Paid By the Load

I mentioned the other day that corrupt cops and border enforcers frequently get paid by the load on the US side for allowing drugs to pass through their jurisdiction, and from El Paso comes another example ("Fugitive border patrol agent back in El Paso," EP Times, Jan. 31) that gives us an idea of the going rate:

Arturo Arzate Jr., 49, a Border Patrol agent for 20 years, is accused of waving loads of drugs through the checkpoint on Highway 62/180 east of El Paso, federal court documents state. He was charged with conspiracy to distribute cocaine and bribery.

He was arrested Aug. 16, 2007, by Mexican officials in Torreon in the state of Coahuila and extradited to the United States Wednesday. He had been a fugitive since February, officials said.

The Border Patrol agent was "allegedly paid $50 per kilo of marijuana and $1,000 per kilo of cocaine he allowed to pass through the checkpoint between El Paso and Carlsbad."

Imagine how high the markup must be on cocaine when you can pay a single cop $1,000 per kilo and still make a profit!

End of an Era: Passports required to enter Mexico starting today

For my entire lifetime, you could walk or drive into Mexico from Texas with no ID except a Texas driver's license; I didn't get a passport myself until the first time I went overseas. But starting today, every American entering Mexico must have a passport, thanks to the Department of Homeland Stupidity Security.

Do you feel safer? I don't. Lots of Texans don't have passports who aren't a security threat, but all the 9/11 hijackers had fake passports that let them through security. So what's the point of this, exactly?

Generations of Texans until now could visit the Mexican border without registering with the feds or having your travel recorded on a visa stamp (many people go back and forth quite frequently, after all, including regular commuters). So this adds more bureaucratic steps in the border crossing process and likely clogs up the borders in the short term while they work out the kinks and accommodate delays. If this improves security, though, I wish somebody could tell me how.

UPDATE: Frequent crossers can apply for a special "passport card" that's only good for land crossings, not air travel, which tracks border crossing by RFID.

RELATED: It's not just American tourists and maquiladora suppliers who need to cross the border. Al Jazeera, of all places, has a short piece on the "hundreds of thousands of lower and middle class Americans [who] have crossed the southern borders to Mexico, in search of everything from prescription drugs to alternative cancer treatments, still illegal in the US." Having once been hospitalized while traveling in Mexico, my experience has been that you can get pretty darn good healthcare there if you're able to pay, and at mind bogglingly low rates compared to US healthcare costs.

Should harm to reputation be taken into account during punishment?

In recent times under federal sentencing guidelines, the only way a defendant could receive a "downward departure" from mandatory sentence requirements has been to become an informant and enter into a "5-K" agreement with federal prosecutors.

Now, Doc Berman brings word of a "rare (first?) post-Booker high-profile sentencing setting, at least that I can recall, in which the government is urging a below-guideline sentence for reasons other than cooperation with authorities." Relates Berman:

As detailed in this New York Sun article and this WSJ Law Blog post, federal prosecutors "are seeking a two-year prison term for one of the nation's most successful class-action attorneys, William Lerach." The Sun article explains why this is notable:

Prosecutors said federal guidelines call for a sentence somewhat longer than 24 months, but that the term would be sufficient for Lerach in light of the harm done to his reputation.... Lerach "stands in disgrace before the profession of which he considered himself a national leader," prosecutors said. They did give Lerach credit for coming forward on his own initiative with an offer to plead guilty and for having no direct involvement in the alleged conspiracy "for a considerable time."

In this publicity-driven age, I'm particularly hopeful this reason for downward departures catches on, and it might mitigate quite a few federal prosecutions that I've seen as abusive of the state's power. As I replied in Doug's comments, "That could apply in a LOT of cases, it seems to me: Marion Jones and Dana Stubblefield come to mind." Indeed, there's little question that the ONLY reason the feds are pursuing celebrity steroid cases is to garner publicity, which they believe serves a preventive purpose.

There's just as much or more evidence of widespread steroid use among law enforcement as among professional athletes, but the feds targeted athletes, we're told, because they're role models for young people, blah, blah, etc.. (As though police aren't.) The feds are pursuing a narrow class of defendants, ignoring even evidence of lesser players' use and going only for the big stars.

Where the main governmental purpose for prosecuting is to seek publicity, shouldn't having that purpose met should somewhat satiate the state's lust for punishment? (A commenter [Lawgiver] on the WSJ Law Blog summed up my view on the subject: "These are exactly the types of cases that should not waste [prison] space and cost us all more tax dollars to build more prisons! Fine him a ton and keep him on house arrest. Make it cost him and not the rest of us.")

I'm gratified to see this new justification for a downward departure on two levels: First, it's good to see the erosion, however slight of the idea that the only chance for a reduced sentence under federal guidelines is to snitch. In addition, I think this particular reason for a downward departure comes up more frequently today than in the past, and this notion might limit particular instances of prosecutorial abuse.

It's the checkpoints, stupid: A border wall won't stop smuggling at legal crossings

If your goal is to stop drug smugglers, a border wall won't help and here's why: Most smuggling traffic in narcotics happens by air, by sea, and through the regular checkpoints or "plazas" where a vast number of legitimate travelers cross back and forth every day. (For that matter, half of so-called "illegal immigrants" didn't enter the country illegally; instead they overstayed a visa. Such folks don't swim the river, they enter through checkpoints and airports, and officials rightly wave them on through.)

