUS issued its decision to review lethal injection in Baze. How many sitting judges can say about 150 attorneys and a thousand other citizens have signed onto complaints against them with the state Commission on Judicial Conduct? Only one that I know of: Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Presiding Judge Sharon Keller. Her decision not to notify her fellow judges of an 11th hour delay in a death penalty appeal - including keeping the jurist responsible for the decision out of the loop - arguably could have ranked at the top of the list except for one reason: Keller and the CCA have so long ago disgraced themselves that the egregious behavior that shocked the rest of the world seems to those of us here in Texas nearly routine. We'll find out in the coming week whether any Democrats will file to challenge incumbent Republican CCA members - I'll have more news on that score real soon. Arguably these judicial seats rank among the most vulnerable statewide races in the 2008 elections.

Actual and Perceived Corruption on the Rise
This year saw a great deal of both actual and perceived corruption discovered, with the public left wondering how deep it all goes. Though claims of terrorist infiltration along the border all turned out to be bogus, an increasingly impressive number of officers on the US side have been accused of accepting bribes at a time when cartels have begun to extend their influence northward, including recruiting hitmen among poor US teens in border towns. Meanwhile, the US Export Import Bank was revealed to have given millions in loans to known drug cartel members. A corruption probe in El Paso accusing public officials of bribe taking includes more prominent local names every time I see new coverage. In Houston, an assistant chief testified under oath that a woman who performed oral sex to avoid arrest engaged in a "consensual" agreement with the officer. In Dallas, more than a dozen Democratic politicos were accused of various corruption charges by the feds in 2007, including state Rep. Terri Hodge who allegedly accepted free rent for several years from a developer for whom she did political favors, according to the federal indictment. At the Texas Youth Commission, a probably unnecessary contract to re-categorize inmates was given with no bidding process to Gregg Phillips, a lobbyist friend of former state Rep. Arlene Wohlgemuth who has been accused in the past of improperly steering state contracts to friends and family. The Bexar County Sheriff resigned to avoid a felony indictment for bribery regarding a contract with a private firm to operate the jail commissary.

New DPS Drug Enforcement Rules Boost Seizures, Reduce Arrests
Vying with the previous item for the "Most important, seldom told story of the year," the Texas Department of Public Safety reported this year that new drug enforcement priorities implemented in recently adopted agency rules growing out of the "Tulia" debacle had produced remarkable results, doubling the number of drug seizures in the first year while overall drug arrests declined 40%. That's because the new rules place "no priority" on arresting "end users," defined as "the intended user of illegal drugs [who is] generally motivated by addiction." Instead, DPS now targets "Drug Trafficking Organizations" with five or more identified participants. One especially notable aspect of this new strategy was the elimination of drug interdiction units on the highway: I was fascinated to realize that even though DPS no longer fishes for drug shipments on the Interstates, their total drug seizures increased. Congrats to Commander Patrick O'Burke and everybody else in DPS Narcotics for transforming the Tulia tragedy into a legacy of improved, more professional drug enforcement statewide.

Hype-Driven Pedophilia Law Makes Family Abuse Victims Less Likely to Come Forward
Succumbing to an extraordinary season of hype about child abusers during the 2006 election, the Texas Legislature in 2007 passed "Jessica's Law," an ill-considered piece of legislative flotsam that created a new crime, "continuous sexual abuse of a child," with minimum penalties of 25 years on the first offense and allowing death on the second, and eliminated the statute of limitations for sexual offenses against children. When the bill passed, I predicted that "the 25 year mandatory minimum first offense will be reduced by a future Texas Legislature soon after the first instance discovered where a family did not turn in a pedophilia case involving a young child because of stiff first-time sentences. I hope I'm wrong, but I don't think so."

Border security policy misses target
Despite evidence that "Operation Linebacker" and its bureaucratic descendants failed to reduce crime in the areas that received new funding, Governor Perry and his legislative supporters dramatically expanded funding for this pork barrel program, approving more than $100 million for "border security" in the 2008-2009 biennium. So far, the Governor has focused on establishing a parallel bureaucracy to Texas' traditional security agencies like the Department of Public Safety that are under his control, but unfortunately these new entities don't typically communicate or work with other agencies, according to legislative testimony. Bottom line: That dynamic has made the Governor's homeland security division a quite expensive and counterproductive third wheel whose sole function appears to be to fight with older bureaucracies over "turf." This policy makes no one happy: Conservatives who want immigration enforcement will be disappointed because, despite all the hype, none of the money goes toward that purpose, while anyone concerned with battling drug cartels will find little direct correlation between new money spent and outcomes on the ground.

Healthcare in prisons and jails nearing crisis
With the federal government having ordered the state of California to open up the taxpayers collective wallet to pay for long-neglected prisoner healthcare, a looming subterranean health crisis faces Texas prisons and many jails. The University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston, in particular, has admitted in legislative hearings that the care they provide in adult prisons is "barely constitutional," while the care they provide at the Texas Youth Commission actually got worse after the agency went into conservatorship, UTMB reported. Until 2006 UTMB was responsible for jail healthcare in Dallas, but county officials ended that contract because of outcomes so bad they invited a federal civil rights lawsuit. Could healthcare in Texas prisons, which UTMB runs using the same telemedicine scheme used in Dallas, be far behind? How long will Texas get a pass for spending half the amount per inmate on healthcare compared to California and most other large states? Time will tell, but my guess is not long after a certain former Texas Governor leaves the White House - particularly under a Democratic President, but really either way - we can expect litigation aiming to force increased spending for Texas prison healthcare from the US Justice Department.

Honorable Mention:

Public Sentiment Waning for New Jail Spending
In what I consider a bellwether election on the subject in November, voters in two of Texas' most conservative, "tuff on crime" counties - Harris (Houston) and Smith (Tyler) - rejected new debt for jail building. In Tyler, where opponents mounted an active anti-jail campaign, voters rejected a new jail by a 69-31 margin. In Houston, heavy turnout in black neighborhoods and modest support elsewhere doomed the proposal by a narrower margin - 51-49 - with no opposing campaign and with blogs as the only vocal opposition. Notably, it was the first time Houstonians rejected bonds on any public ballot in more than 20 years. Voters may like the "tuff on crime" message, but these elections show they may not be so happy when presented with the long-term bill. The Legislature responded to local jail overcrowding by expanding the range of offenses for which police can use a "cite and summons" mechanism instead of arresting non-violent class B offenders, but so far officers in most counties aren't using this new authority. Time will tell if these is an electoral blip on the radar screen or the beginning of a more significant trend.

See last year's list, and a recent update on those stories.

Annual contenders:

• Mentally ill Texans warehoused in prisons and jails
• War on drugs overall still failing
• Immigration detention expanding; incarcerating children becomes opposition's spearpoint

What is the "pro-animal" agenda?

I got to visit yesterday with a friend who works for the Humane Society, who mentioned something I found interesting: I enviously observed that it must be a lot easier to advocate for puppies and kittens than for people caught up in the justice system, to which she replied that the Humane Society policy agenda was "boring." "It's all enhancements," she said, "just increasing penalties for animal cruelty, stuff like that."

That's a shame. Nobody is more pro-dog than me (not really a cat person), but it makes little sense to increase penalties for animal cruelty when the current laws go largely unenforced until an animal has already met its untimely demise. If you want to prevent animal cruelty, or investigate allegations thereof, spending greater resources on enforcement on the front end would do a lot more good than punishing the occasional person actually caught more severely.

It shouldn't be necessary for criminal justice reformers and animal advocates like the Humane Society to be on opposite sides of the political fence. Historically, the knee-jerk, bipartisan first reaction to every social woe is to pass a law against it and increase penalties if the law doesn't stop it. For many offenses though, like drug use and animal cruelty, that approach has largely failed to stop the behaviors.

So what might a more effective pro-animal political agenda look like that did not focus on increasing criminal penalties?

Most public education efforts typically aren't very effective, my friend said, but perhaps it would be possible to think creatively about that: We don't need to "educate" everyone, since most people don't abuse animals, but only those who've engaged in the behavior. What if the punishment for animal cruelty weren't incarceration, but education for offenders including community service jobs that provide supervised services to abused animals (or even just shoveling poop at the dog pound). Maybe education resources would be better spent more intensively on the handful of people prone to abusing animals rather than on the general population.

What other pro-animal agenda might be developed that doesn't involve penalty increases? The obvious ones are funding for dog pounds, spay/neutering functions, "rescue" services, perhaps marketing for pet adoption, programs to train dogs for dog owners with disabilities or other special needs. I'd also like to see offenders sentenced to some sort of peer education, using those who've engaged in activities like dog fighting, e.g., to perform pub ed functions within their own social networks as part of community supervision.

There must be other ways the government could reduce animal cruelty besides just increasing penalties. Let me know in the comments if you can think of any others.

Smith County Justice Gets New Web Watchdog

Go say "Howdy" to SmithCountyJustice.org, a new website dedicated to "fighting injustice and corruption in Smith County, Texas." Regular readers know I grew up in Smith County (in the county seat of Tyler, actually), and try to keep up with local crime and punishment issues back in the hometown as much as possible. The site joins another local blog, Smith County: Tell the Truth, documenting the social, public safety and monetary costs of Tyler's legendary "tuff on crime" brand of justice.

Wichita Falls task force proves asset forfeiture can't finance drug units

There's a lesson to be drawn from the final demise of the North Texas Regional Drug Task Force based in Wichita Falls: It's hard for an honest privateer to make a living these days.

One of the last remaining Tulia-style drug task forces, the North Texas task force had hoped to continue operations based solely on asset forfeitures and funds seized from drug interdiction on the highways. As media everywhere publish their year-end retrospectives (Grits' own feature on the Top Ten Texas Criminal Justice Stories of 2007 will appear tomorrow), we find news from the local daily that the task force couldn't make their budget just by seizing funds. Reported the Times Record News ("Top stories of the year," Dec. 29):

The North Texas Regional Drug Task Force closed down in 2007, victim of budget cuts. The consortium of law officers had served 23 counties in drug investigations. The Texas Legislature curtailed its funding of regional task forces and federal grant money was diverted to other purposes.

Another factor was the trend of drug traffickers to choose methamphetamine over cocaine, which resulted in lower cash seizures by the task force.

City and county governments chipped in enough money to keep the task force, which operated out of the Wichita Falls Police Department, running though 2007. But the money wasn’t available for 2008. The task force officers were absorbed into WFPD or other agencies.

The two reasons given by the Times Record News for the task force's closure deserve closer attention. It's certainly true that Governor Rick Perry eliminated funding for Texas drug task forces in 2006, shifting the money to pay for border security grants to 16 Sheriff's departments along the Rio Grande, an initiative which itself has met with mixed results. That's what caused the North Texas Drug Task Force to venture out on its own, attempting to operate based on forfeiture funds.

But the second reason given explains why THAT plan failed: "the trend of drug traffickers to choose methamphetamine over cocaine, which resulted in lower cash seizures." The narco-warriors simply couldn't make enough money through asset forfeiture to make the special unit worthwhile.

Fighting crime should not be a for-profit enterprise, which is what they tried to turn this task force into in Wichita Falls. It's one thing to occasionally benefit from asset forfeiture funds, and quite another to rely upon them routinely for one's annual budget. It was a bad idea from the start and I'm pleased, if unsurprised, to discover that it failed.

When the Tulia scandal broke in 1999, Texas had more than 50 of these regional drug task forces. With the demise of the Wichita Fallas TF, we're down to four, none of them any longer receiving federal Byrne grant funds. The fate of these task forces, perhaps especially the one in Wichita Falls, represents an important step in the ongoing shift in thinking in Texas about how best to combat harms from drug abuse and trafficking.

Magic Johnson Goes to Texas Prison for "Wall Talk"

Here's one sports star I never expected to see in prison, even with all the professional athletes out there in trouble with the law: Basketball legend Earvin "Magic" Johnson. Fortunately, he was just visiting the Darrington Unit to participate in TDCJ's "peer education program, 'Wall Talk,'" filming a video that will be shown to "at risk" offenders. The prisoners Johnson met with are "trained to 'spread the word,' ... [to] help educate fellow offenders about preventive health care as it relates to HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, hepatitis A, B and C, as well as diabetes and staph infections." Good for him! Also, good for TDCJ for using peer education to supplement top-down approaches to its longstanding healthcare failings; they have to try something! Johnson and TDCJ "filmed a discussion he had with a group of offenders. The resultant DVD will be used to disseminate his message further into at-risk communities"

Missouri juvie justice profiled

AP has a story on Missouri's juvenile corrections model that most juvie justice professionals believe constitutes the best practices currently known for reforming delinquent youth. Texas Youth Commission previously dismissed Missouri's approach, but I'm hoping the new conservator will provide leadership to take the agency in that direction.

Aggie administrators ignore risk from bioterrorism research

Viruses created as bioweapons rank among technology's most grim contributions to the human experiment, but too often those researching these deadly bugs seem quite callous and casual about the risk of spreading them to the public.

I've written before that we've met the bioterrorism threat in Texas and it is us, but you wouldn't know it from how our state leaders behave. Texas A&M University claims it's ready to re-certify it's biodefense lab after a lab worker was accidentally exposed to a virus during an experiment this summer. Reports AP:

After learning about lab workers' exposure to bioweapons agents, the CDC launched an investigation that uncovered other failures, including several missing vials of Brucella and at least seven cases in which the school allowed unauthorized access to select agents.

Edward Hammond, director of The Sunshine Project, an Austin-based bioweapon watchdog, said university officials were "excessively optimistic" when they said publicly that they expected to be up and running by the end of 2007.

"When they said that, they were trying to put a spin on it, trying to trivialize, to minimize, the implications of what had happened," Hammond said. "They thought this was a problem minor enough to be fixed in short order. Turns out, that's not the case."

The Sunshine Project first discovered that workers had been exposed to the toxic agents while researching the universities vying to host a new National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility. Texas A&M had been among the applicants for the homeland security project.

American biodefense labs have experienced more than 100 accidents or missing shipments since 2003, and more deadly viruses and toxins are being transported routinely among more labs than ever before.

Upon studying bioterror threats at some length as a member of Texas' Bioterrorism Preparedness Task Force several years ago, I became convinced that a graver risk existed from an accident among our own domestic "defense" programs than from Al Qaeda or some terrorist group. Perhaps the most concise statement of my views on the subject was laid out in this 2004 letter to a Texas Senate committee. (I notice Jay Kimbrough, then the Governor's homeland security guru, was cc'd on the 2004 letter, so at least he's heard these arguments before.)

Not every Texas university needs a BSL-3 or BSL-4 lab to handle the planet's most deadly bugs. The existing labs in Galveston and San Antonio mean Texas already does more than it's share of biodefense research, and I don't think officials pursuing the expanded lab at A&M have fully grokked the massive potential risk that comes along with the new federal dollars they're pursuing. We shouldn't have to wait until another labworker is exposed, they walk outside onto the campus and kill a bunch of hapless Aggies before these concerns are taken more seriously.

At a minimum I wish officials weren't in such a rush to get the lab back online. It's one thing for Mike McKinney and Jay Kimbrough to say the lab is ready to go, but I'd feel a lot better if the CDC and the Sunshine Project agreed with their assessment.

Is it reasonable to believe taxation policy will influence sexual assault, or is Texas' "pole tax" just another boondoggle?

I don't closely watch the Ways and Means Committee in the Texas House or Finance in the Senate, so somehow I missed the creation of this new tax during the 80th Texas Legislature.

In what some have dubbed the “pole tax,” Texas will require its 150 or so strip clubs to collect a $5-per-customer levy, with most proceeds going to help rape victims.

Helping rape victims is certainly a noble cause, but why link that to strip clubs? Why not pay for services with extra drivers license fees, or better yet through regular ol' property or sales taxes? Do legislators really believe strip club devotees are somehow collectively, esoterically responsible for rape? More than, say, beer commercials and music videos filled with scantily clad women on TV every day?

And where are all the anti-tax hawks when it comes to sin taxes? That's a LOT of money: State officials estimate it will raise $40 million per year, which would mean about 22,000 people per day visit strip clubs, but by my own back of the envelope calculations, that figure probably underestimates revenue just like they did with the cigarette tax. I suppose legislators assume these taxpayers a) don't vote and b) won't mind being unfairly, officially blamed for causing sex crimes.

El Paso's Sheriff Leo Samaniego, R.I.P.

Spare months after announcing his retirement, long-time El Paso County Sheriff Leo Samaniego (see his pdf bio prepared by El Paso County) passed away yesterday, succumbing to cancer that had not been previously disclosed. While this blog disagreed with Samaniego on certain policies (particularly his desire for the local Sheriff to enforce immigration laws), by all accounts he was a man of integrity, an old-school cop who acted on what he believed in rather than just talk about it. In choosing politicians, I've learned from bitter experience to prefer pols with integrity who may disagree with me to spineless ones who say what I want to hear, and Samaniego, to my mind, always fell in the former category. El Paso was lucky to have him, and I hope his family and friends will accept Grits' bloggerly condolences as they honor the Sheriff and a full life devoted to public service.

Blog On, Anonymous

Here's a news item I'd overlooked that will please the many anonymous commenters on this blog: Mary Alice Robbins at Texas Lawyer's Ex Parte blog informs us that the 6th Texas Court of Appeals in Texarkana issued a ruling on Dec. 12 that:

protects the identity of an anonymous blogger. The appeals court ruled in In Re: Does 1-10 that an Internet provider does not have to reveal the blogger’s identity. As noted in the 6th Court’s opinion, written by Justice Jack Carter, Essent PRMC, the company that owns Paris Regional Medical Center, sued the blogger and nine of his anonymous commentators in June, alleging in its original petition that John Doe 1 had set up a blog that is defamatory, containing “scurrilous” comments about the hospital and its staff. Essent also filed an ex parte request for disclosure of information from a nonparty to the suit, SuddenLink Communications, Doe 1’s Internet provider. The trial court, which is not identified in the 6th Court’s opinion, ordered SuddenLink to disclose Doe 1’s name and address, basing its order on Essent’s argument on a provision in the Cable Communications Policy Act, 47 U.S.C. §551(c). Doe 1 filed a petition for a writ of mandamus with the 6th Court, which found that “the federal statute is not a procedural vehicle for obtaining such a court order.” The 6th Court also held that the operator of the blog site has a First Amendment right to anonymity in the defamation suit, unless Essent provides proof that the blog postings caused it financial harm. Carter wrote for the 6th Court that “an author’s decision to remain anonymous . . . is an aspect of the freedom of speech protected by the First Amendment.” Chief Justice Josh Morriss III and Justice Bailey C. Moseley joined in the decision.

The literally thousands of anonymous comments from employees at the Texas Youth Commission on Grits this year demonstrated to me once and for all why preserving anonymity is important. While it's a shame so many people feel too intimidated to use their real name when engaging in public debate, the fact that they do shows why anonymity is needed: It allows debates over topics where participants would otherwise refuse to engage for fear of reprisal.

Long live the anonymous blog commenter, and long live anonymous blogs!

Ex-Im Bank Scandal Looks Like Tip of Corruption Iceberg

The WFAA story about the Ex-Im Bank giving loans to Sinaloa and Juarez drug cartel associates threw me for a bit of a loop, and I thought I'd take a moment to explore the implications a little further. (Read this Grits post if you don't know what I'm talking about. Go ahead ... I'll wait.)

Until today, I hadn't thought much about the Ex-Im Bank since I was an economics major in college, but insofar as corruption of major international trade institutions goes, this is a really big deal!

Some of these loans went to companies that didn't even give a valid address: One business, WFAA reported, gave a Dallas address on "Highway 10." There's no Highway 10 of any kind in Dallas, though Interstate 10 runs from Houston through San Antonio and El Paso more than 250 miles south.

What could it mean? What will it mean? Who is in charge of the Ex-Im Bank and who oversees their activities? Who approved the loans in question? Certainly David Carter, Vice President of Credit Underwriting, has some questions to answer, as well as Business Credit VP Pamela Bowers. How did President Bush come to name these particular people to serve on the board - are they donors, friends, banking careerists?