The debate over immigration and border enforcement becomes tiresome to me because so many false assumptions get wrapped into it. A border wall can't solve anything because the checkpoints, not the empty spaces in between, are where most cross-border smuggling occurs; a recent story from ABC News ("Fake Fed-Ex trucks; when the drugs absolutely have to get there," Jan. 18) gives a good example how that routinely happens:

Savvy criminals are using some of the country's most credible logos, including FedEx, Wal-Mart, DirecTV and the U.S. Border Patrol, to create fake trucks to smuggle drugs, money and illegal aliens across the border, according to a report by the Florida Department of Law Enforcement.

Termed "cloned" vehicles, the report also warns that terrorists could use the same fake trucks to gain access to secure areas with hidden weapons.

The report says criminals have been able to easily obtain the necessary vinyl logo markings and signs for $6,000 or less. Authorities say "cosmetically cloned commercial vehicles are not illegal."

In August 2006, the Texas Department of Public Safety, on a routine traffic stop, found 3,058 pounds of marijuana and 204 kilograms of cocaine in a "cloned" Wal-Mart semi-trailer, driven by a man wearing a Wal-Mart uniform.

In another case, a truck painted with DirecTV and other markings was pulled over in a routine traffic stop in Mississippi and discovered to be carrying 786 pounds of cocaine.

This is old news, exposing a frequently used tactic rather than reporting on a new development. (Even more common would be bribing/threatening the driver of a legitimate commercial vehicle.) Less than 1% of northbound shipping traffic at the Mexican border is ever inspected (less headed south), and even that results in long lines daily at every border entry point. Most of these folks are legitimate travelers or transporting legal goods in a trade relationship that benefits both countries. According to George Friedman at Stratfor:

In 2006, the United States imported $198 billion in goods from Mexico and exported $134 billion to Mexico. This makes Mexico the third-largest trading partner of the United States and also makes it one of the more balanced major trade relationships the United States has. Loss of Mexican markets would hurt the U.S. economy substantially.

That's an immense amount of legitimate trade crossing back and forth - most of it by highway through the main plazas or checkpoints - that effectively masks crafty smuggling operations, especially when high profit margins allow smugglers to effectively absorb any losses.

The fact is, too many legitimate Fed-Ex trucks need to cross the border, and WalMart trucks, and DirecTV trucks, and anything else you can think of, to search every last one of them. (And drug dogs don't work well in a crowded checkpoint environment.) We've established vast maquiladora industries that are directly dependent on that kind of "low-friction" border crossing, to use Friedman's phrase. Add to that, the amount of legitimate traffic is increasing thanks to the Pacific Rim sending more and more US-bound goods through Mexican ports.

It's hard to overstate the importance of the border economy to Texas, even for Texans who grow old and die having never visited there. Not just now but historically Texas' robust economic relationship with Mexico - mostly legal, but also illicit - contributes greatly to buoying the state from facing the full brunt of national economic downturns.

Two thirds of the US border with Mexico is in Texas. If "securing the border" results in a reduction or slowing of legitimate north-south trade, Texas' economy will endure a disproportionate share of the negative impact. I'm a lot more worried about that than I am the nationality of the guys building the condos next door.

Walls and patrols in the desert ignore the paths destined for most smuggling across the border, in both directions: To steal a line from James Carville, "It's the checkpoints, stupid." Success or failure at reducing both drug smuggling and illegal immigration depends mostly on how we handle the traffic flow at legal border crossings - much of the rest is public relations.

Barney Fife had more bullets than these guys

Mexican police in five border towns - Reynosa, Rio Bravo, Matamoros, Nuevo Laredo and Valle Hermoso - are patrolling the streets only with batons after being disarmed earlier in the week by the Army for suspected drug involvement. No word when they'll get their guns back - the weapons were confiscated to see if any had been used in cartel-related killings.

Regrettably, for all the hoopla, the occupation of municipal police stations appears to have netted few corrupt cops or cartel connections. Sounds like the bad guys were tipped off before it happened.

Los Niños de Los Zetas

Will the children and grandchildren of Los Zetas become Mexico's version of the Kennedys, parlaying a prohibition-generated fortune into multi-generational wealth and political power?

I mentioned yesterday that both criminality and affluence tend to run in families. In Mexico, George Friedman from the corporate intelligence company Stratfor says they often run in the same families, and will for several generations thanks to the lucrative drug trade:

The current efforts by the Mexican government might impede the various gangs, but they won’t break the cartel system. The supply chain along the border is simply too diffuse and too plastic. It shifts too easily under pressure. The border can’t be sealed, and the level of economic activity shields smuggling too well. Farmers in Mexico can’t be persuaded to stop growing illegal drugs for the same reason that Bolivians and Afghans can’t. Market demand is too high and alternatives too bleak. The Mexican supply chain is too robust — and too profitable — to break easily.

The likely course is a multigenerational pattern of instability along the border. More important, there will be a substantial transfer of wealth from the United States to Mexico in return for an intrinsically low-cost consumable product — drugs. This will be one of the sources of capital that will build the Mexican economy, which today is 14th largest in the world. The accumulation of drug money is and will continue finding its way into the Mexican economy, creating a pool of investment capital. The children and grandchildren of the Zetas will be running banks, running for president, building art museums and telling amusing anecdotes about how grandpa made his money running blow into Nuevo Laredo.

It will also destabilize the U.S. Southwest while grandpa makes his pile. As is frequently the case, it is a problem for which there are no good solutions, or for which the solution is one without real support.

Interestingly, Friedman seems to think that legalizing drugs would be the most effective solution to limiting cartel power, to "allow easy access to the drug market for other producers, flooding the market, reducing the cost and eliminating the economic incentive and technical advantage of the cartel." But that's a "political impossibility" in the US, he says. Still, the notion that the Zetas' grandkids will consider it quaint that grandpa was running blow to Texas implies that Friedman sees drug legalization as a perhaps inevitable long-term solution.