Cui bono? Who benefits? For that matter, particularly for these phony front companies, who cashed the checks when the loan funds were released?

Let me say for starters that I'd hate for the Ex-Im Bank's overall mission to take a hit. If I had my druthers, US loans to Mexican business enterprises would be a key strategy to reduce immigration, which largely stems from a shortage of job opportunities in Mexico. But when you see stories of fabricated front companies receiving loans, it's hard to argue for more lending.

The Ex Im Bank gives loans that are supposed to create new markets for American exports. Here's a web page with overview information on the Ex-Im Bank's role in Mexico. What's needed, at a minimum, is an immediate Government Accountability Office (GAO) audit to determine the scope of the problem and whether the program is utterly corrupt or if only the medium-term loans were affected. That's where WFAA found most of the phony loans that it has documented so far, according to reports (it's also the type of loan for which Ms Bowers created a "fast track" program, according to the Ex-Im website, that probably also deserves a second look).

If steroid use in Major League Baseball deserves Congressional hearings, surely the allegations presented by WFAA deserve a similarly full and high profile investigation. Certainly it matters much more to the nation's security if, as WFAA's investigation strongly implies, US trade organs are being used to finance drug cartel operations in Mexico.

Does Congress or any federal law enforcement agency care, or is it just WFAA?

UPDATE: It's not just Mexico, apparently - here's news of a scam to secure phony loans to Fillipino companies for export goods that never existed. The company "acted as a purported exporter, falsified records given to US banks and diverted $2.1 million in loan proceeds guaranteed by the Ex-Im Bank," reported ABC News. Between this news and revelations that Ex-Im loans in Mexico went to known drug cartel figures, this agency needs a serious housecleaning.

Perhaps I'm being paranoid, but the mind reels at the possibilities of how deep this might go: If a bold thinker wanted the perfect front for massive-scale, global money laundering, you couldn't ask for a better vehicle than the Ex-Im Bank. At a minimum, I think I'll add the Ex-Im Bank to my Google News feeds for a while and see what else pops up.

Texas Jail News Roundup

Here are several jail related items I've been watching that may interest Grits readers:

Federal suit filed against Dallas jail for medical neglect
This has been a long time coming: A civil rights lawsuit filed by Jeffrey Ellard alleging medical neglect at the Dallas County Jail, especially notable as the first such litigation since Parkland hospital took over medical care at the jail from UTMB Galveston's correctional managed care service, which had been blamed for past problems. UTMB currently provides healthcare services for youth incarcerated in TYC and for most adult Texas prison inmates, where similar problems have been alleged.

Freestone County Jail History
The Mexia Daily News supplies a history of the five jails in Freestone County dating to a log cabin built in 1852 that was later used as a barn. According to this article, until 1925 executions were performed in local county jails, and three of the five jail buildings in Freestone County at various points served the death house function. J.R. "Sonny" Sessions wrote that "The last legal hanging in Texas was in Waco on Jully 30, 1923 of a man who admitted 8 murders and terrorized the area for a year."

Tuff on crime pols can't also be cheapskates
Here's a classic penny-wise, pound foolish moment: Johnson County has a reputation as one of the "tuffest" jurisdictions in the state, but when they looked at a consultant's and contractors' recommendation for a new roof on their overbuilt jail they decided to do it on the cheap. The county is willing to pay about 40% of the $547,800 low bid, said the county judge, perhaps $200,000 or less. Hmmm. Do they foresee the county's function to oversee the jail ceasing at some point, or do commissioners just think that when the roof fails again it will be somebody else's problem? If you want to be tuff on crime, you have to be willing to pay the piper.

Anderson commissioners pressure to open entrepreneurial jail wing
Speaking of paying the piper, the Anderson County Jail in Palestine intentionally overbuilt its new facility in order to take in prisoners from other counties on an entrepreneurial basis. Commissioners there are growing impatient for new revenue to begin flowing to help pay the debt.

Reimbursing counties for 'criminal alien' costs
Here's a good description in the Mineral Wells Index of the State Criminal Alien Assistance Program, a federal program that reimburses counties for incarceration costs for felons and repeat misdemeanants identified for an immigration hold. "Payment to Texas counties ranged from $308 to Dimmit County to $2.8 million to Harris County (Houston)."

Bexar's bricks and mortar jail unsecure, so why push tent jail?
Okay, Bexar County cannot prevent escapes or secure it's bricks and mortar jail from contraband, according to WOAI radio, so why do Commisioner Tommy Adkisson and others insist on pushing a tent jail, where the problem of excluding contraband and preventing escapes would be much worse?

Bloggers look back at 2007 criminal justice stories, and ahead

As we reflect on 2007 headed into the BCS bowl weekend ... er ... the New Year, here a some year-end top ten lists worth reading:

• A Prediction of 2008 Government Power Grabs by Radley Balko
• Drug War Chronicle's Top Ten Drug War Stories of 2007
• Sentencing Law & Policy's 2007 Top Ten Sentencing Stories

In addition, Doc Berman pointed out several more year-end lists that may interest Grits readers:

• The Sentencing Project here has a review of 2007 developments in felon disenfranchisement reform.
• White Collar Crime Prof Blog here gives out "2007 White Collar Crime Awards"
• The Death Penalty Information Center (as previously discussed here) has made available here its 13th annual Year-End Report.

I've declared intentions to publish my own Top Ten Texas Criminal Justice Stories of 2007 on New Years Day, along with predictions on Texas justice topics for 2008 (see how Grits did prognosticating last year), so let me know what you think are Texas' biggest 2007 criminal justice stories and any predictions you have for the coming new year.

Who are the big American drug bosses? How about the Ex-Im Bank?!

We've been wondering on this blog who are the big American drug bosses and American drug financiers, and Byron Harris at WFAA in Dallas yesterday offered up another clue: A first-rate piece of broadcast journalism ("Drugs tied to $243 million bogus loans," Dec. 27) analyzing records obtained under FOIA to show that:

small business loans sponsored by the Export-Import Bank of the United States were made to non-existing companies for equipment that wasn't even real.

Now, New 8 has discovered that some of the people who got the Ex-Im Bank loans may have drug connections. The $243 million worth of bad loans were originally made to help trade with Mexico.

The loans have been linked to the Juarez drug cartel, which is known for its brutal murders. The cartel killed one dozen people and buried them in a suburban backyard across the border fro El Paso.

Another loan was linked to the Sinaloa drug cartel, whose business is smuggling heroin into the United States.

The federally funded Ex-Im Bank apparently backed loans to people affiliated with both cartels and the Mexican drug trade.

Under the Freedom of Information Act, News 8 asked for all documentation related to defaulted small business loans made to Mexico from 2002 to 2005. Although there were nearly 200 bad loans, so far, information on only 34 cases has been turned over.

But the bank did give a list of the defaulted loans and the names and addresses of the people who got them in Mexico.

"They have drug connections, which is very disheartening to think that the U.S. government is lending money to documented traffickers in the drug trade that are tied into the cartels in Mexico," said Phil Jordan, the former head of the El Paso Intelligence Center for the DEA and Border Patrol in El Paso.

Jordan ran background checks of the borrowers with two federal sources and found borrowers from Juarez and Sinaloa with criminal ties to money laundering, organized crime or drugs in Mexico. Jordan said he was surprised to find that the Ex-Im Bank didn't do similar checks before guaranteeing the loans.

"To lend them millions of dollars and then to not be a fail safe system of checks and balances is just throwing money away," he said.

Between these revelations and the questions about US ownership of a drug plane downed earlier this year, not to mention the raft of official corruption, you have to seriously wonder whether at least some of the "drug bosses" on the American side might just reside quietly in the bowels of government?

UPDATE: Ex-Im Bank looks like tip of corruption iceberg.

Swinford on HB 13: There I was, slaying the dragon, when the ACLU stole my sword and steed

House State Affairs Committee Chairman David Swinford and I sure remember the debate over his bill HB 13 a lot differently. Wrote Bob Campbell ("Texas House committee plans second immigration hearing," Dec. 27):

State Affairs Committee Chairman David Swinford, R-Dumas, was disappointed when representatives backed by the American Civil Liberties Union defeated his House Bill 13 last spring in Austin to withhold state money from "sanctuary cities" that refuse to cooperate.

So he was pleased that Craddick gave him the responsibility to draft legislation for the 81st Legislature in January 2009.

"The ACLU got it killed because some representatives were more beholden to them than to protecting our kids from the drug dealers," Swinford said. "It's absolutely untrue that people on the U.S.-Mexico border don't want border security because who is the first to get whacked? They are."

"My bill said, 'You need to enforce all the laws. If you pick and choose, the state will withhold some of your funds because we are not a sanctuary state, we're a law abiding state."

I watched debates over this legislation pretty closely and wrote about them on Grits (see below), and from my recollection that's hardly an accurate rendition of what happened. The version of the bill that died with a point of order at the end of the process contained no such language, though ACLU (among quite a few others) certainly opposed it. But you can't blame ACLU for killing the provisions Swinford blames them for; that was done by GOP legislators on his own committee.

Conservative Republicans control the State Affairs Committee, which Swinford chairs, by a 7-2 margin. So it was his own party members, not the ACLU, who wouldn't go along with that proposal in the filed bill, a fact Campbell could easily have checked on the state capitol website. (See the text of the House committee report and other versions of the bill.)

Which three or more Republican members of his committee, I wonder, does Swinford consider "beholden" to the ACLU, an organization that does not endorse candidates, give money, or participate in elections? When you look at it that way, it sounds pretty silly, doesn't it?

HB 13 died because Chairman Swinford played fast and loose with the bill from start to finish, and because the Senate larded the thing up like a Christmas tree in May with junk, much of it given them by the Governor, that turned the bill into a monstrosity before it finally died a much deserved death. Swinford appeared willing to say anything to pass the bill, and at times didn't know the facts behind the legislation's details, which from my observation had more to do with why the bill died than anything else, at the end of the day.

• Don't Do It! Perry moves to consolidate intelligence gathering in the Governor's office
• The Governor's Great Border Security Power Grab
• Border chiefs dislike Governor's homeland security bill
• Swinford's line in the sand on HB 13 makes no sense
• The case of the missing data
• Farrar: HB 13 won't secure border, risks political interference with law enforcement
• Most states don't run homeland security money through the Governor
• How David Swinford's bad day made HB 13 a better bill
• No Chairman Swinford, they're not Byrne grants
• Ding dong, the witch is dead! Why HB 13 died and why it doesn't matter

Holiday week blog linkage

As Grits' posting and blog reading has been light during the holiday season, I find myself today playing catch up. Rather than reinvent the wheel on several important stories, let me refer readers to recent posts at these blogs that merit your attention:

• The Back Gate
• Texas Prison Bidness
• Sentencing Law & Policy
• Simple Justice

More important stuff there, certainly, than I have time to write about. Finally, I should link in particular to I Was The State, if only in thanks for the joy I derived from the excellent C.S. Lewis quote Robert scrounged up for the holidays on the tyranny of good intentions:

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

Amen. May we all resolve in the new year to resist both brands of tyranny.

Former (?) paramour receives fat salary, county car, and 'ickey' love notes from Harris DA Chuck Rosenthal

At the Harris County District Attorney's office, that squawking you hear is the sound of chickens coming home to roost.

On its front page today, the Houston Chronicle reports that an attorney in a civil rights suit believes Harris DA Chuck Rosenthal did not prosecute two Sheriffs deputies because he feared an affair with his executive secretary Kerry Stevens would be revealed. "The very next time I see you, I want to kiss you behind your right ear," Rosenthal wrote to Stevens on Aug. 10, 2007. Reported the Chronicle ("Judge seals Harris DA's revealing emails," Dec. 27):

"It's five years later; why weren't they investigated?" [attorney Lloyd] Kelley asked. "The e-mails establish the reason why Rosenthal did nothing — you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours."

When deposing Rosenthal on Nov. 29 for the case, Kelley asked if he was having an affair, a question Rosenthal's attorney wouldn't let him answer.

He also wasn't allowed to answer Kelley's question about whether his friends, Sheriff Thomas and Harris County commissioners Jerry Eversole and Steve Radack, were aware of his relationship with Stevens.

Kelley then asked, "Mr. Rosenthal, is it because you are engaged in activities that you want to keep quiet, is that why you won't rock the boat and investigate the sheriff and his activities?"

"No," Rosenthal responded.

During discovery for the case, Kelley asked for all of the e-mails sent or received by Rosenthal, his first assistant Bert Graham and his general counsel, Scott Durfee from July to Oct. 15.

In court documents protesting the release of the e-mails, attorneys for Rosenthal argue they "relate to private expressions of affection between Rosenthal and Stevens."

While the 51 e-mails between the two contain the phrase "I love you" more than a dozen times, and Rosenthal asks Stevens to let him hold her, the messages are not explicit.

Rosenthal said Wednesday he is not having an affair with Stevens, but that he had an affair with her in the 1980s when he was married to his first wife. He said the affair did not end that marriage, but he did later divorce.

Rosenthal later remarried and said he told his current wife about the affair before hiring Stevens as his executive assistant when he took office in 2000.

Kelley is a friend and former law partner of C.O. Bradford, the former Houston police chief and Rosenthal nemesis who is running for DA as a Democrat, so the story has the appearance of a political hit. But that doesn't mean it's not a legitimate story. As one of many commenters on the Chronicle website pointed out, "If he were in the private sector, he would at least be severely reprimanded and most likely fired."

Another commenter summed up my own feelings: "Hiring your former paramour as your executive assistant, giving her a County car to drive around town (so the car can receive preventative maintenance!) and using the County's computer system in the manner he did is just plain 'ickey'. ... Chuck Rosenthal really needs to do the honorable thing and resign so that another untainted candidate can run against C.O. Bradford."

UPDATE: See more from the blogosphere here, here, here, here, here, and here. In addition, here's a photo of Rosenthal and Ms. Stevens from the Harris DA's website:

NPR: No reduction in overall cocaine supplies

US Drug Czar John Walters has claimed that drug enforcement efforts had created a cocaine supply shortage in 37 US cities, but a report from National Public Radio yesterday poked holes in those assertions, finding that any supply reduction in cities like Houston were transitory and already passed. Retail prices in San Antonio for cocaine remain unchanged, NPR declared, and Dallas experienced no supply shortage at all.

Reporter John Burnett's investigative story confirmed "long-established trends: that price spikes are transitory, and that over time, dealers find other distribution routes, while users may find other drugs." The National Drug Intelligence Center also contradicted Walters' claims, declaring "Cocaine availability appears to have returned to previous levels in some, but not all, drug markets, as traffickers re-establish stable sources of supply and distribution networks."

You can listen to the full 7.5 minute story here.

Dallas PD internal affairs can't bust through cops' No Snitching code

The "stop snitching" street code apparently applies to police officers, as well.

The Dallas News yesterday published on page one a story about the Dallas PD's dysfunctional internal affairs investigation against three Dallas police officers. Reported the News ("Ticket writing inquiry shows flaws in policing police," Dec. 26):

At key points during nearly a year of investigations, questions were not asked and witnesses were not interviewed.

The investigation may also have been hampered by officers' fear of reprisal for not reporting possible misconduct sooner and an early belief among high-ranking officials that the three officers – Senior Cpls. Jeffrey Nelson, Al Schoelen and Timothy Stecker – were simply gruff, old-school cops who didn't mesh well with younger officers.

Officials said they now realize that belief wasn't entirely correct.

Cpls. Nelson and Schoelen face discipline after investigators found that they engaged in a pattern of unacceptable enforcement activity. One activity included arresting vagrants, prostitutes and other habitual offenders and adding citations that are mailed, even though many of these people did not have stable addresses. The officers were also issuing tickets to people under more than one name at the same time.

Investigators also concluded that Cpl. Nelson used inappropriate force in an incident involving a handcuffed woman. They also later concluded that Cpls. Nelson and Stecker made homeless people, prostitutes and others sign blank citations so the officers could fill out the tickets later.

But it took about 10 months and investigations at several levels within the department to get there.

Not only did IAD fail to investigate thoroughly, many officers refused to cooperate with Internal Affairs, the News reported, because they feared they'd be disciplined themselves for failing to report the offense earlier. (I'm not sure I buy that excuse; since when has the Dallas PD ever fired officers for failing to report misconduct? I've never heard of it.)

In any event, if the Dallas News hadn't pursued this case it would never have come to fruition - IAD had already cleared the officers and likely would have dropped the matter if the News hadn't researched the allegations independently, located citizen victims, and published their stories.

Police chief David Kunkle understatedly said that, "Everybody mistrusts IAD – from the public to the officers." I can understand why; from this account they sound like a pretty worthless bunch.

ID drug task force informant accused of murder

Though it's not a Texas case, a scandal arising from an Idaho drug task force touches on themes Grits has discussed in recent months, particularly law enforcement tolerating crimes by informants in order to prosecute low-level offenders. Reported AP:

A 31-year-old charged in a September slaying had apparently worked previously as a drug informant for law-enforcement agencies in southcentral Idaho.

John Henry McElhiney faces trial along with Cameron Watts, 29, next March in the killing of 18-year-old Dale Miller.

His body was discovered Sept. 12 bound with wire and stuffed inside a barrel in the garage of a Twin Falls apartment complex.

McElhiney had previously been enlisted by the Blaine County Sheriff's Office in some of its drug investigations.

Detective Steve Harkin called McElhiney a "cooperative individual" on some probes into drug peddling in the region.

Miller's slaying has already been linked to drug activity

When you're investigating serious crime, unfortunately, saints and angels do not often present themselves as witnesses. But this case shows why criminal informant use should be restricted to more serious crimes and not employed profligately to pursue low-level offenders: Not infrequently, police wind up tolerating more serious offenses by their snitches than they're investigating in the first place.

Would Idahoans have been safer if police had viewed Mr. McElhiney as an investigative target instead of as a tool? Certainly the 18-year old victim might have been.

RELATED: See another informant-related scandal from the Pacific Northwest, in this case a lying informant who set up an innocent person through "controlled buys" monitored by drug task force officers. In Oklahoma, a drug task force officer pled guilty to a misdemeanor this month embezzling seized drug money and staging a burglary to cover up the crime.

ALSO RELATED: The federal Byrne grant fund that pays for regional drug task forces has been cut by 2/3 in the most recent federal budget. In 2006 Texas abolished its drug task forces, shifting Byrne grant money to drug enforcement on the border.

One year retrospective: A look at what Grits thought were the important stories when the year began, and where they are now

At the end of 2006 in this post, I created a top ten list of the most important Texas criminal justice stories, many of which still rank among the state's most vexing public policy dilemmas.

In a link-rich post, I described how Governor Perry's 2005 vetoes ensured Texas' prison overcrowding crisis, and the 80th Legislature responded with the worst possible scenario: Building prisons the state can't staff or afford to operate.

Innocence cases were the next on the 2006 top ten list, but despite the steady stream of DNA exonerations throughout the year, the Legislature did virtually nothing to reform the procedural flaws that we now know generate wrongful convictions.

As in 2006, immigration detention in 2007 continued to drive incarceration expansion, though the Texas Legislature also added thousands of new beds, both in secure lockdown facilities and in treatment and intermediate sanctions beds. It remains unclear whether it will be possible to staff those new facilities.

I predicted that local jail overcrowding would worsen, illustrating the section with a picture of Harris County jail inmates sleeping on the floor. There's little question that it has. In November, Harris County voters rejected new jail bonds by a 51-49 margin; today the county rents 600 beds from a private facility in Louisiana. Another proposed jail in Tyler was voted down by a whopping 69-31 margin, the second time in two years Smith County voters said "no" to a new jail. Throughout the state, increased pretrial detention is the main reason for increased jail populations, even where overall crime is falling. Voter antipathy for new jail building is forcing some counties to re-evaluate those expensive policy choices.