Friedman's article is an excellent, honest assessment of the problem and well worth reading the whole thing. Via Blood and Treasure.

See related recent Grits posts:

• What do we know about US-side cartel infrastructure?
• More documentation, obfuscation about drug cartel violence on the border and the response by US law enforcement
• Following the money in search of American drug bosses
• Los Zetas subcommander convicted in McAllen; details emerge about Gulf Cartel operations
• New Ex-Im Bank guidelines won't prevent loans to drug cartels
• As Mexico fights a "hot" war against cartels, US not holding up its end
• US made fewer cocaine seizures in 2007
• Might open-sourced criminal intelligence protect journalists and strike a blow against multinational drug cartels?
  

Too short TYC search for new executive director?

The Texas Civil Rights Project's Jim Harrington tells the Statesman and a local TV station that one week isn't long enough to leave the Executive Director's job posting open. Harrington says he "smells duplicity and that a ‘fix is in’ for a particular candidate.”

I'm sure that's true. Conservator Richard Nedelkoff already said he had a short list of candidates in mind, so this doesn't bother me a lot - I already expected him to pick his own person. Under acting executive director Dimitria Pope, often top jobs weren't posted at all before they were filled, so personally I gave the conservator credit for at least going through the motions.

That said, if Harrington or anybody else have folks in mind they think deserve a shot, by all means forward them the job description. The job was posted last Friday, so it's still open through Thursday (Jan. 31) for anyone masochistic enough to apply.

CCA incumbent faces strong GOP primary challenge

Of the three incumbents up for re-election to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, only two face opponents, and only one faces challengers in both the primary and the general election: GOP Judge Paul Womack, who faces off in March against Dallas District Judge Robert Francis. (The winner faces perennial Democratic candidate J.R. Molina in the November election.) Reports Chuck Lindell in the Austin Statesman ("Statewide judge race raises heat," Jan. 29), Francis is:

a state district judge in Dallas who says Womack is ripe for defeat because he was fined $20,500 by the Texas Ethics Commission and sanctioned by a judicial ethics agency for failing to file seven campaign finance reports during the 2002 elections.

At the time, Womack blamed the lapse on attention-deficit disorder and a problem with procrastination. That explanation — made in a 2003 closed-door session of the State Commission on Judicial Conduct but revealed when the agency issued its sanction — was not widely discussed at the time beyond a few newspaper articles and Internet forums used by lawyers.

Francis, however, said the episode raises questions about Womack's continued tenure on the state's highest criminal court.

Womack now says the ADD prognosis was incorrect, that he just didn't fill out the correct paperwork. Whatever the case, to my mind his greater sin has been to be a reliable vote for Presiding Judge Sharon Keller, under whose leadership the court has become a national disgrace.

I don't know much about Judge Francis, a Dallas district court judge, though I'm pleased to see that he was an organizer of a Dallas symposium on re-entry issues in January. His website informs us that he created and operates a "re-entry court" in Dallas, which appears to be a version of strengthened probation for low-level drug offenders:

Judge Francis has moved over 15,000 cases through the Dallas County court system. Although his daily court schedule keeps Judge Francis extremely busy, his commitment to finding new ways to deal with the ever increasing crime rate led to the formation of the first Re-Entry court in the State of Texas.

The Dallas SAFPF Re-Entry court is designed to stop crime by preventing addicts from returning to their addiction. Probationers who complete the Substance Abuse Felony Punishment Facility (SAFPF) program return to Judge Francis’s court for intensive aftercare to ensure compliance with the conditions of their probation.

This program has had one of the highest success rates of any treatment program in the country. The results ensure that people who complete the SAFPF Re-Entry Court curriculum will not return to their criminal behavior and this prevents the citizens of the State of Texas from becoming victims. This court has received local, state and national recognition for its success.

In the Statesman article, though, Francis doesn't seem like he's running on a platform to shake up the court: "I think I'll bring a new personality and dynamic to it," he said. "I think there needs to be a higher degree of collegiality."

Personally I think there needs to be a lot LESS collegiality. I think judges on the CCA need to stand up to Presiding Judge Sharon Keller more often to keep stuff like the Michael Richard debacle from recurring.

OTOH, Judge Francis seems pretty serious about the race, while Womack appears to be barely campaigning, reports Lindell:

In the last six months of 2007, Francis reported raising almost $44,800 in campaign donations. In a race that has traditionally favored the incumbent, Womack raised $103 in the same period.

Francis has been endorsed by quite a few Dallas area Republicans like Jerry Madden, Will Hartnett, Jodie Laubenberg and other prominent names, including GOP DA candidate Toby Shook who barely lost to Craig Watkins in 2006. Texas Eagle Forum even backs his candidacy.

These downballot races are hard to contest, and history shows it's folly to bet against an incumbent CCA judge in a primary (ask Terry Keel), but Judge Francis certainly looks like a serious candidate. Since Dems haven't won a statewide race in Texas since 1994, Francis' candidacy might be the best chance to oust an incumbent CCA judge this year. In a court that desperately needs new blood, perhaps Judge Francis will turn out to be a live one.

To prevent crime, focus resources on children of incarcerated parents

Because children of incarcerated parents are 6-8 times more likely than their peers to wind up in prison themselves, I've long believed that whenever the state chooses to incarcerate a parent of a minor child, a rational crime prevention strategy would focus significant resources for psych counseling, tutoring, mentoring, and other services for their children.

That's the implication to me of a story in USA Today ("For many of USA's inmates, crime runs in the family," Jan. 29) about the extensive family ties among prisoners.

Crime, just like affluence, tends to run in families. "In Texas, which has executed six sets of siblings, there are two sets of cousins on death row. An additional dozen or so death row inmates have relatives serving time in other parts of the state prison system, spokeswoman Michelle Lyons says."

While I don't believe one's bad childhood should excuse criminal behavior, when we know that childhood influences contribute to crime, particularly among children of incarcerated parents, it makes good sense to focus prevention resources there.

RELATED: An alert reader points out that strategies used by the nonprofit described in this Grits post might be a good model, at least a starting point, for a county level program aimed at children of incarcerated parents.

Are more Texas kids using drugs, or are more schools spending resources trying to catch them?

The Texas Education Agency reports double digit annual increases in student discipline for drug offenses in North Texas counties, but no one knows whether that means more kids are doing drugs or if schools are just disciplining more frequently for it. Reported the Dallas News: ("More Texas students are getting in trouble for drugs," Jan. 26):

In the Texas Education Agency region that includes Dallas, Collin and Rockwall counties, the number of incidents in which students were disciplined for drug infractions rose 13 percent between 2005-06 and 2006-07, according to data compiled by the TEA.

And in the TEA region that includes Denton, Tarrant and Wise counties, the number of incidents rose 50 percent over the same period. the TEA will compile data for the current school year by December.

Statewide, the number of reported nonfelony incidents increased 10 percent over the same period. Felony-level offenses, such as heroin possession, jumped 38 percent statewide, an increase officials speculated was due at least in part to the spread of cheese heroin in Dallas-area schools.

The figures, which the TEA got from school districts, include any drug-related activity that resulted in discipline, from suspensions to arrests. The data include misdemeanors and felonies but don't reveal which drugs were involved.

Some districts saw increases so dramatic that they can only be explained by changes in district enforcement, not student behavior:

The Fort Worth school system had the biggest increase in reported incidents among large districts, with the numbers nearly tripling from 132 to 381 from 2005-06 to 2006-07. In the Houston school district, the state's largest, reported incidents dropped from 1,074 to 914.

Administrators in Fort Worth couldn't explain the rise.

"We can't attribute it to anything other than we caught more people," said Clint Bond, Fort Worth school district spokesman. "There are spikes in different categories from year to year. I can't say there's an increase in drug use but just that we caught more people."

It's hard to tell what to make of these numbers, especially when the aggregate stat is broken down by school district. I don't necessarily believe that drug use by Houston students declined or that in Fort Worth it tripled. Instead, these numbers likely represent changes in enforcement patterns or tactics at certain districts like Fort Worth; you catch more fish with a net than a pole, after all. And some Texas school districts appear to be casting the net more and more widely every year.

Lots of MSM coverage of multinational drug cartels

Since I've been posting a great deal recently on the Mexican border wars and multinational drug cartel activity, I wanted to point readers to some related recent MSM coverage:

• Hunting El Puma, The McAllen Monitor
• Mexico, US step up drug war cooperation, The Christian Science Monitor
• Mexico says crackdown is pressuring cartels, The Houston Chronicle
• Mexico's Narco-Insurgency, Time Magazine
• Arrests, slayings underscore Mexico's drug crisis, The Washington Post
  
• Seized cash likely drug related, The El Paso Times
• Chertoff quote to 'grow up' way off base, The El Paso Times
• Fear grows with violence in Peru's cocaine trade, Reuters
• For sale to the highest bidder: A little bit of a drug lord's empire, The Guardian (UK)
  

Now you pay attention: Lying informants in Brooklyn get NY Times thinking about snitches

Informants or "snitches" have been called the "life blood" of police work, says the New York Times, but they may also be a "poison."

Naturally, despite bad informant cases all over the country, it took a major case of a mendacious informant in NYC proper for the Grey Lady to pay closer attention to the subject, which it does today in an overview of problems created by police reliance on snitches ("Officers' arrests puts spotlight on police use of informants," Jan. 28):

The issue of confidential informants was thrust into the spotlight last week by news that four narcotics officers in Brooklyn had been arrested, in a case that involves accusations of paying informants with drugs seized from dealers the informants had pointed them to.

The officers are not suspected of making any illegal profit, and one law enforcement official has said police officers’ trading of drugs for information in the pursuit of arrests could be described as “noble-cause corruption.” The practice would, however, shatter police policy, break the law and, in the view of police commanders and prosecutors, erode the integrity of officers.

The scandal has led the Brooklyn district attorney’s office to seek the dismissal of about 150 drug cases, with hundreds more under review. Besides the arrests — of a sergeant, a detective and two officers in the Brooklyn South narcotics bureau — six additional officers were suspended and several others were placed on modified or desk duty, barred from doing enforcement work. Four supervisors were transferred and a new commander was assigned to the Police Department’s Narcotics Division.

Confidential sources are generally recruited and managed in secret, and their numbers are hard to determine in large police departments like New York’s.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation, according to its budget request for 2008, maintains more than 15,000 secret informants; the Drug Enforcement Administration, according to an internal audit from 2005, has about 4,000 at a time on its payroll.

Texas recently saw our own case of a police officer trading drugs to a snitch for information, and the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals remarkably ruled that the practice did not amount to "evidence tampering" under Texas law. I'll bet that's not the result in New York.

I was particularly interested in the statistics on paid DEA and FBI informants. State and local agencies also maintain their own stables of informants, typically with less regulation, even than federal agents, who themselves by policy sometimes knowingly tolerate violent crimes by informants in the field.

Just as disturbing, and directly relevant to the Brooklyn case, in the recent national wave of exonerations based on DNA evidence, false testimony by informants has been the second leading cause of wrongful convictions. This dark underbelly of law enforcement has long deserved greater scrutiny, and maybe we're reaching a critical mass of public attention on the topic from cases like this to push the issue to the fore.