I'd named the federal investigation of TYC's Evins unit as one of the top ten 2006 Texas criminal justice stories, but no one (except maybe Nate Blakeslee or Alison Brock) could have predicted how the Youth Commission story would explode onto the national and international stage, to the point where the agency has become the subject of frequent NY Times editorials and coverage in recent months. TYC surely must be the most scrutinized agency in the state, but so far that hasn't meant that's it's been run any more ably.

The next top-ten story was the Court of Criminal Appeals thumbing its nose at the Supreme Court and President Bush. Things got worse this year, when the Presiding Judge Sharon Keller began to thumb her nose at the rest of her colleagues as well, presuming to turn down an appeal in a death penalty case without notifying the judge who should have made the decision.

A section called "Sex offender election hype promotes dangerous non-solutions" predicted nearly precisely what came to happen with "Jessica's Law": A sweeping and costly new statute that victim advocates argue will make it less likely pedophiles are reported. Time will tell.

In 2006, Texas' federal "Byrne grant" money was taken away from regional drug task forces and split among 16 Sheriff's departments along the border. Gov. Perry convinced the Legislature to institutionalize that model in 2007, with little oversight or reporting required for how they spend the funds or whether border enforcement strategies are productive. I'm convinced border enforcement must be a key state security spending priority, and consider the influence of drug cartels arguably the greatest criminal threat Texans face. But without spending resources to ferret out corruption among law enforcement, it's very easy for such money to go to people who themselves wind up helping the drug traffickers. I'm also afraid that's what will happen with President Bush's proposed funding for Mexican law enforcement.

Finally, in the honorable mention category, I suggested that in 2007, "Dallas Dems must now put up or shut up on criminal justice," arguing specifically that Sheriff Lupe Valdez and new DA Craig Watkins in Dallas County must each step up to solve problems they inherited from their predecessors. To my mind, one has and one hasn't. As of this writing, Sheriff Valdez in particular has failed to creatively lead her department in new directions, particularly when compared to Craig Watkins' national-class performance. In part I'm told that's because, unlike Watkins, she failed to bring in a cadre of new leadership loyal to her when she took over the department, and thus has less support from her top commanders than does the DA's shop. That should be a lesson for anyone assuming new control of executive positions after next year's elections: If you win, get folks in the top slots who you can trust.

I'm going to publish a similar retrospective piece on New Year's Day looking back at 2007. Tell me what you think were the biggest Texas criminal justice stories in 2007. Clearly the TYC meltdown will make the list, but what are some of the important stories hovering just a little further below the radar? Full prisons? Spooky databases? And which of the issues from 2006 should still make the list for 2007?

And while you're at it, give me your Texas criminal justice predictions for 2008, on whatever topic. Tell me you're opinion and I'll publish Grits' 2007 "Top Ten" essay on Jan. 1.

If CIA can record interrogations, so should police

Over the holiday I put my finger on what's been bugging me about the national debate over the destruction of CIA recordings of interrogation sessions: If the CIA can record interrogations, why can't local police departments? Some jurisdictions already do.

It makes sense for the CIA to record interrogations because they're looking for intelligence, so they don't want to miss something said in passing might later become important.

More routine law enforcement benefits from a similar approach, but police interrogations in the United States rely on the "Reid technique," which takes an accusatory ("admit you did it") rather than an information gathering ("tell me what happened") approach toward the suspect. Interrogators using the Reid technique desire a confession, not necessarily information, and may not to want to record other parts of a defendant's statement (like denials) that might later confuse the jury.

There's little technological barrier today to recording interrogations, only official recalcitrance that serves no discernible public policy purpose. Recording custodial interrogations would be easier than ever - my niece received for Christmas a pocket video camera with which she can record and upload video to YouTube with incredible ease. (At eleven, she and a friend plan to launch their own podcast.)

When in 2001 the Legislature passed Texas' racial profiling statute requiring squad cars doing traffic enforcement to use cameras, many officers opposed the idea. Police unions said having cameras in their squad cars amounted to "Big Brother" watching over officers' every move. Now police know from practical experience that good cops all benefit from having cameras in the cars - both by verifying their version of events when motorists contradict their account, and by giving supervisors tools to weed out officers who abuse their authority at traffic stops. Today there's very little debate about whether recording traffic stops is a good idea.

I think the same thing would happen if police began recording custodial interrogations. Not only would they accumulate more evidence by recording full interrogations at the investigations' earliest stages, the recording protects police against false accusations, protects defendants against coerced confessions, and generally makes the justice system more transparent and accountable all the way around.

More information doesn't just benefit one side of the bar or another; instead it makes errors less likely by the system as a whole, which should be in everyone's interest. If the CIA can record custodial interrogations out in the Afghani hinterlands, there's no reason the local cops can't do the same thing where you live.

Merry Christmas, Everybody

I'll be away from the blog until at least Wednesday; I hope the holiday finds you all happy and well. Thanks for visiting.

What do Cleveland, Dallas and Hearne, TX have in common?

Speaking of informants, since I've been harping on the topic this week, here's a case from out of state where a federal informant wrongfully accused innocent people of crimes in exchange for informant fees ("Informant admits to lying about drug deals," Cleveland Plain Dealer, Dec. 20). Though no officers have yet been charged, it sounds a lot from the news accounts like one or more undercover officers participated in the set up: Otherwise, you'd have to believe the undercover who purchased drugs from the informant's friends did not later recognize that a different person entirely was accused in court in every instance!

The case reminds me a great deal of the Dallas Sheetrock scandal, where a drug dealing informant packaged up minute amounts of cocaine and fake drugs to set up innocent people, as well as setting up at least one person with real drugs. These cases are always treated as isolated incidents, but soon after the Dallas scandal cropped up we saw the informant-driven debacle in Hearne, leading the Texas Legislature to require corroboration for informant testimony in undercover drug cases in 2001. (Personally I think corroboration should be required for all incentivized informant testimony, at a minimum.)

Bottom line: It happens often enough to make you wonder how many times informants set up innocent people when it's not discovered. Mendacious informants are the second leading cause of wrongful convictions behind erroneous eyewitness testimony. In the Cleveland case, the informant used his insider power to set up a woman who refused to date him as well as a competing drug dealer, among others, reports the Plain Dealer.

The Whisperers: 3/4 of Grits readers have known of drug possession crimes and didn't snitch

Here's another unscientific metric that makes me think most people have a very mixed opinion about the ethics of informants and "snitching": Perhaps unsurprisingly, more than 75% of respondents in last week's Grits readers poll said that, at some point, they have known about a drug possession crime committed by another person and failed to tell the authorities.

That's a big percentage who don't necessarily think, for whatever reason, that reporting a crime is always a good idea, that sometimes one's loyalty lies more with the "criminal" than with the state. I'm not surprised because the result confirms other recent data: A majority of Americans in a scientific poll said they wouldn't snitch on co-workers who embezzled or violated tax laws.

Via Wikipedia recently I ran across this webpage developed by a professor and students to evaluate public values concerning "snitching." Applied psychology students this year at a community college in Philadelphia have been surveying their peers using this instrument to better understand the values around snitching, and I'll be interested to see their results when they're published. The questions asked imply, as we see from these results, that people view "snitching" differently based on who is the offender, who is the victim, the nature of the offense, and whether the snitch received compensation in either treasure or reduced culpability for their own crimes.

Relatedly, driving home this morning from an early errand, I heard on NPR an interview with Professor Orlando Liges who authored a book called "The Whisperers," chronicling tales of how the use of informants in Soviet Russia influenced the culture and family life. Wrote Liges:

The Russian language has two words for a 'whisperer' — one for somebody who whispers out of fear of being overheard (shepchushchii), another for the person who informs or whispers behind people's backs to the authorities (sheptun). The distinction has its origins in the idiom of the Stalin years, when the whole of Soviet society was made up of whisperers of one sort or another.

The book appears to focus on the ways the informant culture degraded everyday human relations, and I wondered as I listened to the story how much of what the author describes would also apply to the use of informants in the American drug war, particularly in crime-ridden black neighborhoods our largest cities.

Don't get me wrong: the Stalinist purges outpaced the American drug war in brutality and especially their death count by many orders of magnitude, and I'm not comparing the two in that way. However, a study of the corrosive influence of an informant culture in any context may offer lessons for the sociological effects of tactic's use elsewhere on a wide scale. In an era when the network of law enforcement's drug informants, particularly in minority neighborhoods with high crime rates, rivals in volume that of the Stasi or the KGB under communist rule, I think an analysis of how that dynamic affects the individual family structure may illuminate dynamics that occur in more than a few American households in the here and now.

Prof. Alexandra Natapoff has estimated that one in 12 black men returning home from prison may be informants for police at any one time. In 2002, 41% of Texas' approximately 150,000 inmates were black (compared to 12% of the overall population), as were more than 24,000 of the 55,183 inmates Texas released from prison in 2001. If Natapoff's estimate is accurate, that means more than 2000 black men who left Texas prisons in 2001 became informants after they got out. And that's just for one state, in one year. Many more become informants much earlier in the process, before they're even arrested or before final conviction. While it's impossible to accurately estimate the number of police informants in the United States from publicly available data, these numbers imply that the total is not insignificant, arguably approaching a scale unseen in modern times outside of communist totalitarian states.

If you change out "fear of repression" with "fear of imprisonment for drugs," what Stalin-era families went through isn't much different than the dilemmas facing people accused of drug crimes and their families:

Millions of people lived like Antonina in a constant state of fear because their relatives had been repressed. How did they cope with that insecurity? What sort of balance could they strike between their natural feelings of injustice and alienation from the Soviet system and their need to find a place in it? What adjustments did they have to make to overcome the stigma of their 'spoilt biography' and become accepted as equal members of society?

The idea of a "spoilt" biography is especially interesting to me, as that phrase could easily be used to describe the effects of a felony record on drug offenders today. When a person's options are limited by their "spoilt biography," the petty incentives and harms that may be imposed by authorities at their whimsy can overwhelm ethical concerns for someone struggling to survive

LULAC estimated a couple of years ago that nearly one in eleven Texas adults have a felony conviction on their record, while nearly one in twenty are currently under control of the criminal justice system, either in prison, jail, on probation or parole.

The results of Grits reader poll tells me that the drug war today creates similar dynamics where average, law abiding people find themselves confronting conflicting motives and values over whether to supply police with information. Those 75% of the 211 blog readers who answered "Yes" to this poll question are themselves the drug war's version of "The Whisperers," people torn between duty to family, friends, community and the state, all making individual choices about when to cooperate on a case by case basis.

RELATED: Grits posts on values behind anti-snitching ethos -

• "Don't Snitch, Jack"
• Survey: Most US workers don't snitch
• Antipathy for snitching part of US culture, not just hip hop
• Snitching Undermines Justice Institutions
• What Would Jesus Do about uncorroborated snitch testimony?
  
• Snitching on Good Friday: Rethinking Judas
• Stop Snitching: God Said So
• No snitching code reinforced throughout culture, not just rappers
• A prison guard's aversion to snitches
• Schneier: Faulty war on terror tactics target 'unique, unorthodox, and unexpected'
• Alberto Gonzales takes 'stop snitching' code to new heights
• Snitching and the Drug War at TPM Cafe Book Club
  

SEE ALSO: On the topic of informants who continue to commit crimes while they're "cooperating" with the police, this story from Canada seems almost iconic: A Hells Angels member collected more than $180,000 and was promised a total of $650,000 in informant fees in a contract with police. But continued to commit crimes himself over several years throughout his service as an government snitch, despite admonitions by his handlers that he was violating agency policy.

First image via Confessions of an Insomniac.

Expert: Drug dogs wrong 48% of the time

Robert Guest at I Was the State posted an interview this week with an Austin-based consultant who reviews the performance of drug sniffing dogs. In his experience, most drug dogs are only accurate 52% of the time, meaning that 48% of the time dogs wrongfully give police probable cause for a search.

Why not just flip a coin to see if there's probable cause?

The consultant, Steven Nicely, believes that dog handling officers should be required to keep logs of their dogs' success rate and that dogs should be removed from service (or their handlers switched out, when that's the problem), when success rates fall below 80%. Nicely says that "most of the trainers and handlers I have met do not want to improve their dogs," and that officers should be prosecuted for official oppression when they don't keep records on drug dog success rates or ensure that dogs meet a minimum reliability threshold.

I knew that sniffer dogs don't perform well in crowds, but Nicely's assessment makes me wonder if sniffer dogs' use can be justified at all - I'm not sure a one in five rate of wrongful searches is acceptable, but surely a 48% error rate means the dogs' "expert" assessment constitutes little better than a guess.

End of the Week Roundup

Blogging here has been a little slow this week, so let's round up a few items I haven't had time to write about in more detail:

Just one more thing before you evacuate
Several readers sent notice of what has to be the most absurd idea I've heard from emergency planners since 9/11: Criminal background checks prior to an evacuation! Texas gave AT&T the contract to perform such checks, and evacuees will wear wristbands with RFIDs so they can be tracked and their past analyzed by officials. This is a solution looking for a problem, or maybe just an excuse to hand out a fat, unnecessary contract. When has there ever been an issue with sex offenders, e.g., assaulting someone during an evacuation on a bus?! I've never heard of such a thing. According to Wired, "what’s not explained is where all the sex-offenders and parolees end up? Their own facility? I’ll bet communities are just lining up to host that type of “special needs” shelter." No kidding! Does anybody remember when Houston tried to evacuate during Hurricane Rita and we wound up with cars running out of gas en masse on the highways out of town? We have no solution to THAT problem, but somehow this foolishness is going to make things better.

Death house chaplain now an abolitionist
Rev. Carroll Pickett witnessed dozens of executions as a Texas prison chaplain, including men he believed innocent when they were killed. Now he's a death penalty abolitionist. Read why.

UT law clinic intervenes in child murderer's case
Doc Berman points to this article in the National Law Journal about a South Carolina case being appealed to the US Supreme Court by a UT Austin law school clinic on behalf of a boy who killed his grandparents when he was twelve and received a thirty year sentence.

Harris County ships more inmates to Crawfishlandia
With voters having rejected a new jail in November, Harris County plans to outsource an additional 200 county jail inmates to a private firm in Louisiana, in addition to 400 local inmates already housed there, we learn from Texas Prison Bidness.

School holidays lead to spike in graffiti
The El Paso Times documents a steep rise in graffiti around town since school let out for the holidays. I'll bet that's a pretty predictable trend that probably holds true every year.

Clemens snitch still uncorroborated
A potential corroborating source for the Mitchell report's allegation that Roger Clemens used steriods turned out to be a bust: The "Grimsley affidavit" had long been rumored to include Clemens, which has been cited by some as possible corroboration for claims by an informant that the Cy Young winner used performance enhancing drugs. I'm willing to bet the Rocket's absence in this document won't make nearly the same national press as did his inclusion in the Mitchell report, confirming a common pattern: Informants' uncorroborated accusations are nearly always given more media play than later debunking arguments or retractions, meaning for those accused, often significant damage has already been done. Did McNamee name Clemens because he, too, had heard the Grimsley rumors and thought he was handing Sen. Mitchell somebody they already knew about? There's just no way to know.

Documentary: Children in Jail

See the trailer for a forthcoming documentary film on the T. Don Hutto Immigration Detention Facility in Williamson County, titled "Children in Jail":



RELATED: Austinite Greg Moses has a piece about the Hutto facility in Counterpunch.

Third time a charm? New TYC conservator appointed

The Governor's first choices turned him down, but the Texas Youth Commission finally has a new conservator, Richard Nedelkoff, the third to hold the position since the agency was placed under conservatorship last March.

Welcome aboard, sir, y buena suerte! You've got a tough job ahead of you, and you're going to need all the luck, and help, you can get.

On the upside, it's not like you've got big shoes to fill. The Governor inexplicably declared in an AP story announcing the decision ("Former Bush aide chosen to lead TYC," Dec. 19) that:

"Impeccable leadership by conservators of TYC has helped Texas make great strides in righting a very troubled agency," said Perry. "Richard's experience and expertise in juvenile and criminal justice make him the right person to finish the job at TYC."

Uh, excuse me? "Impeccable"? Do the the Governor's PR people own a dictionary? The last two conservators took a broken agency and transformed it into a crippled one. TYC has been so mismanaged since March that the New York Times editorialized Texas should "raze" the agency and "start over"! That ignominious record, I'd suggest, cannot be wiped away with a pat on the back and a press release declaring "Heckuva job, Brownie!"

On the other hand, other experts in the juvenile justice arena suggested that Nedelkoff may be, as UNLV Professor Bill Bush declared in Grits' comments, an:

Interesting choice, and extremely well qualified for the job. Someone who knows a lot about juvenile justice and probation, knows how to handle budgets, and, it appears, an experienced fundraiser who may be able to attract some much needed federal and private funds to TYC.

The place he was working until today, Eckerd Youth Alternatives, is pretty highly respected nonprofit in Florida, which ran highly touted youth programs, and its founders were opponents of the get tough philosophy.

"I view this as a real game-changer," concluded Bush, "and it will be interesting to see what he does. At least Gov Perry has given us someone who can be taken seriously." Similarly, Dr. Barry Krisberg, president of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency, told the Dallas News ("New conservator brings long-term outlook for Texas Youth Commission," Dec. 20) that "this is great news ... He's a tough-minded guy. He's played in a few bureaucracies."

It sounds like Nedelkoff may plan to revive the "Blue Ribbon Panel" report that the last conservator round-filed immediately upon receipt. He told the Austin Statesman ("Governor appoints juvenile justice veteran as youth agency conservator," Dec. 20) he intends:

to moderate and participate in a high-stakes political debate over whether the state's most serious youth offenders and delinquents can ever be properly dealt with in the current system of far-flung prisons.

The system, which has had the support of the Legislature for more than a decade before scandal broke in March, has been criticized as untenable by some criminal justice experts.

"It's an appropriate debate that needs to be held to discuss a variety of options," Nedelkoff said Wednesday after Gov. Rick Perry announced that he was appointing Nedelkoff to the position, effective immediately. "There is the ideal world of having as many of these kids in communities as close as possible to where their families live, and there is the reality of the current facilities."

He also sounds much less antagonistic toward the idea of rehabilitation than the current TYC crew. According to Austin's KXAN-TV:

With 28 years of criminal justice experience, Nedelkoff said his first step is to organize the agency in a way to help the kids, not just detain them.

"Making sure that a kid who leaves a TYC program or facility is better than when they walked in," Nedelkoff said.

A former director of the Governor's Criminal Justice Division under both Bush and Perry, Nedelkoff ran the Bureau of Justice Assistance under President Bush for a while, giving him a perhaps unique background to assist soliciting federal funds. Indeed, at the end of the day if everything turns out as well as it possibly could, that experience may be the most important asset Mr. Needelkoff brings to the table.

After leaving the Bush Administration, he was for a while President of the Riga Solutions Group, a management consulting firm for criminal justice and human services operations at government agencies - though I've seen the name around occasionally, I don't know anything about that firm.

In addition, though I couldn't figure out a time frame for this slot in his resume', according to a press release announcing Nedelkoff's hiring at Eckerd:

In Florida , he was the Executive Director of the Florida Network of Youth and Family Services, which is a statewide coalition of over 30 non-profit and governmental organizations that provide services to truant, runaway and troubled children in 100 sites across Florida . He was also appointed by the Florida Secretary of Juvenile Justice to manage the largest juvenile justice service district in Florida .

Since May, Nedelkoff has been "chief operating officer for Eckerd Youth Alternatives in Clearwater, Fla., a private not-for-profit organization that serves at-risk youths through residential and community-based programs in 10 states." Like Ed Owens before him, Nedelkoff considers "conservator" a part-time job; he will stay on at Florida-based Eckerd as COO and draw a paycheck while he is TYC conservator.

You have to wonder if this mess can actually be fixed on a part-time basis? Perhaps the last two, short-timers who held the conservator's slot whispered into Nedelkoff's ear, "Don't quit your day job." Certainly nobody's lasted too long in that gig so far.

One potential conflict of interest not reported in initial press accounts: Eckerd is one of the private contractors competing to take over TYC's role housing young offenders (10-13 year olds), and Nedelkoff personally was involved this summer in soliciting the Texas contract, which would have been the company's first in the state.

For that reason, I really question whether it's appropriate for Mr. Nedelkoff to stay on at Eckerd while he does this job unless the nonprofit intends to withdraw its bid to house Texas youth. If Eckerd is competing for contracts, at a minimum it creates an overwhelming appearance of conflict.

If I had to offer one piece of advice to the new conservator, it would be that the major lesson of the last two conservators is how severely they undervalued their employees. Jay Kimbrough came in and fired dozens of people who had nothing to do with the agency's scandals, then under Ed Owens TDCJ cronies filled high-paying management jobs and newly created bureaucratic positions, while front-line employees worked double shifts and suffered retaliation for complaining about unsafe work conditions. I've never seen nor heard of a government agency that's so alienated its staff, who are now leaving the agency in droves: In the last fiscal year, TYC lost half again as many old employees as it has hired new ones.

The best way to change the anti-employee culture in TYC management would be to appoint a competent, permanent commissioner as soon as possible next year. Acting executive director Dimitria Pope has been the enthusiastic instrument of misguided policies under Kimbrough and Owens, and within the agency has almost become like a brand name identified with the Governor's two failed conservator appointments. Find her a soft place to land (perhaps a job in another state with Eckerd?), then get somebody in that slot who's independent and competent with experience in juvenile justice, and you'll go a long way toward restoring confidence in the agency among its employees. From a management perspective, that must be your first concern.

RELATED RECENT GRITS POSTS:

• Every time a Christmas bell rings, an Angel gets its wings: Current TYC admin approach a "dead loser," say experts
• Governor: Please come back from the campaign trail and fix TYC!
• Looking for leadership: Meurer turns down TYC slot running agency mired in crisis
• When will the Governor replace TYC management?

Around the Blogs

I'm in Fort Worth today for a bit of museuming and a day off. Until I return, check out these blogs for good, recent posts on topics Grits regularly covers:

• Drug War Rant
• Corrections Sentencing
• Thinking Outside the Cage
• Texas Prison Bidness

Clemens informant shielded from prosecution: Do snitch agreements give incentives to lie or tell the truth?

Does a prosecutor's promise not to indict a snitch if they talk to authorities make an informant more or less likely to tell the truth?

On the one hand, the prosecution's option to indict if an informant gives false testimony supplies incentives for honesty under such circumstances. On the other hand, giving full immunity to criminal conspirators might make them feel free to just give the prosecutors whatever they want - specifically, accusations against their investigative target - in order to keep from going to prison.

Those are the questions raised in a New York Times piece today ("Trainer's steroid testing testimony followed deal with prosecutors," Dec. 18) about the informant who's accused Roger Clemens of steroid use, Brian McNamee.

It was a turning point in the exposure of the use of performance-enhancing drugs in baseball. McNamee went on to tell his story to the former Senator George J. Mitchell and his staff. Ward said the government, in effect, told McNamee, “We are not going to charge you if you cooperate.”

The proffer agreement, to some, appears to add credibility to McNamee’s testimony against Clemens because of the punishment he would face if he lied, several former prosecutors said Monday. Clemens’s lawyer declined comment Monday, but last week said his client was outraged at the accusations against him in the Mitchell report and that McNamee’s deal with the government gave him incentive to lie. ...

A proffer is a written agreement between a person and a prosecutor allowing a person to say what they know about possible illegal activity with the assurance it will not be used against them at trial. The government is free to follow investigative leads. The proffer agreement, colloquially known as a “queen for a day” letter, may lead to a written immunity, cooperation or plea bargain agreement, or it may stop there if the government does not plan to take the case further.

Daniel C. Richman, a professor at Columbia University Law School and a former federal prosecutor, said it was extraordinary to see prosecutors compel an individual to cooperate with a private third party like Mitchell.

That last observation strikes me as odd, too: US Attorneys are usually pretty tight-fisted with their investigative information. I'm not sure I can think of a similar situation where the Justice Department used an informant proffer to gather evidence for a third party like Major League Baseball. It's one thing to use that authority to pressure witnesses and pursue prosecutions, but surely another to use it merely to embarrass major league ballplayers with uncorroborated allegations?

McNamee denied Clemens' involvement with steroids in numerous interviews with investigators, said the Mitchell report, until he finally changed his testimony in exchange for a promise not to prosecute. As I've written previously, "Was McNamee telling the truth before prosecutors threatened him with prison, or after? One just can't tell from the report." Clemens' attorney maintains that "McNamee’s deal with the government gave him incentive to lie."

In other snitching related news, the informant who accused Michael Vick in dogfighting charges received a prison sentence 1/10 as long as the former Atlanta Falcons football star - 2 months compared to Vick's 23 month sentence. Prosecutors had suggested the informant receive only probation, but a federal judge said "no," declaring “You were as much an abuser of animals as any other defendant in this case.”

The judge's concerns mirror my own about many informant agreements: They often formally tolerate behavior by snitches that's at least as harmful as those whom they testify against. The judge is right: This fellow is as guilty as Michael Vick, perhaps more so, and I'm sure if prosecutors had offered Vick would have been willing to testify against him! But Vick was the target: Prosecutors wanted to make an example of him, so they didn't really care if this guy was punished. That might fulfill certain public relations goals, but it's not a strategy that particularly enhances public safety.

RELATED: See an interview with Ethan Brown about his new book, "Snitch," on AllHipHop.com.

Federal crack sentencing changes won't much affect Texas; changes to state drug laws still needed

The much-ballyhooed SCOTUS decision on crack sentencing disparities will have little effect overall in Texas, reports the Houston Chronicle ("Crack ruling of little effect locally," Dec. 17) because the vast majority of drug cases come through state courts:

Since July 2006, there have been just over 1,400 drug-related convictions by federal prosecutors in South Texas, according to data from the U.S. Department of Justice.

In contrast, the Harris County District Clerk's office said nearly 35,000 convictions for drug offenses were secured in county courts from Jan. 1, 2005, through Dec. 31, 2006, the most recent data available.

That's 35,000 convictions for drug offenses over two years in one Texas county, folks, albeit the county whose size and punitive judiciary exert an exceptional and negative influence on state policy. Legislative testimony earlier this year revealed that about 85% of felony drug cases in Houston - 12,000 out of 14,000 drug indictments in 2006 - were for possessing less than a gram of a controlled substance, or less powder than is in a Sweet-N-Low packet. The recent SCOTUS ruling won't affect any of those cases.

Indeed, the flood of low-level court cases in Houston led long-time State District Judge Michael McSpadden in recent years to implore the Legislature and Governor Perry to reduce drug possession sentences for small amounts, declaring that "These minor offenses are now overwhelming every felony docket, and the courts necessarily spend less time on the more important, violent crimes."

Not only that, every one of those convicted of a felony loses access to many employment and housing options that might otherwise help them pull themselves up by their own bootstraps.

Texas doesn't suffer statutory crack sentencing disparities like in the federal system, but that doesn't mean there's no problem with racial disparities in enforcing existing drug laws, most especially for black people. "Blacks make up 11 percent of the population of Texas," reported the Chronicle, "yet 46 percent of drug offenders serving time in the state's prisons are black, according to figures provided by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice."

The existence of racial disparities in Texas drug enforcement is obvious; the reasons for it, less so. We could debate here all day the reasons for racial disparities without reaching any firm conclusion. I don't know the answer to that complicated question.

But in an era when Texas prisons are completely full and severely understaffed, a bigger overall problem for law abiding citizens of all races, as Judge McSpadden indicates, is that the excessive focus of state and local policing, judicial, and incarceration resources on drug crimes reduces resources available to incarcerate more serious offenders, including violent criminals. That makes everyone less safe, including, disproportionately, black victims of violent crime.

Every time a Christmas bell rings, an Angel gets its wings: Current TYC admin approach a "dead loser," say experts

I've always been a sucker for the line in Frank Capra's Christmas classic, "It's a Wonderful Life," where at the end of the movie George's daughter looks up from under the decorated tree and exclaims to Jimmy Stewart, "Look, daddy! Teacher says, every time a bell rings, an Angel gets his wings."

So I suppose it's my affinity for that movie and the spirit of the season that made me hone in on TYC acting executive director Dimitria Pope's newest declaration about the youth under her care.

Today in the Dallas News, Emily Ramshaw identifies reform practices perhaps best modeled in Missouri ("In Missouri, 'unprisonment,'" Dec. 16), which significantly animated the recommendations of Texas' "Blue Ribbon Panel" on reforming the juvenile corrections system:

a juvenile justice model that national experts say has turned Missouri's state system from an abuse-ridden institutional nightmare to an industry gold standard for juvenile rehabilitation.

States across the country have taken note. Rarely a week goes by that Missouri officials aren't playing host to touring juvenile justice advocates or advising on proposed pilots in Louisiana, Washington, D.C., New Mexico or California.

But it is a model the Texas Youth Commission is not embracing.

For some Texas officials, it's just not the right time. For others, it's too dramatic a change and simply not punitive enough.

"The youth who are [incarcerated] in Texas, the court sent them here to restrict their behavior," said Dimitria Pope, TYC's acting executive director. "These are kids who have cut off their angel wings. This is a corrections environment."

Ms. Pope's comments to Ramshaw sum up exactly the problem that Governor Perry's "Blue Ribbon Panel" identified at TYC (see their report, pdf): The prevailing "punishment culture" dictated from the top management down instead of a focus on rehabilitation. A companion DMN article by Gregg Jones and Doug Swanson ("10 months after scandal, problems plague Texas Youth Commission," Dec. 16) quoted one of the national experts asked by Gov. Perry this spring for advice on TYC offering a much different assessment:

"The way they're going, a correctional model, is a dead loser," said Dr. Barry Krisberg, president of the National Council on Crime and Delinquency. "That's not going to get them anyplace. It's never gotten anyone anyplace, except court."

Dr. Krisberg was a member of the TYC-appointed task force whose report the agency rejected this year. The task force advocated, among other things, a "home-like environment" for inmates.

"The question is," he said, "is Texas going to tolerate being the embarrassment of the nation on this?"

So far, Dr. Krisberg, the answer is "yes." Perhaps when Governor Perry gets back from Iowa he'll have had time to think things over and reconsider.

Naturally, Ms. Pope disagrees, reports the News: "Dimitria Pope, TYC's acting executive director, was asked to gauge the agency's current progress. 'I'm going to say excellent,' she answered," adding "I say we have turned the ship."

On that last comment, this blogger, Ms. Pope, and Mr. Krisberg all agree: Krisberg, Grits, and other critics simply wish the ship hadn't been turned toward the nearest iceberg!

Finally, an unsigned staff editorial accompanying the Dallas News article asks point blank whether the agency could be mostly sunsetted out of existence ("California is dismantling its youth [prison] system; could Texas?"). In California, the "state will pay the counties to take the youths. For some counties, though, it's a burden that they're not yet prepared to deal with." (As an aside, I suggested in "Surviving the TYC Meltdown" that counties must prepare precisely to deal with that coming future burden.) Editorialized the Dallas News, "If the plan does work, advocates may be pushing Texas to go the same way. "California and Texas face the same problems," Dr. Krisberg said. "Texas is worse: more corruption, more abuse."

The only disagreement I'd have with the Dallas News' assessment is the use of the future conditional tense, "may be": Advocates have been pushing for Texas to go the same way for many months. That's the direction the Texas Legislature was led to believe would be pursued when the Blue Ribbon Panel was appointed and Missouri's experts were paraded before Texas legislative committees to talk about best practices.

It's only since the appointment of a cadre of career bureaucrats from the adult prison system to TYC that rehabilitation has become a dirty word. For Ms. Pope and the people with whom she surrounds herself, these are all "kids who have cut off their angel wings" - her job is to lock 'em up, they can't be rehabilitated, by this logic. Public safety be damned: Forget that nearly all will re-enter society in just a few years, apparently.

Their "angel wings" have been clipped: If even God has forsaken them, why should Dimitria Pope or the state of Texas care what happens to them? (Oh, and by the way, Merry Christmas! Ho, ho, ho.)

I find I'm seldom unhappy when Governor Perry leaves the state - like most politicians he tends to do less damage when he's away from his desk - but he couldn't give TYC employees a better Christmas present than to git back home to Texas and appoint a competent, new conservator. Even I'm becoming weary of the seemingly continuous drumbeat of bad news coming out of the Texas Youth Commission, but this attitude, what the Blue Ribbon Panel called TYC's punishment culture, simply invites controversy and litigation, as Krisberg and many others have repeatedly told them.

Nothing this agency does seems to work. Just yesterday the Dallas News reported that "TYC's drug treatment program produces graduates who are more likely to re-offend after release than addicted inmates who did not participate." Nearly every day some new disgrace seems to crop up damning the current administration and pointing toward some looming, radical transformation, for good or ill, in TYC's near future.

Since her appointment, Ms. Pope has blamed underlings, the prior administration, private contractors, "corrupt" and "illiterate" employees, "white women," and now the youth themselves for TYC's mismanagement. Perhaps over the holidays the acting executive director will find an opportunity to locate a mirror when she's looking for someone to blame.

Or at least carve out a couple of hours to watch "It's a Wonderful Life."

This week's reader poll: Would you snitch?

Having discussed "snitching" in several recent posts, this week's reader poll asks, simply, "In your personal experience, have you ever had knowledge of a drug possession crime by another person and failed to report it to authorities?" In other words, have you ever known someone else had drugs in their possession and failed to report the crime?

For those who answer "Yes," let me know in the comments what you believe is the relation between your motives for failing to report that person and the "stop snitching" meme which has received so much attention in the last couple of years.

Governor: Please come back from the campaign trail and fix TYC!

An Open Letter to Texas Governor Rick Perry:

Dear Governor,

I read that you are in Iowa speaking to crowds of 20-30 on behalf of Rudy Giuliani's presidential campaign bid. Perhaps you simply, strongly support him, or perhaps you hope to become his vice presidential nominee, as some have claimed. I won't presume to judge your motives.

But sir, we need you to get back home and fix the mess your appointees have made at the Texas Youth Commission. You need to find a new conservator, PRONTO!, and give them the authority to hire and fire agency leadership as they please, including getting rid of the current managers who've alienated staff and proven they're not up for the job.

If the new conservator is not empowered to replace the Executive Director, the General Counsel, or "Bronco" Billy Humphrey whose defiance needlessly dragged TYC into litigation over its pepper spray and use of force policy, then honestly you can't expect any self-respecting person to take that position.

In the past Ms. Pope has wrongly blamed TYC's problems on the influence of juvenile corrections experts, as though some rogue superintendent allegedly sodomizing youth out in West Texas or a guard allegedly coercing sex with girls in Brownwood stems from the application of juvenile justice best practices! Now, in the Dallas News, she blames TYC's failure to provide adequate treatment services on the influence of "white women" with Ph.D's.

Mr. Perry, exactly where would the Republican Party be without white women? Are you sure you want your state agency heads running around making such foolish statements while you're off chasing voters in packs of ten through the Iowa cornfields? Sir, please come home and find somebody ASAP to turn this sinking ship back toward harbor: It may already have wandered too far out to sea!

There are readers on Grits for Breakfast, many of them Youth Commission employees, who think all this is happening because you want it to, because acting executive director Dimitria Pope and the crew of TDCJ transplants she has brought in are intentionally running the agency into the ground so that you can farm the contracts out instead to private prison firms or other contractors that may contribute to your campaign.

My observation has been different: Even at the height of the media storm this spring - when it was first revealed youth had been sexually molested by staff at multiple units, and physically abused at all of them - you never appeared engaged, simply handing the problem over to your "fixer," Jay Kimbrough, whose unhappy legacy still hovers over the agency, and appointing a "Blue Ribbon Panel" whose recommendations your appointees ignored. I don't honestly think you've paid a lick of attention to TYC. But it's time for you to start. Jay Kimbrough has moved on, this time without "fixing" things, and the folks he's left in charge have no experience in juvenile corrections and just can't do the job, however good their intentions.

Thanks both to past, bipartisan neglect and because the gravity of its problems were understated by the new administration during the legislative session, the agency is not sufficiently funded to fulfill its mission given the number of kids who are housed there. That's the main reason for poor treatment results at TYC, not the influence of white women!

Current pay is not sufficient to hire staff in the remote locales where units are located, even if morale at the agency could be transformed under new leadership. In the last fiscal year, TYC lost half again as many guards as it hired, and youth recently had to be moved from a remote West Texas unit because understaffing became so severe.

It may be possible still to avoid a complete collapse at the agency, whose misdeeds are already drawing withering editorials from the New York Times, during the height of the general election season next year.

It would be much better to get home now and find somebody to fix this problem before it gets out of hand. It could even require a special session, before it's all said and done, as much as I hate to say it. TYC can't remain a backburner issue for you any longer, Governor Perry, and what's happening at that agency is a lot more important to Texans than whatever you had to say to twenty people at an Iowa house party.

You may be a lame duck, Governor, but at least until Mr. Giuliani offers you the Veep gig, you've got a few more years left on your contract still, and it's not time yet to start phoning it in. Please get back home and fix this train wreck at the Texas Youth Commission, or get on the phone and find somebody who will.

Sincerely,
Scott Henson
Grits for Breakfast

Snitching and the Drug War at the TPM Cafe Book Club

Over at the TPM Cafe Book Club this week they're debating the book "Snitch," and unsurprisingly the topic quickly turned to the use of snitches in the drug war. I'm going to try to review "Snitch" next week, but the discussion so far over at TPM itself is remarkable. Ethan Brown's book focuses primarily on snitching in the federal system, which has its own specific rules and vernacular. Writes Brown in his introductory TPM post:

Street hustlers and criminal defense attorneys call this process “The 5K Game.” Indeed, one criminal defense attorney dubbed a cooperator in a recent drug conspiracy case that a “graduate of 5K University.” Why? Because the cooperator cooperated in a federal drug case in Pennsylvania the early 1990s, received a huge sentencing reduction as a result and then hit the streets and committed murders for hire in New York during the late 1990s and beyond. When he became ensnared in a murder and drug conspiracy case in 2007, he entered into a cooperation deal yet again. This cooperator’s tale elicits yet another fatal flaw of the cooperator institution: cooperators are often much, much more dangerous than the defendants they have cooperated against. Unsurprisingly, residents in inner city neighborhoods where such dangerous cooperators roam free are not happy with the effects that the “5K Game” is having on their communities. Indeed, I believe this anger with the unregulated cooperator institution is at the very root of the much publicized, yet little understood “Stop Snitching” phenomenon. While antipathy towards informants and cooperators has existed for decades—former FBI director William Webster famously remarked that “there is a tradition against snitching in this country”—the evils of the “5K Game” and mandatory minimums for drug related offenses have caused an explosion in anti-law enforcement sentiment in recent years, particularly among minority populations who are most affected by such policies. As criminologist David Kennedy told The Atlantic Monthly in April of 2007, “this [mistrust of law enforcement] is the reward we have reaped for 20 years of profligate drug enforcement in these communities.”

Based on these comments and his reading of the book, drug policy prof and blogger Mark Kleiman views criticism of snitching, perhaps rightly, as a frontal attack on the drug war. As a drug war supporter, at the end of the day (he actually argues it was a public policy mistake to end alcohol prohibition), Kleiman thus encourages us to "Keep on Snitchin'." John McWhorter replied that the book made him think the entire war on drugs needed to be scrapped, causing Brown and Kleiman to digress over whether drug prohibition should be scrapped or retained.

Though Doc Berman and Alexandra Natapoff brought the discussion back down to earth by insisting that snitching plays out in many different contexts, it's entirely understandable that the debate over coercing criminals to testify in exchange for leniency would center at least in part on the drug war.

The best statistics I've ever seen on the aggregate use of snitching in drug law enforcement came from Texas drug task forces like the one in Tulia funded by the federal Byrne grant program. After management of Texas' task forces were taken over by the Texas Department of Public Safety, those units' aggregate reporting constituted the closest thing to hard numbers I've ever seen regarding (state) drug cases involving informant testimony. E.g., in this public policy report (pdf) published by ACLU of Texas in December 2002, I was able to calculate that "collectively requested $1,941,286 in funds for CIs in their 2002 grant applications." That's a lot of scratch paid to informants in a single year!