H/t: Thinking Outside the Cage

MORE: From Simple Justice and the ACLU Blog.

Media hits Bexar DA Susan Reed over prosecution of Christian activists for needle exchange ministry

The decision by the Bexar County DA to use needle exchange-related prosecutions for political grandstanding appears to be backfiring, at least to judge by the media response.

National media are paying attention, and editorial boards around the state are beginning to take potshots at Bexar County District Attorney Susan Reed's use of prosecutorial discretion to charge three Christian needle exchange activists with Class A misdemeanors instead of the Class C offense the officer originally alleged. In an editorial (Jan. 24) titled "Jailed for Ministry," the Lufkin Daily News pronounced:

What a ridiculous misuse of the law.

Intent is all-important in the law. If [73-year old volunteer Bill] Day and his organization were intending to make money from the sale of needles, or were intentionally promoting drug use in any way, we would be the first to call for their prosecution.

But Day is working both to ease suffering and to promote the general public health. For that, he and his group are not being prosecuted, they are being persecuted.

This points out that Texas needs to have some provision that allows needle exchange programs — at the very least as a pilot project and with responsible groups such as the Bexar Area Harm Reduction Coalition.

Bill Day is no criminal, he is closer to being a hero who is following his faith and taking care of people when no one else wants to bother with them.

It's never good news for a District Attorney when the media begins to identify the people you're prosecuting as "heroes" and the DA as the villain: Ask Terry McEachern or Mike Nifong. Similarly, the Houston Chronicle called Reed's decision to increase charges an "abusive use of her prosecutorial office," and editorialized over the weekend ("Needled to death," Jan. 27) that:

The incident makes a a mockery of clear thinking in this state when it comes to containing infectious disease among intravenous drug users, the people who love them and even their babies: Texas is the one state in the union in which it is illegal to run a needle exchange program of any kind, even though such programs have been shown to reduce the spread of HIV infection and hepatitis.

In 2007, the Texas Senate approved a bill that would have allowed local governments to operate needle exchange programs everywhere in the state, but in the House that authorization was whittled back to Bexar County only. With key opponents departing the Legislature and the Governor's office, I anticipate such legislation could receive an even more positive reception in 2009.

The Bexar DA is swimming against the tide of history on this issue, not to mention defying common sense and many in her own party. Her threat to prosecute county health workers who participate in a needle exchange pilot is more over the top, even, than the "mockery of clear thinking" in Bill Day's case. It's likely Day's ministry wouldn't have been out exchanging needles in the first place if Reed hadn't blocked the county program.

Reed's use of her law enforcement powers to promote her political positions discredits not just her but the system. One hopes the Attorney General will rule soon that the DA can't drag people into court for implementing a legislatively authorized pilot, then Day and Co. won't need to break the law in order to prevent disease among San Antonio's addicts.

Conservatives must choose: Are they Anti-'Amnesty' or Pro-Business?

The GOP and the conservative movement in Texas face a big practical glitch as their patchwork ideology meets reality on the ground regarding immigration: At the end of the day, you cannot both be anti-"amnesty" and pro-business. The Dallas News over the weekend demonstrated why that's true in an effective article ("Employers wary of policing immigration," Jan. 27):

Between 8 percent and 9 percent of the Texas workforce is estimated to be in the country illegally, according to an analysis of 2005 U.S. Census data by the nonpartisan Pew Hispanic Center done for The Dallas Morning News. That's nearly twice the national average of about 5 percent.

So a crackdown on employers in Texas – in agriculture and construction in particular, where the percentage of workers is higher – could have a major impact, some analysts and employers say.

According to the state comptroller's office, illegal immigration drained hundreds of millions from local governments in fiscal year 2005 but provided a boost of nearly $17.7 billion to the state.

"To do anything to dramatically reduce the Texas workforce would have pretty severe consequences," said Ray Perryman, an economist with the Perryman Group, an economic and financial analysis firm in Waco.

It's neither wise nor realistic to advocate expelling 8-9% of Texas' workforce. How can anyone think it would be? Nor is it wise to harass them or keep them as second class citizens. For that matter, it's unwise to forbid them from getting a drivers license, which means they can't buy auto insurance.

While the comptroller said illegal immigration costs hundreds of millions to local governments in Texas, the billions gained by the state overall show that's not a problem with immigration per se, but a mis-allocation of resources caused by restrictions on immigration. If currently "illegal" immigrants working here were allowed to get drivers licenses, car insurance, social security numbers and pay taxes, those problems for the most part could be resolved.

We can't and won't expel that much of Texas' work force - it would be practically impossible and economically devastating - so most of those folks, like it or not, will end up staying in Texas by hook or by crook. Self-described "conservatives" must make a choice: They can be either anti-"amnesty" or pro-business, but they cannot be both.

Further Down the Rabbit Hole: Bastrop Sheriff accepted bribe from man accused of illegal gambling operation

The string of recent corruption stories coming out of Texas cities and law enforcement around the state makes me think the topic nearly deserves its own independent blog: No doubt you could productively focus on the topic full time. Part of me feels good that these cases are being prosecuted, since we're now seeing them with so much greater frequency. On the other hand, they just keep coming, and part of me is beginning to wonder exactly how deep this rabbit hole goes?

Last week, former Bastrop County Sheriff Richard Hernandez added his name to the ignoble list of corrupt Sheriffs, chiefs, and other law enforcement officials who've pled guilty to corruption charges in the recent past. Reported the Austin Statesman ("Former Bastrop County Sheriff, Commissioner plea guilty to corruption charges," Jan. 23):

Former Bastrop County Sheriff Richard Hernandez and County Commissioner David Goertz, both accused of misusing public money, pleaded guilty Tuesday to corruption charges under plea deals that require Hernandez to serve jail time and Goertz to resign from office.