What's more, if you think none of the informants that money paid for accused innocent people, I'd encourage you to ask Regina Kelly, or at least listen to her interview with Radley Balko, about what happened to her and more than a dozen others at the hands of an addicted, mentally ill informant in Hearne, Texas. (Long-time readers may recall that posts from this blog got momentarily caught up in that court case.) The FBI in some instances will knowingly tolerate "serious violent felonies" by informants in order to retain a snitch's cover.

Not only do informants have incentives to lie, but task forces and other drug enforcers frequently have their own incentives to maximize their cases made thanks to asset forfeiture and don't always have many good reasons to closely examine snitch testimony favorable to their case. (I've been told that this is more frequently a problem with young prosecutors - long-timers tend to have been burned pretty often and may be less likely to rely solely on a snitch, the logic goes.)

Thankfully, Texas' Byrne task force system was abolished by Gov. Perry after a serious of remarkable and unfortunate scandals, and those funds have largely been shifted to give fat grants to border sheriffs to patrol the Rio Grande. However, Byrne task forces in other states still provide perhaps the best snapshot of informant use in drug cases. A quick Google search turned up this recent report on Byrne grant funded drug task forces in Massachussetts, which largely jibes with the numbers we saw in Texas (see p. 7):

During FFY 2005 and FFY 2006, the task forces reported 5,373 drug transactions. For the task forces that reported information on the types of drug transactions, purchases made by confidential informants were the most frequently reported type of drug transaction (45%), followed by purchases made by undercover officers (32%).

These 5,373 drug transactions a two-year period resulted in more than 3,000 arrests and more then 10,000 drug charges, according to the report - 95% of them state-level offenses. Applying the percentage of informant-related transactions to arrests, around 1,500 defendants were arrested in Massachussetts by drug task force officers during those two years based on informant testimony.

Most of these informants were themselves in a position where they could have been arrested for their own crimes, but were granted leniency if they would go scout out other people for drug task force officers to arrest. A smaller number (who often begin "working off" cases then continue snitching for pay), become professional paid snitches like Alex White in Atlanta, who considered working as a police informant his "job."

If lying snitches were the only problem, there might be little overall reason for concern. Substantive corroboration requirements and vigorous cross-examination might prevent most such injustices (though right now that doesn't always happen). But forcing witness "cooperation" as it's practiced today by threatening long prison sentences has larger corrosive effects on the justice system to which Doc Berman's appropriately returned the discussion - the degradation of civil rights and liberties for everyone, not just those caught up in drug cases:

Through many provisions of the Bill of Rights -- particularly the right to a jury trial and the rights of confrontation and counsel -- the Framers sought to limit the ability of govertments to convict and punish persons based on suspect accusations. But, as Ethan shows with many anecdotes, persons facing certain and severe sentencing consequences quickly realize that flinging allegations may be their only sentencing life preserver, and some of these allegations are sure to stick.

Relatedly, and integral to this story as well, is the weakening of the privilege against self-incrimination. By threatening even more severe and certain punishment after a trial conviction, the feds now can tell suspects that only through self-incrimination and cooperation is there any real hope of a mitigated sentencing term. In this context there is a particularly disturbing irony: those who are most guilty and would least benefit from traditional trial protections are necessarily going to admit guilt and point fingers in the hope of reducing their sentencing exposure; in turn, those who believe in their innocence end up subject to the full brunt of the certain and severe sentencing realities if convicted after a traditional trial.

Hear, hear. Go get 'em, Doc! And those aren't the only serious problems. Regular readers know I've long thought this dark underbelly of the justice system deserves more discussion. Those interested in more on the subject should definitely mosey on over to TPM Cafe's Book Club, and I'm looking forward to reading and reviewing "Snitch" myself in the near future.

Baseball's 'Mitchell Report' relies on uncorroborated, coerced informant testimony to accuse "Rocket" Roger Clemens

The nation may soon get an up-close and personal look at the pressure the criminal justice system places on witnesses/informants whose testimony is coerced through threat of prosecution thanks to the steroid investigation in Major League Baseball.

Texas baseball great and seven-time Cy Young award winner Roger Clemens was the biggest star and most often mentioned player named besides home-run king Barry Bonds in the "Mitchell Report." Clemens' lawyer said the pitcher's name was included based on uncorroborated testimony from a "troubled" informant, who himself faced federal charges and was seeking leniency from federal prosecutors. The informant apparently is "Brian McNamee, a former undercover police officer who worked with Clemens while he was the Toronto Blue Jays strength and conditioning coach and later with the Yankees. McNamee allegedly injected "the Rocket" with steroids he said Clemens obtained from some unknown source in 1998.

Having just looked through the massive 400+ page Mitchell Report (pdf) looking to ascertain McNamee's role, it really does seem as though his testimony is the only accusing voice against Roger Clemens. Unlike several other players named, the report provided no canceled checks or other documents linking Clemens. McNamee previously denied to the press and, at first, to investigators, that Clemens used steroids, then changed his story after he was repeatedly threatened with prison.

I saw no corroboration for McNamee's claims accusing Clemens in the report, just his testimony. Is that enough to destroy the pitcher's reputation, to taint a lifetime of athletic achievement? Can he now be dismissed as "just another cheat"? The allegations could be true, but repeatedly threatening a witness if he doesn't give investigators names makes me think his uncorroborated testimony shouldn't be enough to draw a firm conclusion. Certainly the witness has never faced cross-examination related to these claims.

Was McNamee telling the truth before prosecutors threatened him with prison, or after? One just can't tell from the report.

I've written before that under Mosaic Law, no one could be accused without testimony from two or three witnesses. By that standard, the allegations against Clemens would not withstand scrutiny, and I'll be quite surprised if it's enough to convince an MLB arbitrator that Clemens is definitively guilty.

It will likely be enough, though, to convict Clemens in the court of public opinion. As with Barry Bonds, for the Rocket this bell cannot be unrung - the public will forever associate the best major league pitcher I've ever seen with steroid use, whether or not he is really guilty.

Perhaps the Clemens case will spur a wider discussion about snitching and whether pressure on witnesses may coerce false testimony.

Meanwhile, I continue to wait for the day when we'll see a "Mitchell Report" aimed at steroid use among law enforcement. Why is it, I wonder, that a bunch of millionaire ballplayers merit this kind of massive, expensive investigation, but similar resources aren't aimed at preventing abuse and corruption among those charged with enforcing public safety?

Related Grits posts:

• Barry Bonds perjury indictment is pure USDOJ media ploy
• Why test Texas high school athletes for steroids but not police officers?

Related from the blogosphere at:

• Cafe Hayek
• Signal to Noise
• Talk Left
  
• Mack Avenue Tigers
• Below the Beltway
• Biased Look at the New York Yankees
• You Been Blinded
• Mets Today
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At one-year anniversary, Kaufman County public defender says focus on mentally ill

Via Robert Guest at I Was The State, I was pleased to discover an article from the Terrell Tribune ("Just a year old, Kaufman County PD's office serves as a model for others around state," Dec. 13) reflecting on the one-year anniversary of the Kaufman County public defender office. Guest points to a common theme in MSM reporting about public defender offices:

The news article seems to focus on the cost savings to the county. Much is made over the fact that the average cost per case is down 50% over 2005-2006. Is that a good thing? I know the county wants to save money but the government created the need for indigent defense. Instead of looking for the cheapest defense maybe we should rethink our incarceration epidemic.

Good point. We certainly don't see enough news coverage about that! Besides, providing counsel to defendants isn't nearly as costly to taxpayers as housing them in jails and prisons after they've been convicted.

Perhaps an even more important upside from the public defender office in Kaufman County from a public safety perspective may be the creation of a de facto advocate for mentally ill defendants who use up tremendous extra resources, using the local jail as a substitute for community based mental health treatment. (Regular readers know that Texas jails and prisons warehouse tens of thousands of mentally ill inmates.) Buried in the Tribune article public defender Andrew Jordan exudes:

“I am really excited to be working right now with the district attorney, the sheriff and the judges to create a special program for mentally ill clients,” Jordan said. “Sadly, over the last several years the Legislature has continued to under fund programs that care for people with recognized mental illnesses.”

According to Jordan, the result has been that the county jail has become the de facto care facility for citizens who, through no fault of their own, can't interact in society.

“In addition to being expensive and presenting a liability issue for Kaufman County, it's simply inhumane,” Jordan said. “Many of these individuals also qualify for my office's services so that area of the law is of particular importance to me. Hopefully in another year I can report that we have found a way to balance public safety against the absolute need to take a more compassionate approach to the mentally ill who enter our criminal justice system.”

Writes Guest, a former East Texas prosecutor, "That is absolutely true. The mentally ill are constantly arrested and shuffled through the criminal justice system." I'm not sure that Kaufman County would be directly addressing mental health issues among indigent defendants if they hadn't created a public defender office. A system of appointed private attorneys simply doesn't empower the kind of big-picture advocacy role that an institutional public defender can play on issues like criminalizing the mentally ill.

I'm all for defense lawyers making a living, but I'm increasingly convinced that many defendants receive poor representation for the price that counties are willing to pay per head, and that public defender offices provide more consistent quality of counsel, provide an important institutional counterweight to the elected DA, and obviously cost less overall to operate than paying private lawyers case by case.

"Meth Free Texas" backs drug treatment

I ran across a pro-drug treatment website from the Texas Panhandle titled Meth Free Texas, whose founder Charlene Cheek had a column earlier this year (9/26) in the Amarillo Globe News titled "Drug addiction a matter for medicine, not the courts." The Globe News piece uniquely frames the problem of criminalizing drug addiction as something out of science fiction:

In his novel about the imaginary land called Erewhon, Samuel Butler deals with the criminal code of the Erewhonians, which makes it a crime to have tuberculosis.

The very notion of punishing someone for a disease seems preposterous, yet we do it a thousand times a day, every day, in courtrooms across our nation.

A hard hitting analogy, huh? Cheek quotes a judge from Butler's novel offering justifications for criminalizing tuberculosis that can be heard in courtrooms and DA's press conferences every day across the country where drug prohibition is enforced:

"It is all very well to say that you came of unhealthy parents, and had a severe accident in your childhood which permanently undermined your constitution; excuses such as these are the ordinary refuge of the criminal; but they cannot for one moment be listened to by the ear of justice."

Meth Free Texas advocates for expanding drug treatment alternatives, particularly in the Texas Panhandle. On the MFT website, Cheek laments:

The sad truth is, there are no "Treament" facilities in the Texas Panhandle. Why is that? It certainly is not because we do not have a need.

In Lubbock, Texas, Managed Care is our nearest state funded facility. Even then, there is a very long waiting list and a limited number of "beds" available. Anyone that has tried to find help for a loved one, understands this frustration. Unless you have the monetary resources and are willing to spend some "big bucks" for treatment...indigent treatment is almost non-existent

Good work, Charlene, and good luck! Finding this site reminds me I need to check up to see how new treatment dollars allocated to the TX Department of Criminal Justice this year have been spent so far, and where.

Informant in Kathryn Johnston case sues Atlanta police; 'Snitch' discussed all week at TPM Cafe Book Club

A couple of national items on the subject of informants caught my eye today:

TPM Cafe Book Club Discussing 'Snitch'
First, via the ACLU informant blog:

Check out the play Ethan Brown’s new book Snitch is getting this week at the TPM Cafe Book Club. His book will be the featured subject, with special guests contributing to the conversation, throughout the week. Each post has a string of comments and the conversation is hot!

Besides Brown himself, contributors to the discussion so far include Grits favorite, Loyola (CA) law professor Alexandra Natapoff and Doc Berman from the Sentencing Law & Policy blog.

I got to chat a bit with Ethan in New Orleans last week and have just begun to crack open his book myself, but definitely check out these writers and Ethan's commentary on TPM in the meantime.

GA man says snitching was his job, sues over blown cover, lost wages
Second, in a bizarre turn of events, the informant in Atlanta who police tried to get to perjure himself to cover up police misconduct in the death of Kathryn Johnston has sued the agency because the event ended his ability to get informant work, which was apparently a significant part of his income. Steve Rose in the Atlanta Constitution Journal blog, View from a Cop, writes:

Alex White, professional snitch, is suing Atlanta Police.

First, let’s get this out of the way: Should he have told on those narcotics cops? Damn right! No doubt. They got what they deserved. There’s plenty of dope out there without having to fabricate facts and doing what they did. Kathryn Johnston should not have been shot and killed that night. Alex White should have told the truth and Alex White did what he should have done. Whether or not he did it because it was the right thing to do or doing to cover his fanny is a matter of discussion I’m sure. Maybe it was the lesser of two evils.

Alex White’s “credibility” as a confidential informant has been damaged due to the fact that his face was on television. Now he can’t get a job as a confidential informant. That’s horrible. Is there some sort of pie chart or graph showing the dramatic decline of confidential informants? Those guys need a union.

I have no idea what are the merits of Mr. White's lawsuit, and from the description in this police officer's blog post it sounds a little squirrelly. But one suspects the court pleadings will provide interesting reading, giving a lot more first-hand, nitty gritty detail than we usually get to see about how police handle snitches.

It's a safe bet that a guy who made most of his income as a police informant to the point where he sued over lost wages has a lot of stories to tell.

RELATED: See also Radley Balko's coverage of the Kathryn Johnston case.

As Bexar prepares to pilot needle exchange, Vancouver CA models the future of harm reduction

One of the more interesting presentations I saw last week in New Orleans at the Drug Policy Alliance conference centered on implementing ground-level harm reduction strategies, a topic that interests me especially as Bexar County prepares to launch Texas' first legal needle exchange operation in San Antonio. (Last I heard, Bexar officials hoped their county's needle exchange pilot program will begin early next year.)

Vancouver launched its needle exchange programs, said the city's Drug Policy Coordinator Donald MacPherson, because of a spike in overdose deaths in the late 1990s topping 200 per year at its height. Like similar programs elsewhere, Vancouver saw a decline in both overdoses and HIV transmissions among injection drug users after implementing needle exchange, and more addicts referred to treatment.

Observing these successes, MacPherson said, the city took the idea one step further, creating a "supervised injection site" where addicts can use illegal drugs in a clean environment under nurses' supervision. The facility teaches addicts how to protect themselves from disease transmission and encourages them to enter drug treatment. According to this brochure from the Vancouver program, called "insite," more than 7,000 people have used the facility to inject drugs since its inception.

people using insite are more likely to enter withdrawal management (detox) programs, and people using insite who also talk with addiction counselors are even more likely to enter detox. In fact, one in five regular visitors to insite began a detox program, showing that insite is a proven entry-point for the Downtown Eastside’s highest risk injection drug users. Detox programs are an important marker of addiction treatment system use, as most addiction treatment programs first require people to complete a detox program.

This notion may seem radical from where Texas sits now, but from all appearances the idea (which was imported from Switzerland) works surprisingly well at reducing both drug use and the harms associated with it. "It hasn’t been difficult to convince injection drug users that insite offers a safe, clean place to inject drugs," reports the insite brochure. Overall program results were analyzed in a study published in the Canadian Medical Association Journal, reported CBC News, finding that

the three-year-old Supervised Injection Site in the Downtown Eastside has been a great success.

The injection site, which drew about 5,000 users in its first year of operation, is a place where people can safely go to inject illegal drugs while being supervised by nurses.

"By all criteria, the Vancouver facility has both saved lives and contributed toward the decreased use of illicit drugs and the reduced spread of HIV infection and other blood-borne infections," Mark Wainberg, the director of the McGill University AIDS Centre in Montreal, wrote in a commentary published alongside the study.

The study — conducted by Dr. Evan Wood, a professor of epidemiology at the University of British Columbia, and his colleagues — found that drug users who visited the site at least once a week were more willing to enter detoxification programs.

These data make me optimistic about San Antonio's legislatively approved pilot program to exchange clean needles, which I see as an important first step toward implementing policies to reduce drug demand and the harms associated with addiction. Prison, by contrast, does neither of those things.

Vancouver's experience shows that not only do harm reduction principles work but they can be expanded beyond just needle swapping, and indeed may be the best available method for convincing serious addicts to seek treatment.

Vancouver's model demonstrates that its possible to scale up harm reduction strategies to demonstrably reduce deaths and addiction in a major city. Indeed, the idea of a safe injection site strikes me as the epitome of the harm reduction model - a much more civilized, humane, and rights respecting mentality than Texas' current "trail 'em, nail 'em, and jail 'em" approach. Every major Texas city has thousands of addicts who inject illegal drugs, and if all society offers them is prison, they're more likely to remain in the shadows.

In closing, I found these data interesting about the Vancouver supervised injection site, and was especially encouraged to see that 453 overdoses at the site occurred during a two year stretch with no fatalities. By contrast, that many overdoses out on the street or in some run-down shooting gallery would be much more likely to result in morbid outcomes. Here are some other statistics worthy of note for those interested the Vancouver supervised injection site:

Other research results show*:

• 7,278 unique individuals registered at Insite
• Women made up 26 per cent of clients
• Aboriginal people made up 18 per cent of clients
• Heroin was used in 41 per cent of injections
• Cocaine was used in 27 per cent of injections
• Morphine was used in 12 per cent of injections
• 453 overdoses resulted in no fatalities
• 4,084 referrals were made with 40 per cent of them made to addiction counselling
• Referral to withdrawal management: 368
• Referral to methadone maintenance: 2 per week
• Daily average visits: 607
• Average number of visits per month, per person: 11
• Busiest day: May 25, 2005 (933 visits in 18 hours)
• Number of nursing care interventions: 6,227
• Number of nursing interventions for abscess care: 2,055

*All totals or averages are for the two-year period from April 1, 2004 to March 31, 2006.

Perry TBCJ Appointee: My main qualification is that I know nothing about the subject

Gov. Perry just named three new members to the Texas Board of Criminal Justice, the governing board for the state prison system. Reports the Houston Chronicle:

A trial lawyer, a businessman and a social worker were appointed by Gov. Rick Perry on Monday to the nine-person Texas Board of Criminal Justice, which oversees the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

The appointees are: R. Terrell McCombs of San Antonio, who is vice president of McCombs Enterprises and a nephew of auto magnate B.J. "Red" McCombs; Eric Gambrell of Highland Park, who is a trial partner with the law firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer and Feld; and Janice Harris Lord of Arlington, who is a social worker and national consultant on crime victim issues.

McCombs touted his lack of criminal justice experience as a plus.

"I'm open-minded and business-minded. My hope is to make (the prison agency) run more efficiently."

Janice Harris Lord worked for many years for Mothers Against Drunk Driving (that should make Robert Guest happy) and told the Fort Worth Star Telegram she sees her role on the board as "to present the victims' perspective in criminal justice issues."

One wonders what experience Gambrell, a trial lawyer from Highland Park (an exclusive, wealthy enclave entirely surrounded by the City of Dallas) brings to the table? According to his biography at Akin Gump, he "represents businesses and high-net-worth individuals in aggressively prosecuting their claims and defending their interests." Not a lot of those in TDCJ.

Similarly, I couldn't help but be reminded of Perry's ill-suited appointments to run the Texas Youth Commission when I read that GOP superdonor "Red" McCombs' nephew was one of the picks, telling the Chronicle that the fact that he had no experience at all in corrections was his biggest asset. As at TYC, apparently the Governor sees having zero experience in the area for which they're responsible as a key requirement for his criminal justice appointees. Perhaps that's because people with any experience in the field tend to disagree with his policies.

TDCJ's problems don't stem from a lack of business-like efficiency. They arise from understaffing, low pay, poor working conditions, poor inmate health care, failure to fund programming to reduce recidivism, and a variety of other troubles that need leadership from professionals who know what they're doing.

These appointments suit the Governor's political interests much more than they do the agency's management and oversight needs in the face of looming challenges.

New TYC treatment program unveiled; completion by youth now optional

Thanks to Scott Medlock for pointing out to me that the Youth Commission came out with its new treatment program, CoNEXTions, while I was out of town last week on December 7. (Note to TYC PR department: Pearl Harbor Day? If I were y'all, I'd avoid for the time being all future symbolic references to sinking ships.)

The new TYC treatment program sounds a lot like the old "Resocialization" program, but with key differences designed to rush kids out the door on the back end much quicker than under the old guidelines:

CoNEXTions measures a youth’s progress in treatment in five stages: Orientation, Skills Development, Transition, Maintenance, and Community Reintegration. Once a youth completes a stage in his or her treatment, he or she cannot be demoted to a lower stage. Additionally, youth do not have to complete all five stages to be eligible for release from a TYC facility when they have met their minimum length of stay. Progression through and completion of the program can be accomplished as a condition of parole.

In the CoNEXTions model, reward and privileges are key motivating tools to encourage youth to progress in their rehabilitation. While all youth receive basic privileges as outlined in TYC policies, there are four additional privilege levels. As youth advance in their treatment, additional privileges are earned. Youth may earn or lose privilege levels based upon individual behavior but any lose of privilege will not affect a youth’s minimum length of stay in TYC.

So bottom line, kids no longer must complete this treatment program before they go home, and while privileges may be taken away, failure to participate fully in treatment will no longer be used to extend a youth's length of stay (a change already codified this summer in TYC's formal rules).

That's probably just fine for most youth, but for some of the more troubled kids at TYC the failure to more fully prepare them before re-entry to the free world could invite trouble, just like the failure to provide adequate sex offender and chemical dependency treatment may lead to youth re-entering society without resolving their core problems.

I can't find any additional info about the program on the agency website, but the press release declares that "CoNEXTions is expected to be implemented system wide in early 2008."

BoR: Help find good candidates for the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

With filing deadline approaching, Burnt Orange Report promotes a plea from Scott Cobb to help locate good candidates to run against incumbents on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.

Cobb points out that, "Candidates for the court are required to submit 50 signatures from each of Texas' 14 appellate districts, so even after a candidate is found, the blogging community should be ready to help the candidates get those signatures." Good point! I think the blogosphere could easily assist with accomplishing this task before the filing deadline. The question is, will there be horses in the race to support?

Full prisons boosting parole rates for nonviolent offenders

Now that Texas prisons are overflowing, we're going to see a lot more articles like this one in the Paris News over the next couple of years: "Inmates' early release worries prosecutors," Dec. 9. Reports Bill Hankins:

A new and serious issue relating to justice is developing across the state of Texas, and local district and county attorneys are being caught up in the state’s drive to clear prison beds.

To do so, parole officials are under pressure to release some convicted people early to have space for more violent offenders.

“Clearly, this is a money issue,” said Lamar District and County Attorney Gary Young. “The state has to find a way to pay for these folks to be housed in prisons. But justice is not being served when someone does eight years of a life sentence.”

Young was referring to a Lamar County case in which Clifton Blackshear was sentenced in 1999 to life in prison for the manufacture of a controlled substance.

He was released earlier this year and is back in Lamar County.

In another Lamar County case, Timothy Brett Taylor received a three-year sentence and began serving his time in April of this year.

Parole officials already have announced his release. He is back in Lamar County.

“We are back to where we were in the late eighties and early nineties,” Young said. “Prisons are full again and the parole system is working to free up beds.”

“It is sad when defendants are getting their first parole consideration when they are still in our county jail awaiting transfer to the actual prison,” Young said .

That has happened in some Lamar County cases in which an inmate received his parole while still in Lamar County Jail.

“There are people who know how to work the system that are agreeing to go to prison for what appears to be decent five or six-year sentences who know they will be out in less than a year,” Young said . “Many of them would rather do that than be on probation for two or three years.”

Assistant County Attor-ney Bill Harris said he was amazed at the defendant’s reaction in a recent burglary of a habitation case.

“I was prepared to offer him a lengthy probation, no jail time, but he told me he just wanted a sentence,” Harris said. “He knows that on non-violent offenses, inmates are doing about a month and a half for each year of their sentence. He knows he is going to be out of prison in less than a year, so why would he want to be on probation six or seven years, when he can go to prison and get it over with in just months.”

The article spins this story in a very narrow fashion, and exhibits many assumptions common to MSM crime coverage that I find misleading if not outright fallacious. From a systems perspective, though, the cases described don't surprise me at all. Texas simply cannot sustain the rate of incarceration growth our state has experienced over the last thirty years.

As I've argued ad nauseum, what's really happening here is that pure pragmatism is forcing the parole board to make decisions that the state Legislature does not have the courage to impose: Shortening sentences for nonviolent offenders to free up prison space for more dangerous folks. The fellow whose life sentence turned out to run 8 years was imprisoned for drug manufacturing (probably meth). If you had to make the choice whether to house a drug addict for life or a rapist, who would you choose?

Is it ever appropriate to give life sentences for nonviolent offenses? Texas' law frequently allows it, but it makes little sense to me - not when there's not enough space to house much more serious offenders.

In addition, the story implies that the Legislature could just throw more money at the problem and solve it, but that's not true, either. Regular readers know that Texas prisons are already understaffed, and though voters approved new debt to build three more, even if they're built it's unlikely the state can find enough employees to staff them. There is a pragmatic limit to how much prisons can safely expand without sufficient staffing, and Texas already reached that threshold several years back.

The article hints at another big problem that the state only this year has begun to address: Texas' probation system is broken, and long probation terms with minimalist supervision maximize the number of low-risk offenders revoked to prison. Probation terms are so long and have become so onerous and expensive that many offenders would quite rationally rather serve an incarceration stint than agree to long, draconian supervision terms.

The Paris News says "“We are back to where we were in the late eighties and early nineties," but that's not quite true. In the late '80s the prison system actually had to let some violent offenders loose early to free up prison space. Today, more than half of Texas prisoners are nonviolent offenders, and they're mostly the ones the parole board has been releasing sooner when they become eligible.

Prosecutors like to spin Texas' overincarceration crisis to say more prisons are the answer, but to reach that conclusion they usually focus on the wrong questions, as did critics quoted in this story.

I predict similar articles will crop up more often in the coming years, but reporters writing them should ask more and different questions of a broader array of sources to get the context right: Why are low-level offenders receiving decades-long sentences, and does that help or harm public safety? How understaffed are current prison units? Where would guards come from to staff new prisons? How much would new prisons cost taxpayers in the long haul? What other priorities (roads, education, healthcare) must be short-changed to spend more money on prisons? Why aren't more drug offenders sentenced to treatment instead of incarceration?

The Lamar County DA says justice is not served when a defendant sentence to life serves only eight years, but arguably justice is not served by assigning such a draconian punishment to someone whose offense was nonviolent and addiction-driven. Texas' overincarceration crisis will push these justice defining issues to the forefront over the next few years, and its high time to have a collective conversation about whether it's desirable or even possible for the state to continue along its current path.

Revolving Door Between TDCJ and Private Prison Firm: Give a Contract, Get a Cushy Job

Perhaps it's all perfectly legal, but a recent hire by the Geo Group, a large private prison firm formerly known as "Wackenhut," raises questions, at least, about an appearance of serious conflicts of interest:

Former Texas Department of Criminal Justice chief Gary Johnson approved contracts to lease prisons from the Geo private prison group that he will now manage in his new position as Geo regional director, reports the Statesman's Mike Ward in a blog entry, via Texas Prison Bidness.

Johnson was executive director of TDCJ from 2001 through December 2004, when he retired after 27 years service. As E.D., he presided over draconian budget cuts from which the agency still has not recovered. "In 2003, TDCJ was forced to reduce its budget by approximately $240 million dollars and eliminate more than 1,700 positions during the fiscal year 2004-2005 cycle." Yet despite these cuts, the agency could still find money to lease new private prison space.

Pretty cozy, huh? Give Geo fat public contracts at the expense of public employees, then retire and get rewarded with a cushy administrative gig. Gives you a real warm fuzzy feeling about how well TDCJ exercises oversight over private prison contracts, doesn't it?

Dallas News: All claims of terrorist infiltration of border so far have been bogus

When it comes to claims that the US-Mexico border allows terrorists through to harm America, they all have one thing in common: So far, none of them are true, reports David McLemore at the Dallas News ("Tales of terrorists breaching border overblown, so far," Dec. 11), confirming prior assessments of similar public statements on this blog.

Said Texas homeland security director Steve McCraw to McLemore, "These reports get out into the public and get magnified quickly before the facts can be confirmed, and that's a shame." Well, gee, sir, I've got a solution for you: Stop making unsubstantiated claims whenever it suits your political aims!

See prior, related Grits posts:

• Hyping Fear: As Texas Congressmen tell big fat lies, where are media factcheckers?
• Texas homeland security chief hyping phony border threats
• Congressman made up Al Qaeda incident at Texas border
• I wish the truth would hurry up and tie its shoes
• Even more hyped border threats
• Governor's ad avoids debating real border problems

Early identification, treatment of dyslexics would reduce crime, boost economy

I've argued before that expanding emphasis in public schools on combating dyslexia would reduce crime. Now we can also argue that it would be good for the economy!

Dyslexics make up 10% of Texas children who are tested but 30% of Texas prison inmates, and illiteracy is a key indicator increasing the likelihood of imprisonment. Now new research indicates that in addition to overpopulating the criminal justice system, dyslexics also overpopulate another, more socially acceptable class of people: Entrepreneurs! Who'da thought? According to the New York Times ("Tracing business acumen to dyslexia," Dec. 6):

It has long been known that dyslexics are drawn to running their own businesses, where they can get around their weaknesses in reading and writing and play on their strengths. But a new study of entrepreneurs in the United States suggests that dyslexia is much more common among small-business owners than even the experts had thought.

The report, compiled by Julie Logan, a professor of entrepreneurship at the Cass Business School in London, found that more than a third of the entrepreneurs she had surveyed — 35 percent — identified themselves as dyslexic. The study also concluded that dyslexics were more likely than nondyslexics to delegate authority, to excel in oral communication and problem solving and were twice as likely to own two or more businesses.

“We found that dyslexics who succeed had overcome an awful lot in their lives by developing compensatory skills,” Professor Logan said in an interview. “If you tell your friends and acquaintances that you plan to start a business, you’ll hear over and over, ‘It won’t work. It can’t be done.’ But dyslexics are extraordinarily creative about maneuvering their way around problems.”

The study was based on a survey of 139 business owners in a wide range of fields across the United States. Professor Logan called the number who said they were dyslexic “staggering,” and said it was significantly higher than the 20 percent of British entrepreneurs who said they were dyslexic in a poll she conducted in 2001.

She attributed the greater share in the United States to earlier and more effective intervention by American schools to help dyslexic students deal with their learning problems. Approximately 10 percent of Americans are believed to have dyslexia, experts say.

One reason that dyslexics are drawn to entrepreneurship, Professor Logan said, is that strategies they have used since childhood to offset their weaknesses in written communication and organizational ability — identifying trustworthy people and handing over major responsibilities to them — can be applied to businesses.

“The willingness to delegate authority gives them a significant advantage over nondyslexic entrepreneurs, who tend to view their business as their baby and like to be in total control,” she said.

When I proposed a "Real Public Safety Agenda for Texas," prior to the 80th Texas Legislature, one of the principal new investments called for was to "Train 10,000 new teachers to perform individual training with dyslexic children, and increase funding for early testing for dyslexia."

I considered reducing crime a powerful enough incentive by itself to focus new resources toward treating dyslexia, but this new research finding that dyslexics who receive that extra support more frequently become creative, productive entrepreneurs means that the state is wasting valuable human capital, leaving extra, home-grown economic growth on the table by channeling dyslexics more commonly into prison than into creating small businesses.

Reading this new data, I couldn't help but think of a recent program I heard about at a Texas Public Policy Foundation forum in Austin a few weeks back, described thusly on their website:

November 07, 2007
Policy Primer: Jobs After Jail - Enhancing the Employment of Ex-Offenders (audio file)

Approximately 30 percent of Texas adults have a criminal conviction. Ex-offenders who are employed are three-times less likely to re-offend and much more likely to pay restitution and child support. However, one reason some are unemployed or underemployed are state regulations that can be used to exclude them from over 150 different licensed occupations. Also, hiring ex-offenders can expose an employer to civil liability, and there is a lack of vocational opportunities in state and local lockups that correspond to available jobs in the economy.

An impressive program described at that forum - the Prison Entrepreneurship Program (PEP) - trains inmates to become legitimate entrepreneurs when they leave prison. Several of their program's graduates so far have become significant success stories to tell.

I wonder what's the relationship if any of inmates with dyslexia and participation in PEP?

These are just initial thoughts from disparate research that perhaps raise more questions than answers. Would dyslexics who turn to crime be more likely to launch their own legitimate business enterprises if they received specialized education support, plus training that prepares them with entrepreneurial skills they'll likely need to cope with their disabilities throughout their lives? We can't know for sure from these data, but the possibilities are intriguing:

Dyslexics make up 10% of Texans, but 30% of prisoners and up to 35% of entrepreneurs! Whatever else these data say, they tell me that what happens with dyslexic kids has a profound impact on the future of both the criminal justice system and the economy. Perhaps Texas policymakers should begin to pay closer attention to them.

No break for bad TYC news

Kiss the evening sky and say bye, bye bye,
Tomorrow knows no sorrow like today,
And should it come to pass the day's no better than the last,
We'll live it best we can, anyway.

- Terry Hendrix, "Hey Now," The Art of Removing Wallpaper

As is usual, the drumbeat of bad news about the Texas Youth Commission failed to cease just because of I was away from the blog for a few days.

Civil lawsuit filed against GEO Group for alleged Coke County abuses
The Brooklyn-based blog JuvieNation brings the word that:

Seven inmates who were held at the Coke County Juvenile Justice Center have filed a federal civil rights suit against the GEO Group, the AP reports. The Texas Youth Commission facility, which was handed over to the private prison behemoth GEO Group in 2003, was abruptly shut down in October after a surprise TYC audit found “unsafe conditions” at the facility. ...

According to the AP, the inmates allege “they were mentally, physically and sexually abused in 2006 and early 2007 by David Andrew Lewis, 24, who worked the night shift until he was fired in March.” Lewis, a registered sex offender, was dismissed after TYC officials learned he was on the public sex offender registry. Lewis claims he divulged his sex offender status when he applied for the position. A GEO spokesman had no comment.

See more from Texas Prison Bidness.

Mentally ill inmate molested by guard, but no clemency yet
Howard Witt at the Chicago Tribune brings news that a former JCO already accused of sexually molesting several youth has been indicted for allegedly assaulting a mentally disturbed girl at the Ron Jackson unit in Brownwood. However, "youth prison authorities have declined to grant clemency to the girl." The Paris News has more, including news that the Governor's office is reconsidering the case as of Friday. This girl was the same young arsonist whose story was paired by Witt in a feature last spring with Shaquanda Cotton, who was released after a much-celebrated media circus.

Though originally the story was framed to portray Cotton receiving a comparatively raw deal, possibly based on race, as Witt has followed up the story has shifted, demonstrating that the travails of the mentally ill in Texas youth prisons create their own types of discrimination and their own horror stories.

The question of clemency for this one girl, however compelling her individual case, symbolizes the plight of many more mentally ill youth in TYC, just like the adult prison system has become the de facto treatment of last resort (and sometimes first resort) for many mentally ill Texans. Hopefully this case will inspire not just new attention to the needs of this one teenager, but to the staggering human and monetary costs of underinvesting in mental health treatment before people wind up in prison. Particularly in the wake of draconian budget cuts in 2003, but really throughout its history, Texas has failed to provide sufficient mental health treatment in community settings, and instead simply criminalizes anti-social behaviors, somehow expecting punishment to send a rational message to an irrational mind.

NY Times: Feds should sue over "Spray First" force policy
Meanwhile, the New York Times published yet another staff editorial last week ("Harsh Treatment of Youthful Offenders," Dec. 8) criticizing TYC's proposed "Spray First" policy requiring officers to use pepper spray before manual restraints. The editorial follows a recent public hearing and a public policy report criticizing the practice from the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition. The Times suggested that if TYC enacts the new policy, the US Department of Justice should sue the agency and take matters into their own hands:

In a worrying sign that the right lessons have not been learned, the commission’s new leadership is proposing a rule change so it can make more frequent use of pepper spray against unruly detainees. Juvenile justice experts, the federal courts and the Justice Department have all condemned excessive use of pepper spray.

Pepper spray is a caustic substance that produces burning and respiratory distress and can also cause nerve damage. In addition to being inhumane, the policy is counterproductive. It undermines institutional discipline, further angering and alienating young detainees.

The agency claims that the new policy is necessary to help understaffed institutions maintain control. It also insists that the spray will be judiciously used. In a lawsuit filed earlier this year, however, Texas child welfare advocates charged that the system was using pepper spray excessively, including on mentally ill detainees who were supposed to be exempted. Among the cases cited in court documents was that of a mentally ill 15-year-old who was said to have been sprayed three times while attempting to harm himself.

These accounts are reminiscent of the heart-wrenching cases in Los Angeles County, Calif., where authorities were called to account for pepper-spraying pregnant girls, suicidal youth and detainees whom doctors had ordered exempted because of respiratory problems. Faced with the threat of a federal lawsuit, Los Angeles County reformed its disciplinary practices. According to a recent analysis by the Washington-based Center for Children’s Law and Policy, the county achieved its improvements by retraining its staff, improving mental health services and embracing less violent systems of crisis management.

Texas needs to follow the same course. If it will not, the Justice Department should ensure that it does.

Reader Poll on Future of TYC
At this point, given that TYC continues to insist on ignoring expert advice and plowing ahead with its pepper spray policy, not to mention driving away its core staff in droves, a DoJ lawsuit seems like a likely possible outcome; in fact, maybe it should have been one of the options on last week's reader poll, which posed the question:

Which will happen first at the Texas Youth Commission?

• The National Guard or state police are called in to guard TYC facilities because they're shortstaffed (9%)
• Acting Executive Director Dimitria Pope is relieved of her position (22%)
• A new conservator is appointed (11%)
• TYC announces more facility closures (34%)
• The 81st (2009) Texas Legislature convenes (22%)

The third of readers (150 voted, in addition to 106 comments on the post posing the question so far) who thought that more facility closures will be announced are probably betting with the odds - with staffing so low and the agency underbudgeted for the biennium, it's hard to imagine how the trends that would force further downsizing can be reversed without an infusion of both money and more importantly competent leadership. At the moment, neither appear to be forthcoming.

As for replacing Acting Executive Director Dimitria Pope, the 22% who thought she'd be removed next probably were engaging in wishful thinking. Supposedly candidates being asked to become TYC's next "conservator" have been told that Ms. Pope is a mandatory part of the package, a requirement that convinced a couple of good possible choices to turn the Governor down for the job.

Most readers don't appear to think that staffing problems would come to a head - only 9% thought outside agencies would have to be called in for emergency staffing of youth prisons. But readers were similarly pessimistic that a new conservator would be found who is willing to take the thankless job, with only 11% thinking a new conservator is coming soon, despite evidence the Guv's folks are prowling for candidates.

That pessimism may be well-founded if it's true the TDCJ transplants currently running TYC have been declared untouchable. Who would take the job under the condition that the people who've nearly wrecked the place and alienated most of their staff all must keep their jobs?

In any event, 22% of readers voted with me on this one, that the 81st Legislature occurs before any of those things. In other words, what will happen? Probably the worst possible outcome: Nothing. Things will just stay really screwed up, the people in charge won't be held accountable, legislators running for re-election will tell their constituents the agency is "fixed," and 2009 will roll around with little having changed from the status quo.

I hate to encourage such pessimism, but I fear state leaders have missed their most important opportunity to reform the agency, and that the malaise that's set in may become semi-permanent. After all, it's easier to do nothing than make any of the bold moves that would actually be required to pull the agency out of this quagmire.

Should the DoJ get involved? Probably. At this point I don't think they could mess things up any worse.