Both men admitted to using taxpayer resources, including county equipment, vehicles, materials, inmate labor, facilities and credit accounts, for their personal benefit, under the plea arrangements, which were negotiated with the Texas attorney general's office. ...

According to his plea agreement, Hernandez will spend 90 days in jail, will be on probation for 10 years, will forfeit his peace officer's license and will pay the county $16,000 in restitution. The county will also receive $3,750 that Hernandez deposited in a court restitution account after his indictment. The money was intended to repay the county for materials used to build barbecue pits that Hernandez was accused of selling for personal profit.

Hernandez, 52, served as sheriff from January 1997 until he resigned in May after his indictment.

The most serious allegations against Hernandez involved a scheme to pay for a new pickup for his personal use that he arranged with a convicted drug dealer who is accused of running an illegal gambling operation in Bastrop County.

Once may be an isolated incident, but twice is a pattern and I'll bet this won't be the last case we hear in Texas of local officials exacting las mordidas from local gambling outfits. Taking bribes to protect a gambling operation is what recently brought down the Laredo police chief and several of his officers.

If we must have a wall, where should we build it?

This week's reader survey questions where, if anywhere, Texas really needs to build a wall. Here are the options for this week's poll:

• On the Rio Grande to keep out the Mexicans
• On the Red River to keep out the Okies
• On the Sabine River to keep out people from Louisiana and Arkansas
• On the western border to keep out Californians and Phoenix refugees
• I don't want a wall

You can choose multiple options. For example, personally I favor leaving the border with Mexico more or less open, but walls on the Red River or on the western border to keep out the Californians and Arizona suburbanites would be fine with me! ;) In fact, Kathy predicts the option of a wall to keep out Californians will win hands down. We'll see!

Let me know your preference in the sidebar poll and the comments.

More documentation, obfuscation, about drug cartel violence on the border and the response by US law enforcement

Continuing on recent days' theme of confronting the US-side infrastructure of multinational drug cartels, I was interested this morning to read this article ("US working to help contain violence in Mexico," Jan. 27) by David McLemore of the Dallas News, which adds both new data and anecdotes to the mix of public information available about recent cartel-related violence:

The U.S. side of the border has not been exempt from drug violence. Cartel leaders in Nuevo Laredo have successfully ordered hits on rival drug dealers on the U.S. side. And U.S. lawmen have increasingly become targets.

Border Patrol officials said violent assaults on agents along the Southwestern border totaled 987 in fiscal 2007, a 31 percent increase over the year before.

"The American public must understand that this situation is no longer about illegal immigration or narcotics trafficking," said David V. Aguilar, chief of the U.S. Border Patrol. "It is about criminals and smuggling organizations fighting our agents with lethal force to take over a part of American territory so they can conduct criminal activity." (Emphasis added)

The most recent assault occurred Jan. 19, when a civilian Hummer carrying drugs ran down a Border Patrol agent near the Arizona-California line. Border Patrol officials said the killing was intentional.

Border Patrol Chief Aguilar's observation is the insight motivating me to focus more in recent months on the threats from cartel violence. You can be for or against drug prohibition. You can be for or against expanded immigration. Each are legitimate positions. But you can't be in favor of these mass-murdering thugs: Any serious drug policy reform agenda must include, IMO, a way to confront this growing threat from organized crime.

A non-serious drug policy agenda won't bother: E.g., some of the comments from the local yokel agencies in McLemore's story seemed particularly hubristic considering evidence of cartel-related assassinations on the US side, the vast problems with police corruption among US-side border cops and the nearly unabated trafficking of arms through Border Sheriff's jurisdictions. Reported McLemore:

The sheriff said the cartels are battling over control of entry points into the U.S., not U.S. turf.

"The cartels know we're better trained, better equipped and not as corruptible as our Mexican counterparts," [Hidalgo County] Sheriff [Guadalupe] Trevino said. "If a gunbattle erupted in Hidalgo County and a police officer or a civilian was killed, the cartels know the wrath of God would fall on them."

Mr. Reay said the Texas Sheriff's Coalition has joined with border law enforcement agencies in three other states to form the Southwest Border Sheriff's Coalition to share intelligence and enforcement methods.

I don't buy for a second the Hidalgo Sheriff's claim cartels don't operate in the US because the border law enforcement too diligent! That's a bit of self-serving PR flotsam.

The #2 commander of the Reynosa division of Los Zetas, for example, was living, working and doing his grocery shopping in Hidalgo County before his more or less accidental arrest last year! We also know Los Zetas are training US born teenage assassins who've allegedly committed murders on both sides of the border. (See the previous post for a brief overview of documented cartel infrastructure on the US side.)

Besides, if the drugs come north, common sense tell us that the money (and guns) must head back south directly through these agencies' jurisdictions.

That said, I was interested to see this chart showing (pdf) that the US side assaults on Border Patrol agents is much higher in Arizona and California than in Texas entry points; the Rio Grande Valley had the highest Texas numbers. That must be partly because a river separates the two nations in Texas, while in Arizona the border is an imaginary line in the dirt. Or maybe in Texas the fix is in deeper in law enforcement than in those other states? I don't know what explains those disparities, particularly since the I-35 route through Laredo is the main throughfare the Sinaloa and Gulf cartels have been feuding over.

Personally I'm still skeptical that President Bush's $1.4 billion anti-drug package to Mexico is a wise investment, nor do I think the Mexican Congress will accept stipulations the US Congress seems intent on adding to the aid package. Instead, I'd like to see those resources focused on undermining the cartels' infrastructure on the US side, starting with well-funded, wide ranging investigations of money laundering and police corruption.