Reflections on drug policy reform conference in NOLA

Thanks to Bill Piper from the Drug Policy Alliance for making a scholarship available so I could attend the International Drug Policy Reform conference in New Orleans this week. Though I took my laptop, I'm afraid once I got there I was in more of a socializing than a blogging mood. With the exception of a couple of the breakout sessions, for me anyway, the event was more of a networking opportunity and less informative than frankly I might have hoped. But then, DPA's greatest importance over the last few years, to my mind, has been less as a source of information than as a professional environment where different constituencies that support drug policy reform, for a variety for different reasons, backing a variety of different solutions, can all cross-pollinate, a point made by DPA's Ethan Nadelman (pictured at left with Graham Boyd of the national ACLU Drug Law Reform Project) in his opening address. There were quite a few Texans at the event, but with a single exception (Hi, Debbie!) I didn't see much of them.

Though it's been quite a few years since I've made the trek, I love the drive to New Orleans from Texas. After you get past Houston, even well before you get to the Sabine River marking the border with Louisiana, it's easy to forget how much water gushes down toward the Gulf of Mexico in the stretch of country between Harris County and Baton Rouge, where you finally cross the Mississippi. I took a book on CD - Bob Dylan's autobiography read by Sean Penn (a beautifully and vividly written piece of prose, but with disappointingly vapid content) - and enjoyed the scenic if uneventful drive by myself, about nine hours each direction.

Though I didn't do any blogging from N'awlins, Pete Guither over at Drug War Rant, with whom I was pleased to get to finally meet and shake hands after reading his online work for years, has been writing like a fiend from the event, publishing notes from darn near everything he attended, so I'd refer you to his coverage for a substantive overview of the conference. Here's a pic of Pete and his conference entries so far:

• Thursday Morning - (Opening Plenary)
• Thursday Noon - (Costa)
• Thursday Evening - (Dream About a Reefer)
• Friday morning - (Building Momentum in Congress)
• Friday afternoon - (Elevator Arguments and other things)
• New Orleans Food Blogging
• Saturday Morning - (Europe)
• Saturday Noon - (Stop Snitching)
• Saturday Afternoon - (Beyond Prohibition)
• Closing Plenary

Pete was one of the earliest and most prolific drug war bloggers who was already well established by the time I launched Grits, so it was great to to finally put a bushy, red-bearded face to the name, and actually learn how to correctly pronounce it (G-eye-ther). He was one of many folks I got to visit there who made the trip a fun, much needed diversion. I was especially pleased to get to spend time with my pals Katy Schwartzmann and especially Tory Pegram from the Lousiana ACLU affiliate (pictured at left), who made sure I got to visit a bit outside the French Quarter where the conference was held. As with Tory and Katy, I've got a lot of admiration for Nsombi Lambright, the E.D. of the Mississippi ACLU, pictured here with one of her staffers. Those three (among many others, of course - these are just folks who I got to catch up with while I was in NOLA) really stepped up after Hurricane Katrina to earn reputations as some of the most effective young civil liberties advocates in the South.

I was also pleased meet and visit with a local NOLA community activist, Norris Henderson, who appears to be doing important work with a group called Safe Streets, Strong Communities. Though this blog focuses on crime and punishment issues in Texas, you could spend a lifetime writing about what's wrong with the justice system in our neighbor to the East. Couple existing, well-documented jail and police problems with the mass destruction of records and evidence in the floodwaters, combined with the decline in tax base to support adequate police, prosecution and especially public defender services. Mix in a corruption-riddled state and local governments, spice with indifferent federal support, and you get an ill-flavored gumbo of a criminal justice system, only made nastier after the floodwalls broke. Hearing war stories from folks in NOLA about police misconduct and prison conditions reminded me that, despite Texas' reputation, there are quite a few states who would look just as bad underneath the intense daily spotlight I try to put on Texas' system. Louisiana, California, Illinois, Alabama, Georgia, Florida - many of the critiques of Texas justice could just as easily be made in other arenas, and Louisiana is a prime candidate.

I met several folks who I only ever knew online, including Jeannette Irwin who blogs over at the Drug Policy Alliance's D'Alliance blog (which has also been featuring updates from the conference, though less prolifically than Pete). David Borden of DRCNet (at right) is another fellow I got to meet in person whose web work I've read and linked to throughout Grits' three-year existence. His weekly compilation of drug-related law enforcement corruption frequently includes Texas cases that relate to topics covered on this blog. Loretta Nall from Alabama (pictured with yours truly at left) is somebody else I've been in contact with for several years online but had never met face to face.

Having just blogged about Jason Zeidenberg's latest research project from the Justice Policy Institute, it was good to run into him (pictured at left). He encouraged me to dig deeper into the data in JPI's latest report, declaring there were a lot more Texas-specfic goodies there for a student of drug policy.

It was great to see all these folks and many more at the conference, but part of the reason I'd prefer not to give a blow by blow is that some of what I heard was disheartening. As many people out there as are doing great work on drug policy, more than at any time in my adult lifetime, the movement still too often suffers from an odd tendency to embrace its fringe status rather than seriously try to change it. That's not universally true, by a longshot, and one of the reasons I have a lot of respect for DPA is that the group actually tries to win instead of reveling in a sense of moral superiority. They're out there trying to convince opponents and fence-sitters from across the ideological spectrum to support smarter, less expensive policies, a tactic that to me should be no-brainer. I often think that drug policy reformers frequently lose because they go into every battle assuming they'll lose, and more than a few of the folks I spoke to in New Orleans reinforced that sense.

Meanwhile, a lot of the professional class - public health officials, progressive DAs like Craig Watkins in Dallas, more than a few judges from both parties, and many from the defense bar - are pursuing ideas like drug courts and an array of other drug policy reforms. Those hands-on interests were underrepresented in a conference filled with breakout sessions on anti-racist organizing and drug policy reformers against the middle-east war. A disappointing breakout session on "snitching" treated as a great revelation that "snitch" is not a synonym for "witness," but offered no solutions to the problem, only complaints. How you could have such a panel without including any of the folks working on the issue from the Innocence Project angles who actually propose reforms to fix the problem is beyond me.

In any event, though I enjoyed visiting with a lot of folks and meeting some new people - I even enjoyed a few days' break from the blog - it was good to get home to see the missus and the dogs. Though I've enjoyed a few days respite, I'll get back into regular blogging habits, perhaps, beginning tomorrow.

UPDATE: See more on the conference from Thinking Outside the Cage, the Transform blog, and from Ethan Brown, whose new book "Snitch" I'll be reviewing on Grits soon. I'd hoped to get an interview with Ethan, but had an equipment malfunction then scheduling conflicts - his work was definitely the highlight of the panel on informant abuses, along with Regina Kelly who was a central victim of a mendacious informant in the scandal in Hearne, TX. I'm looking forward to reading Brown's new book.

I'm outta here: Off to NOLA

I'm out of here. If you're going to be at the Drug Policy Reform conference in NOLA and would like to say "howdy," shoot me an email at gritsforbreakfast[at]gmail.com. I always love to meet readers. Otherwise, expect light blogging from the conference the rest of the week before I return on Sunday.

Massive racial disparities documented in Texas counties incarceration rates for drug offenses

Doc Berman points to a new study from the Justice Policy Institute documenting racial disparities in incarceration trends for drug crimes, and the study contains plenty of localized county-level fact sheets that have already begun to result in localized MSM stories in various media outlets, though none yet in Texas.

Not only is the level of racial disaparity in drug-related incarceration by county surprising, but also the RANGE of variation between counties in how much more often black folks are arrested for drug offenses. Here's a chart excerpted from JPI data for Texas counties with the highest ratio of drug-related incarcerations per 100,000 by county.


Reporters especially should review this useful map for localized fact sheets for Texas Counties with populations above 250,000. In Travis County, for example, the drug imprisonment rate for white folks was less than 10 per 100,000, while just over 302 black folks per 100,000 were imprisoned for drugs. (The overall drug imprisonment rate was 49 per 100,000, but obviously within that stat tremendous disparities exist.

So Travis County sent 31 times as many black folks as white folks to prison for drugs, by comparison Dallas, with a much larger black population, the ratio was 9-1. In Harris and Bexar Counties, both, the ratio was 19-1.

These are fascinating data and I hope Texas reporters pick up on these localized data to launch local discussions over whether these results reflect the outcomes they think are best for the overall health of their cities and counties.

Congrats to JPI's Jason Zeidenberg on an outstanding (and provocative) research project.

New York Times focuses on "law of parties" that leads to frequent unjust outcomes at the ignominious Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

Evan Smith from Texas Monthly forwarded me a link to this NY Times article, which Doc Berman also points to, about a Florida man convicted of murder under the "law of parties" for providing a car for a burglary that ended in homicide. Smith asked if this wasn't similar to a recent high-profile Texas case?

I think he's referring to Kenneth Foster, the driver of a vehicle used in a getaway after a murder whose execution sentence Governor Perry recently commuted to life. (In all honesty, given the state of Texas' prisons, I'm not sure LWOP is a better deal.) But the same situation also explains quite a few of the "murderers" who got probation in the big Dallas News series on "probation for murder." The "law of parties" as practiced has been expansively broadened at the ignominious Texas Court of Criminal Appeals under Presiding Judge Sharon Keller and Co.. By contrast:

India and other common law countries have followed England in abolishing the doctrine. In 1990, the Canadian Supreme Court did away with felony murder liability for accomplices, saying it violated “the principle that punishment must be proportionate to the moral blameworthiness of the offender.”

That approach, to me, seems more just.Here's another great example why Democrats need some horses, er ... candidates, to step up and run for the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, not just for Democrats to appear competitive in every seat, a laudable but not necessarily strategic goal, but just in case Democrats get lucky and experience a Dallas-style Democratic sweep because of national electoral trends. If that happens, failure to field candidates in these three statewide seats will appear, in retrospect, like leaving money on the table. If there's a chance to improve this egregious court in the least and Texans don't take it, it would be a tremendous waste.

There's only a short time left to get the necessary signatures from around the state, although I'll bet some of our friends in the netroots could help accomplish that quicker than might otherwise be possible. So if you're planning to throw your hat in the ring, shoot me an email to let me know and I'll help you tap into several other folks who are desperately looking for horses ... er, candidates, to run for these three seats.

Before a long drive, a news roundup

I'm leaving in just a bit to drive to New Orleans for the International Drug Policy Reform Conference, so it seems like a good time for a roundup of items for which I don't have time to generate individual blog posts:

Covering the drug cartels
Ace reporter Sam Logan now has a blog which I'd recommend to anyone interested in Latin America. He presently features a fascinating story on Blackwater Corp positioning itself to capture some of the proposed contracts to assist Mexico fighting drug runners.

Just Visitin'
The Mexia Daily News features a new book describing old Texas jails that have been transformed into modern uses. "Just Visitin’ tells the story of more than fifty jails which have survived to serve as museums, libraries, restaurants, hotels, and even a home or two. Dating back as far as 1850, each jail has its own style."

The Hidden Costs of Jury Duty
The Cameron Herald says that in Milam County someone perpetrated an identity theft scam by posing as the county jury coordinator.

Here's the scenario: The County Jury Coordinator, supposedly, calls you on the phone. The target is told that a warrant has been issued for his arrest. Why? Is the obvious question. The reason you are going to jail is because you failed to appear for jury duty.

Of course, the victim never received such a notice, but he is anxious to solve this problem and solve it quick. The caller is sympathetic with the victim's predicament assures him that the matter can be resolved. Some information is needed to prove they are residents. Give you social security number, bank account number and your mother's middle name. Verification of date of birth is required too.

Eager to get this problem fixed, the victim gives the con artist the requested data. The caller asks that you be placed on hold for a minute. He comes back on line with good news. All has been taken care of. You may get an apology for any inconvenience you were caused and hangs up the phone

Immigration Detention Boom Not Over
Here's another example why I don't think we're finished yet with the immigration detention boom, even though capacity in current facilities is already maxxed out.

New Dallas Repeat Offender Policy Due to Overcrowding
With new checks and balances, the Dallas DA has reinstated a program to move repeat offenders more quickly out of the county jail and into prison.

Look West for Advice on Needle Exchange
As Bexar County prepares to begin Texas' first pilot needle exchange program, officials should be sure to look at the successful New Mexico needle exchange operation which has now been in operation for ten years.

Article on parole inflames without fully informing

Here's a news article spinning a story along the traditional, tough/soft on crime axis, when really, to me, the implications are much more profound.

The Houston Chronicle ("Early release, deportation of inmate cause criticism," Dec. 4) points to a case where an inmate convicted of murder (he was the driver, not the shooter, in a drive-by shooting) who was sentenced to 70 years was paroled at the earliest opportunity and deported back to Ecuador. Always looking to grab headlines, City of Houston victim rights coordinator Andy Kahan pounced on the incident to claim the Texas prison system was too soft, that 16 years incarceration amounted to a "sweetheart deal."

Focusing the story on Kahan and the victim's family demanding longer sentences, though, overlooks the big-picture problem that's causing killers to be released earlier than they otherwise might: Texas is filling up the majority of its prison space with non-violent offenders, so when we prosecute more of those, the only way to incarcerate them is to build more prisons or let violent offenders go. Since Texas can't adequately staff prisons and jails now, building more makes little sense, so officials have little option but to parole long-time offenders with good behavior.

Two other points come to mind. First, murderers have among the lowest recidivism rates of all prisoners, so it may well be that this decision won't particularly harm public safety. Second, I'd bet that if the reporter were to check, she''d find the parole board deporting most foreign nationals as soon as they're able, often, as in this case, at 1/4 of their stated sentence.

Again, that's because with prisons overcrowded and understaffed; if you're a prison bureaucrat (or married to one, like the parole board chair when her panel made the decision to parole this offender) it makes a lot of sense from a purely pragmatic perspective to have them deported and make them somebody else's problem. Kahan says this is a "sweetheart deal" since the offender doesn't have to comply with parole conditions. But I'm sure many such prisoners would prefer to stay in the United States under parole instead of be deported.

The range of sources in the Chronicle article were extremely narrow: Kahan, the victim's family, and Board of Pardons and Parole Chair Rissie Owens. That amounts to asking three people with the same opinion, generating false controversy while framing the debate as whether the parole board should be "tuffer." Viewing the story from a systems perspective, though, instead of letting Mr. Kahan spin the story, we must ask the question, as I did in another case nearly two years ago:

in this "tough on crime" state, why would such a person have been paroled in the first place? Because Texas prisons are full, and we have to have someplace to put the thousands of nonviolent offenders sent to prison each year -- often with sentences that will last decades. So the state has to let people like [Eduardo Blondett] out to make room, or spend billions on new prison beds over the next few years. Similarly, the parole system can't chase down violent absconders because it's overwhelmed hunting five times the number of nonviolent ones.

That leaves the state of Texas with three choices: 1) process more nonviolent offenders through probation and community-based sanctions instead of prison, 2) build more prisons at a cost of several billion dollars instead of spending the money on schools and roads, or 3) keep releasing dangerous offenders to make room for new non-violent ones, which is what's happening now.

This reporter let Mr. Kahan divert her focus to a single tree and thus failed to notice the forest around her. But these flame-fanning accusations of lenience amount to only part of the story - in the bigger picture, overcriminalization and policy decisions by elected officials have created the situation where Texas houses so many prisoners, murderers must be let free to make room for petty drug offenders and small-time thieves.

So when you see a news story like this, with "victim-friendly" sources aghast at why a violent offender would be released from prison without serving their full sentence, as Paul Harvey said, now you know the rest of the story.

Meeting Expectations: TYC holds public hearing on use of force

A Travis County judge said holding a public hearing is the least the Texas Youth Commission could do before changing its use of force policy, and since they finally held that hearing yesterday, apparently blogging about it is the least I can do here on Grits.

A regular reader emails today to demand, "Don't even think about leaving town without posting on the use of force hearing yesterday. You are LATE as it is."

So it's not just TYC which must meet expectations, apparently, but me, as well! I couldn't make it to the hearing; I'd already said my piece when I submitted written comments, and was waiting till I had a little more information. But now I feel obligated (since I'm "LATE," after all!) to go ahead and link to MSM coverage of TYC's hearing yesterday to evaluate its proposed use of force policy. Here's the coverage I saw:

• Critics: TYC pepper spray policy is vague, The Daily Texan
• TYC urged to limit pepper spray, AP
• Teen inmates pepper sprayed on videotape, The Austin Statesman

I have no idea what the agency will do here: I hope they go back to the old policy, which was based in a court settlement and didn't need changing, but they could easily approve the same one Acting Executive Director Dimitria Pope first proposed on August 2. At this point, you never know.

SEE ALSO: Public policy report from Texas Criminal Justice Coalition (pdf) on TYC Pepper Spray Policy.

RELATED: For the period I'll be in N'awlins, I've put up a reader poll asking, which will happen first at the Texas Youth Commission:

• The National Guard or state police are called in to guard TYC facilities because they're shortstaffed
• Acting Executive Director Dimitria Pope is relieved of her position
• A new conservator is appointed
• TYC announces more facility closures
• The 81st (2009) Texas Legislature convenes

Let me know your opinion in the sidebar poll and in the comments. And play nice, while I'm away, folks! Please? :)

Open Thread: Stuff to Read While I'm Out

I'm out to run a few errands today before leaving tomorrow for a long drive to the International Drug Policy Reform Conference in New Orleans. While I'm otherwise occupied, check out these Texas blogs, all with interesting, recent criminal justice posts:

• Prevention not Punishment
• I Was the State
• Dallas Sidebar
• The Defense Perspective

Consider this an open thread; what's on your mind?

Readers: Say 'No' to Unmanned Police Spy Planes

To recap last week's reader poll question, 217 readers responded to the question:

Should the Houston Police Department use unmanned surveillance aircraft for traffic enforcement and covert operations?

Of those, 72 percent opposed use of unmanned spy planes in urban Houston, while 28% favored the idea.

A couple of the readers who favored the idea left comments in this post saying the use of unmanned spy drones is no different from current police use of helicopters, but I don't think that's entirely accurate. For starters, it begs the argument, if it's the "same" as a helicopter, and HPD has helicopters, why buy this new gadget?

The most important service of a helicopter is transporting people, getting to the scene of an emergency despite traffic at any time of day, but this plane won't do that. As for aerial surveillance, the noisy helicopter gives automatic notice when it's around, while the spy plane is designed for covert viewing. Indeed, the amount of visual intrusion from humans in a helicopter is advanced by a magnitude of scale with an unmanned spy drone, which will have long-range cameras in all directions, constantly recording for future analysis.

From a constitutional perspective, this bizarrely would not violate any Fourth Amendment rights under current Supreme Court standards, for reasons I've criticized at length in the past. It's the same legal standard that has occasionally protected shopping mall voyeurs taking upskirt photos on escalators. Basically the law says it's not an invasion of privacy to take your picture if someone is in a place they have the legal right to be and takes a line of sight shot, even if they use intense magnification from a distance. While this protects paparazzi who want to shoot pics of naked movie stars suntanning in their backyards, the precedents establishing this standard have for the most part been set in law enforcement cases.

So if they're "just looking" (after all, as Houston PD Chief Harold Hurtt says, if you're not doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?), police can fly their toy camera plane around town and peek into backyards all day, under this theory, without violating our rights as currently formulated by SCOTUS.

One commenter envisioned a use that would violate current Supreme Court standards, "If they put IR [infrared] on it and start randomly looking for hot spots where people are growing pot it might" violate Fourth Amendment rights. That's exactly correct, at least under under current Supreme Court rulings, if you agree with the Court's limited interpretation of the Fourth Amendment.

Myself, I believe that radical technological innovations (like quiet spy planes with 360-degree cameras rigged with powerful telephoto lenses) require a reworking of these old standards of privacy which have rapidly become inadequate to handle invasive technology. I don't know exactly where that line should be drawn, but I know when this type of invasive technology is legal for use by domestic police, a new line needs to be drawn.