What do we know about US-side drug cartel infrastructure?

Ever since I learned last spring during legislative committee hearings that Governor Perry's border security initiative basically amounts to a Laurel and Hardy routine, I've been paying a lot more attention to the threat posed by drug cartels' violence and corruption trickling (at this point, pouring?) across the border onto US/Texas soil.

I may not think arresting drug users is the answer to any problem I believe needs solving (on that me and the Texas Department of Public Safety Narcotics Division agree), but that doesn't mean I have any common interests with the killers and thugs who're turning parts of Mexico into a full-blown battle zone.

Thanks to massive amounts of legal, desirable commerce that's largely unappreciated by those who've never visited the border, a wall cannot stop corruption or drugs from entering the US. Nor will it keep drug cartels (or immigrants) out, not when smugglers are capable of building tunnels across the Rio Grande, for heaven's sake! Only Mexico can fight Mexico's battles. They're a sovereign state and we can't control what goes on there. But we can pay attention to what's happening on the US side.

So before we hand $1.4 billion to Mexico to combat the cartels, what do we know (or rather, what do I know - y'all help me out here) about the US side infrastructure of these multinational smuggling operations? Here's an overview derived mostly from past Grits coverage:

Transport

• Despite a steady supply of drugs nationwide, US drug seizures overall dropped in 2007.
  
• Legitimate north-bound border traffic will continue to increase, making expanded inspections impossible without harming commerce. Currently less than 1% of vehicles entering the country are searched.
  
• The Mexican Attorney General alleges that a fleet of 50 US-registered planes was sold to the Sinaloa cartel by unidentified American interests, including one captured and one that crashed in the last year, both filled with tons of cocaine.
• Someone has begun using submarines to transport drugs by sea.
  
• People, rafts, and a tunnel were used by the Gulf Cartel from Reynosa to McAllen
• Heightened enforcement has empowered cartels to seize control of immigrant smuggling, making illegal immigration more entangled with organized crime than ever before.
  
• Corrupt local police officers on the US side sell protection to smugglers on a per-load basis.
  

Arms

• Cartels purchase firearms in US - particularly at gun shows in Houston and Dallas - that are smuggled into Mexico and used in nearly 100% of drug related killings.
  

Organization
The cartel wars boil down to a clash between two different business models:

• Old Model: Gulf, Juarez, Tijuana cartels appear to be more of a gatekeeper for other, smaller smuggling groups, largely in collaboration with local law enforcement.
• New Model: The Sinaloa federation appears to have a more corporate-esque structure with a vertically integrated supply and distribution chain. And they don't want to pay any tolls for the privilege.
  

Money Laundering
I discussed this in more detail yesterday, but among the recent events I've been watching:

• Seventy employees of currency exchange company taken into custody in Mexico City, accounts frozen at Wachovia (Miami) and Harris Bank (Chicago).
• Another currency exchange with ties to US banks was recently taken down by authorities for laundering Euros.
  
• Ex-Im Bank gives loans to cartel figures; new guidelines promulgated to stop the problem aren't mandatory. (The Chairman of the 9-member Ex-Im Bank advisory board is Wachovia's General Counsel.)
• Drug cash is used to purchase cars in the US to re-sell in Mexico. Makes you wonder what an investigation of new and used car dealerships might turn up, huh?
  

US-Side Combatants

• A subcommander of Los Zetas, the Gulf Cartel's enforcement arm, did his grocery shopping in McAllen where he was arrested last summer buying watermelon.
• Los Zetas train US-citizen teenagers in America as young as 13 to work as hitmen, assassins and fighters in their war with the Sinaloa federation.
• Los Zetas have been blamed for US-side murders as far north as Dallas.
  
• One of these "Zetillas," or "little Zetas," allegedly participated in 30 murders on both sides of the river before his 17th birthday, according to Laredo police.
• In Laredo, more than 25 US children have been kidnapped and held for ransom in Mexico.
  

Politics

• The Chinese businessman in whose Mexico City house authorities found $220 million in drug money lived in New York City (where he was arrested) and claimed most of the cash was for paying off members of President Calderon's ruling PAN political party.

Police corruption
Just in the last few years:

• A former El Paso FBI regional director allegedly took bribes from an informant.
• Numerous official corruption cases at all levels routinely popped up in the MSM, each usually portrayed as an isolated incident.
• Extensive allegations of corruption on both sides of the river in the El Paso "House of Death" case were never fully vetted because a man who participated in multiple murders while working as a ICE informant was quickly extradited to Mexico before he could testify. He claimed Juarez police kidnapped and murdered people on behalf of the eponymous cartel, and that local ICE officials also took bribes. His description of the Juarez cartel, reported the Dallas News, "reveals 'The Office as a business enterprise in which no one is indispensable and in which dozens are killed each year for disciplinary reasons."
• A Laredo Drug Task Force Deputy Commander directed cartel smugglers around enforcement.
• The Cameron County Sheriff and some deputies helped smugglers caravan drugs safely through county
• Additional residual corruption abounds: E.g., the Troup police department was disbanded for taking drugs and alcohol from the evidence room

Each of these is reported and portrayed as an isolated incident: My goal is to look more broadly for patterns indicated by these disparate, far flung data, possibly suggesting "outside the box" solutions to what's obviously a growing security concern, though it has nothing to do with terrorism.

What else can we say about the US-side cartel infrastructure? As a policy matter, how do you get a handle on a problem this big? (Even for those who leap to say "legalize," large-scale criminal smuggling organizations like those described here still must be confronted.) There needs to be a broader conversation about short-term answers, because what we're doing is not working, from any perspective. Please leave any related thoughts, leads, hunches, or other suggestions for further inquiry in the comments.