Others questioned whether it's appropriate for police departments to purchase military equipment for use against their own citizens. That already happens, of course, with SWAT and other specialized units, and even to some extent with average cops. Today's officers are often so larded down with equipment on their utility belts they can hardly run. (At the Austin PD, IMO, this trend has reached a point of absurdity.) But using military spy equipment against your own people takes that concept to a new level, and makes us wonder how far police departments will go mimicking police tactics more commonly used in Iraq and Afghanistan against our military enemies.

Someone else said simply, "it's not how I want my tax dollars spent," and given the decrepit state of the Fourth Amendment, I think that's the bottom line. Houston PD can't put enough officers on the street, but they're going to spend millions on expensive toys and gadgets. That spy plane won't make one more arrest, won't write one more traffic ticket, and it won't quell a single domestic disturbance. All it will do is take pictures of from the sky, for as long as HPD is willing to pay the gasoline bill. I think most people in Houston would prefer they pay a few more officer salaries with that money, instead.

This was just a demonstration of the technology, HPD said, they haven't purchased it yet. Let's hope they pass; it would be a big waste of time and money and set a bad precedent.

SCOTUS to decide in Texas case when right to counsel attaches

SCOTUSBlog brings word that a case brought by the Texas Fair Defense Project in Fredericksburg has been granted cert, meaning the case will be decide by the highest court in the land. According to Lyle Denniston,

The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to further clarify when a suspect taken into custody by police has a right to a lawyer. The question is whether that right sets in when an individual has been taken before a magistrate, who finds reason to believe a crime has been committed and sends the individual to jail, or whether it only ataches when a prosecutor prepares to or makes a charge. ...

The new right-to-counsel case the Justices will hear, with oral argument likely in March, involves a Fredericksburg, Texas, man, Walter Allen Rothgery, who sought but was denied the aid of an attorney when he appeared before a magistrate at a probable cause hearing. The magistrate found probable cause to support a charge that Rothgery was a felon who had a gun; Rothgery was sent to jail. He was released on bond, but rearrested later after a grand jury indicted him. Once he obtained a lawyer, the charges were dismissed; the felony allegation against him turned out to have been an error because charges against him in California had been dismissed.

Rothgery sued the county in a civil rights lawsuit over the denial of a lawyer at the first hearing. The County opposed the lawsuit, contending that the right to counsel did not attach until he actually had been indicted — a claim ultimately upheld by the Fifth Circuit Court. Rothgery’s appeal was supported by 22 law professors urging the Justices to clarify when the right to counsel attaches.

Congrats to TFDP head honcho Andrea Marsh and Chief Counsel Harry Williams on getting this major opportunity. When an advocacy group sets out to file impact litigation in federal court to change local practices, this is exactly where they hope to end up: with an opportunity to set new precedent on behalf of defendants. Good luck, folks!

Here's a little more on the case from TFDP's newly upgraded website:

Rothgery v. Gillespie County

In Rothgery v. Gillespie County, TFDP represents an individual who was denied counsel for over six months while free on bond. Mr. Rothgery was arrested for being a felon in possession of a gun when he was not, in fact, a felon. Although Mr. Rothgery repeatedly asked for a court-appointed lawyer, it was not until Mr. Rothgery was re-arrested and spent time in jail that the county gave him an attorney. Once appointed counsel, Mr. Rothgery‘s lawyer was quickly able to obtain paperwork that showed Mr. Rothgery was not a felon, and the charges were dismissed.

In June 2007, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans upheld the dismissal of Mr. Rothgery‘s claims, finding that Mr. Rothgery‘s right to counsel did not attach until a prosecutor became involved in the case, which did not occur until months after Mr. Rothgery had been committed on charges filed by law enforcement shortly after his arrest. In reaching this disposition, the Fifth Circuit employed a test that has not been used either in Texas courts or in other federal courts and created a split with other federal courts of appeal. TFDP is seeking Supreme Court review of the case.

Rothgery v. Gillespie County case documents:

• Mr. Rothgery‘s Original Complaint
• Mr. Rothgery‘s Appeal Brief to the Fifth Circuit
• Fifth Circuit's Decision
  
• Mr. Rothgery‘s Petition for Writ of Certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court

UPDATE: At the TDCAA message board they've labeled this a case to watch, with a commenter adding that the Texas courts have failed to clarify the question. MORE: See coverage from the Austin Statesman.

Will Democrats Field ANYONE for the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals?

Texas Monthly may think they're "Texas' Worst Court," and that Presiding Judge Sharon Keller should be impeached, but with one month left to go, no Democrat has yet signed up to run against any of the incumbents up for re-election next year on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. This potentially leaves the same nine members on the court for the next biennium who Presiding Judge Sharon Keller bullied into repeated outrageous decisions over the last several years.

Of the incumbents who're up next go-round, at least Tom Price has the good sense to call a spade a spade, vocally declaring some time ago that the court's radical pro-prosecution precedents made them a "laughingtsock" around the nation's legal community. And Cathy Cochran finally came out to publicly criticize the Presiding Judge over the recent "We close at 5" debacle. The other judge up next year, Paul Womack, probably should be targeted before those two, but really IMO it's time to begin a comprehensive infusion of fresh blood.

I'm worried nobody will run for any of these slots, even though arguably these three may be the most vulnerable incumbents on the statewide ballot. Every potential candidate I've spoken to has said "no" or decided to run for something else, but I'm still hoping somebody - preferably three somebodies - will decide to step up and run on the Democratic ticket for the Texas CCA.

Informants, shoddy counsel, and the death penalty

"Houston has 1.3 per cent of America's population but carries out 10 per cent of its executions," reports the UK Guardian, but many of those executed have something in common: Their lawyer. See the Dec. 2 Guardian profile of Houston defense attorney Jerry Guerinot, who the Guardian calls "Lethal Counsel," who represented a DEA informant in a death penalty case without ever speaking with her law enforcement handler. Her appellate lawyers are claiming incompetent representation, but Guerinot insists his representation was "aggressive." Via CrimProf Blog.

Rolling Stone: Colombian Drug War Offers Preview of US-Funded Mexican Surge

Those who don't learn from the history of the Drug War in Colombia are failed to repeat it in Mexico. For a preview of what another $1.4 billion may buy in a Mexican edition of "Plan Colombia," see the article from Rolling Stone, "How America Lost the War on Drugs," Nov. 27, on how we spent the last half-trillion (via Strange Attractor):

All told, the United States has spent an estimated $500 billion to fight drugs - with very little to show for it. Cocaine is now as cheap as it was when Escobar died and more heavily used. Methamphetamine, barely a presence in 1993, is now used by 1.5 million Americans and may be more addictive than crack. We have nearly 500,000 people behind bars for drug crimes - a twelvefold increase since 1980 - with no discernible effect on the drug traffic. Virtually the only success the government can claim is the decline in the number of Americans who smoke marijuana - and even on that count, it is not clear that federal prevention programs are responsible. In the course of fighting this war, we have allowed our military to become pawns in a civil war in Colombia and our drug agents to be used by the cartels for their own ends. Those we are paying to wage the drug war have been accused of ­human-rights abuses in Peru, Bolivia and Colombia. In Mexico, we are now ­repeating many of the same mistakes we have made in the Andes. (emphasis added)

The whole article is worth a read, particularly for those who haven't been following the foreign policy component of the War on Drugs. The piece confirms my impression, as I've maintained previously that Mexican drug cartels arguably constitute the greatest overall public safety threat from the drug war. I'm increasingly convinced that current proposals for anti-drug collaborations with Mexico precisely risk repeating the mistake of allowing "our drug agents to be used by the cartels for their own ends."

House Corrections Faces Full Plate of Interim Studies

The Texas House Corrections Committee, which already had a lot going on with oversight functions at the Youth Commission, was handed a full plate, indeed, by Speaker Tom Craddick with the announcement of its "interim charges." (See here, p. 5-6) Since the Texas Legislature only meets 140 days every two years, interim charges are topics that standing committees study in between to prepare to address more complex issues in a short time frame, meaning it's highly likely these subjects will be the topic of substantive legislation in 2009. Here are the highlights:

Study Technocorrections
This should please Michael over at Corrections Sentencing: The first charge instructs the committee to:

Explore the use of technology practices that improve efficiency, safety, and coordination of criminal justice activities on the state, local, and county levels.

My guess is the intent of this item is to focus on GPS solutions, but I can actually think of many technology practices (or the lack thereof) that could be improved to benefit efficiency, safety and coordination. For starters, an array of silo'ed bureaucracies house a variety of different databases and information streams on related topics that are seldom cross-checked. E.g., pretrial services divisions prepare much of the same information as do probation officers' reports but frequently do not share it, requiring longer waits and redundant work.

Similarly, documentation generated by county probation departments typically does not inform decisions by state parole officers, even though they're frequently supervising the exact same offenders at different stages of the process. That's especially problematic for youth sent to TYC, most of whom were on probation before imprisonment, who may not stay incarcerated long, and who return to the same community supervised by a different bureaucracy. Better coordination between juvenile probation and parole should lead to both stronger supervision and better outcomes for the offender.

What to Do With Drug Offenders?
Two charges deal directly and indirectly with how the state should handle drug offenders. One charge directs the Committee to propose improvements to the state jail felony system (about half of state jail felons are drug offenders), evaluating "original intent for use, sentencing guidelines, and effectiveness." Another joint charge with the Appropriations Committee will have Corrections:

Review and research the availability, coordination, efficiency, and allocation of substance abuse treatment resources for probationers, pretrial defendants, people in the custody of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ), and parolees. This review should include methods to reduce and improve current assessments, training, and referring protocols and the identification of any barriers that may be impeding all of the above.

The results of this study will be especially interesting in light of recently expanded treatment funding from the Legislature; it's always been an open question whether sufficient capacity exists in every jurisdiction to make full use of new treatment dollars.

Re-entry Focus
The next charge focuses on prisoner re-entry:

Consider new strategies for meeting prisoner reentry challenges in Texas, including the evaluation of programs with documented success. This review should include the availability of housing and occupational barriers.

Given that as many as one in eleven Texas adults has a felony conviction, the need here is enormous. Housing and occupational barriers reduce the chances for successful reform and increase recidivism on their face. (Marc Levin at the Texas Public Policy Foundation recently published a white paper on the subject, arguing for ramping down occupational restrictions (pdf) on ex-felons, and you can also listen to a podcast from a recent public forum on the subject.)

Narrow Immigration Focus
In a joint charge with the Committee on County Affairs, House Corrections will focus on immigration matters, particularly:

Study policies and procedures related to illegal immigration and border security
of the TDCJ, county probation departments, and local and county jail facilities,
and make recommendations to improve coordination with international, federal,
state, and local authorities.

All sorts of crazy anti-immigrant proposals have been made over the last couple of years so this interim charge could be a minefield, but it sounds like Chairman Madden intends to limit its scope. According to Quorum Report's Daily Buzz:

Knowing that Chair Rep. Jerry Madden (R-Plano) is from North Texas makes it difficult not to think immediately of the current controversies in Farmers Branch and Irving. In Farmers Branch, voters passed an ordinance in May that would require landlords to check for citizenship status. And in Irving, Council voted to begin turning over all names of those arrested by Irving Police to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) service, with the intention of deporting those in the country illegally.

Those were not the motivating factor in this charge, Madden said. Instead, the committee wants to make sure the state has consistency in it its policies on illegal immigrants with felony convictions, from the probation departments to the local jails to the prison system.

“We’re interested in specifically looking at what’s being done to check citizenship, and to make sure that uniform steps are being taken,” Madden said. “We shouldn’t be treating illegal immigrants any differently than we would treat legal immigrants.”

Mental Illness and Crime
Finally, I was pleased to see the committee has a substantial joint interim charge with the Appropriations Committee concerning mental illness and crime. The charge directs the committee to:

Assess the relationship between mental illness and criminal behavior and offer reforms needed to address the proliferation of mental illness in the adult and juvenile criminal justice systems. This review should include an examination of data sharing between criminal justice and health and human services agencies, proper screening, assessments, treatment, discharge planning, post-release supervision, and community services.

Given that fully thirty percent of adult Texas prison inmates are former clients of the state's indigent mental health system, arguably this (and the quite-related "re-entry" topic) may be the most important of these interim charges from a public safety perspective.

This is a busy interim agenda for the House Corrections Committee considering the Lege is a little late this time around getting to interim charges in the first place. Good luck, folks - you've got a lot of important stuff on your plate.

Oral histories allege abusive TYC practices

The Dallas News today has a feature by Gregg Jones entitled "The Faces of TYC" (Dec. 2). They've also published an interactive website featuring video interviews with inmates, parents, staff, whistleblowers and watchdogs.

Jones' piece today tracks the case of former TYC inmate Chris Gann. As in other such stories, TYC staff were prohibited by confidentiality laws from addressing specifics about the youth's behavior, so the tale is largely told from the ex-inmate's point of view, for good or ill. But in particular I wanted to ask current and past Youth Commission employees about two practices described by Mr. Gann that were allegedly used at the now-closed Marlin unit. Read this, TYC'ers, and tell me if you've ever witnessed these tactics in action:

The staff at the TYC prison in Marlin called it "discipline training."

Every afternoon, for an hour or longer in the summer heat, Mr. Gann and other Marlin inmates were forced to run laps around a dirt track inside the compound, he said. On a staff member's command, the inmates would throw themselves to the ground for push-ups, then scramble to their feet for more laps.

Anyone who stopped without permission was slammed to the ground, handcuffed and left to lie in the blazing sun, he said.

"We were all just falling over and throwing up," said Mr. Gann, by then 14. When it was all over, "we would all be laying there, crying, sore, all scraped up and bleeding."

Young inmates who got sick or hurt found little sympathy, he said.

"When you would go to the infirmary, all they would tell you was to drink water and you'd be OK," he said.

Inmates also performed a drill known as "55-5," he said, in which they would stand at attention for 55 minutes at their bunks, then sit for five minutes. They did this about six times a day, he said.

Does the description of "discipline training" accurately describe how youth were treated at Marlin or at other TYC facilities? Are kids made to run or exercise to exhaustion? Has anyone ever witnessed a youth handcuffed out in the sun for ceasing rigorous exercise without staff permission?

And is the "drill" (not much of a drill, really) that Gann refers to as "55-5" still used at TYC, and if so what is it's purpose? The claim that up to six hours of a 24-hour day were spent on 55-5 drills, seems outrageous: Can this be corroborated?

The videos are compelling. While administrators claim abuse of youth has been 98% reduced, I wonder whether all the agency's abusive practices have even been identified? The DMN website along with Gann's story makes me think that a pure oral history project interviewing inmates and staff, in particular, would substantially enlighten debates over what's wrong at TYC and what should be done.

Mexican cartels continue supplying illegal drugs despite massive numbers of arrests and deaths

The total number of people employed in aggregate by Mexican drug cartels must be just massive.

According to the Washington Post ("Mexico launches 8th offensive in drive against drug cartels," Dec. 1), 14,000 cartel-related suspects have been arrested in Mexico in the last year, while 4,000 more people died in the intra-cartel feuds over favored supply routes in the last 18 months. Some of those 4,000 were police or elected officials who opposed illegal drug trafficking, but most deaths were from rival cartel members killing each other.

So assuming these data are accurate, that's a total 18,000+ recent cartel-related arrests and deaths. Dozens of tons of cocaine and marijuana have been captured over the same time frame, each with its own, jubilant, self-congratulatory press release. But nobody thinks any of this has done more than, at most, slightly raise the price of some drugs in some areas of the United States, and even those claims' veracity is disputable.

“What worries us as a society is that even if this year nearly 50 tons of cocaine have been seized, most of the traffic of narcotics is not detected, so the perception of impunity and corruption continues to be very high,” María Elena Morera, president of Mexico United Against Crime, an advocacy group, told the New York Times.

So if fifty tons of cocaine seizures, 4,000 deaths and 14,000 arrests weren't enough to reduce drug trafficking in Mexico, how many people must be arrested or killed before the problem is under control? There must be many, many more people smuggling drugs through Mexico if reducing the cartels' workforce by that amount hasn't made a major dent.

These are not just 18,000 criminals, they're 18,000 people who worked in one of the more lucrative Mexican industries, meaning that, en masse, the drug war has a negative effect on Mexican domestic demand the same way 18,000 middle-class layoffs in a major industry might effect the US economy. That's a lot of folks.

That large number of arrests must also mean they're mainly catching "little fish" with little tangible effect on overall drug supplies. Most of the bigger fish captured, with one or two high-profile exceptions, have come from the Gulf Cartel, which has led me to wonder if the overall strategy of the Mexican government might not be to pick a side in the cartel wars instead of to stop all illegal drugs. The quickest way to reduce violence in Mexico, which after all stems mainly from competition among rival illegal businesses - would be for the government to enforce an informal monopoly for one side or the other, probably the Sinaloa drug syndicate. By comparison, the Sysiphian task of halting all illegal drugs likely cannot be accomplished any time soon, even if it's what the US might prefer.

Time will tell which way Mexican President Felipe Calderon is headed.

Looking for leadership: Meurer turns down TYC slot running agency mired in crisis

I heard a rumor last night from a reliable source that the Governor offered retiring Democratic Travis County District Judge Jeanne Meurer a job "running" the Texas Youth Commission (my snitch didn't know if it was the commissioner or the conservator's slot), but she turned it down because she would not have the authority or budget to fix the agency's problems. The source speculated Meurer may instead run for Travis County District Attorney instead when long-time incumbent Ronnie Earle steps down from the post.

I have to say, if the rumor's true, at this point it's hard to blame Judge Meurer for passing up TYC. Without significant resources and enough clout to reverse many bad decisions and hires from the last nine months, the job would be an endlessly ungratifying headache. (Maybe they'll ask Michael Griffiths next - they really need to find somebody with real-world juvie experience, and give them enough power to fix things.)

The biggest problem facing the TYC administration and any future commissioner is the system-wide understaffing crisis, the gravity of which is highlighted in a story today coming out of the Ron Jackson unit in Brownwood.

Sixteen juvenile correctional officers resigned from the STAR unit at Brownwood, supposedly over disputed overtime. But once the overtime question was resolved, none of the 16 agreed to return to the STAR team, which makes me think their concerns were more substantive than media reports let on. Reported AP:

Their departure last week leaves 10 members on the STAR team at the Ron Jackson Unit in Brownwood. If a disturbance or other emergency occurs, off-duty corrections officers or law enforcement agencies will be called, [TYC spokesman Jim] Hurley said.

A couple of questions about this immediately come to mind: First, Hurley is wrong to downplay the Brownwood STAR team losing 60% of its members at a whack. If this begins a trend, it spells trouble. Hurley said the agency just needs to "replenish the ranks," but the whole agency is understaffed, so that's much easier said than done.

Also, outside law enforcement agencies aren't trained to deal with TYC youth, and off-duty correctional officers may not have received necessary training to participate in the STAR team.

In any event, relying on off-duty employees or outside agencies to respond to emergencies lengthens the potential time a crisis must be left swirling at the facility before the STAR team can get there, worsening safety for youth and staff on the ground.

(UPDATE/CORRECTION: Contrary to the AP report, all 16 Brownwood STAR team officers in question have re-applied for their jobs, but have not been reinstated because TYC CO insists they re-submit to testing and PT. See the comments for more detail.)

If TYC cannot reverse understaffing trends, it won't be long - perhaps sometime next year - before the only option left will be to bring in the National Guard or state police to keep staffing levels at statutorily mandated 12-1 ratios. Already caseworkers are serving as guards, necessarily shortchanging their regular duties. The fact that the agency is now cannibalizing unfilled positions to pay for overtime shows the Legislature simply did not budget enough money to increase staffing to mandated levels.

At some point, pay needs to be increased - if a dangerous job guarding criminal youth pays comparable wages to the WalMart, who wouldn't choose to work at WalMart? But more importantly, the agency's employment culture must improve to reverse mounting losses among critical workers. The current management crew can't accomplish that, IMO, so I'm glad to hear Gov. Perry's people are out beating the bushes for better leadership. It'd be a great Christmas gift for TYC employees if they could get a new boss before the holiday along with their belated overtime checks.