Image of the Laredo international bridge via Penny de los Santos.

Who visits here? A bit of Friday afternoon navel gazing

Not a terrific shock, but according to Grits' latest reader survey, 20% of Grits readers are attorneys, 21% government workers, 6% are cops or others with a badge, and 53% identified themselves as "civilians," given those four options. In all, 466 people responded.

I wonder what other categories folks think I should have included that might comprise a significant bloc of Grits readers? Offer any suggestions in that regard in the comments.

Grits tends to average about 2,000 visitors per day on weekdays, FWIW, though I'd guess respondents tend to reflect "regulars," not all visitors. According to Google Analytics about half of Grits visitors are search engine hits, so I doubt those numbers apply to those folks.

In any event, thanks for visiting, everybody!

If you haven't already, please bookmark Grits for Breakfast on your web browser. Or, if you're a little more tech savvy, subscribe via RSS feed. If you use a personalized Google or Yahoo! home page or other personalized web interface (highly recommended), you can easily add Grits headlines just like any other site with an RSS feed.

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Following the money in search of American drug bosses

I've wondered frequently before who are the "drug kingpins" on the US side of the border, and speculated that the best way to find out would be to follow the money.

The most important money laundering connection yet discovered in the ongoing fight against Mexican drug cartels was revealed last year when, according to Forbes ("Banking on Drugs," Nov. 15, 2007):

In September, a U.S. registered Gulfstream II business jet carrying 3.3 tons of cocaine crashed in Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula. A year earlier, a DC-9 aircraft loaded with 5.7 tons of cocaine from Venezuela was seized in Mexico by Mexican soldiers.

Both of the planes were purchased through a Mexican exchange house called Casa de Cambio Puebla, and that's turning into a problem for Wachovia, the fourth biggest bank in the United States, and Harris Bank, the Chicago unit of Canada's BMO Financial Group.

One of the two planes turns out to have flown in and out of Guantanamo Bay a few times, which has led some to speculate straight up US government involvement in drug smuggling, since only someone with significant government clearance would be allowed in the restricted airspace.

Then, in November 2007, seventy employees of Casa de Cambio Puebla were taken into custody in Mexico City, and accounts were frozen at Wachovia (Miami) and Harris Bank (Chicago). In an indictment released over the holidays, the Mexican Attorney General alleges that money from the currency exchange was used to purchase a fleet of 50 American-registered aircraft, including the two captured full of cocaine in Mexico.

The use of currency exchanges to launder money appears to be fairly common practice, though I'm certain it's not the only method. A Chilean smuggler laundered Euros through his own chain of Casas de Cambio, funneling tens of millions of dollars through accounts at Israel Discount Bank of New York; Harris Bank in Chicago; and J.P. Morgan Chase in Dearborn, Mich., the Wall Street Journal reported recently.

It's hard not to notice Harris Bank cropping up in both scandals, isn't it? (When it comes to following money trails, I'm not a big believer in "coincidence.") Harris Bank was also one of ten institutions named by Sen. Carl Levin in 2001 as a "significant gateway" for money laundering.

Meanwhile, I've been harping on WFAA reporter Byron Harris' reports out of Dallas that the Ex-Im Bank gave massive loans to cartel figures, and criticizing new Ex-Im Bank guidelines for failing to make preventive anti-corruption measures mandatory. It turns out the Chairman of Ex-Im Bank's advisory commitee is Wachovia's General Counsel, a former Marine and Naval Academy graduate Mark Treanor.

Again, it's hard not to notice that Wachovia's top lawyer finds himself in a uniquely central position in two different federal investigations. Not only must his legal team react to allegations of Wachovia's money laundering involvement, at the same time the Ex-Im Bank, whose advisory committee he chairs, is allegedly loaning money to drug cartel figures.

Interestingly enough, Mr. Treanor has been selling off quite a bit of Wachovia stock over the past couple of years. Perhaps he knows something we don't?

No conclusions to be drawn here yet, I'm just looking at recent, published reports hoping to connect a few dots. But if there really are "American drug lords" out there, I'm starting to think maybe they're bankers.

TYC Executive Director Job Posted

The Texas Youth Commission has just posted the job for a permanent executive director on its website.

As the Dallas Morning News editorial writers said today on the op-ed page, "We hope Dimitria Pope, the acting executive director, enjoys that new $600 office chair, since it sounds like she won't be sitting in it much longer."

RELATED: See these recent editorials calling for management changes at TYC:

• Corpus Christi Caller Times: Texas Youth Commission remains troubled agency
• Lufkin Daily News: State agency doesn't do itself any favors
• Dallas News: Affront to Authority

Texas Monthly names Harrell one of group "who will shape Texas' future"

Texas Monthly named Youth Commission Ombudsman Will Harrell one of its 35 People Who Will Shape Our Future. Congrats, Will!

Here's their feature article about him written by Nate Blakeslee. Readers from TYC will be interested to learn that Jay Kimbrough's appointment of Harrell, he said, stemmed from Will's involvement in the campaign to abolish Texas' Tulia-style drug task forces:

The two first met in 2001, when Harrell was the executive director of the ACLU of Texas and Kimbrough became executive director of Perry’s criminal justice division. The ACLU had been pushing for reforms in the drug war, and seizing on a notorious police corruption scandal in the Panhandle town of Tulia, Harrell assembled a coalition to shut down the state’s scandal-plagued regional drug task forces. It was his first major organizing campaign as head of the ACLU of Texas, and though it took a few years to gain momentum, it became a stunning success. The governor eventually allowed the task forces to die on the vine, shifting funding and responsibility for statewide drug enforcement back to the more disciplined and better-managed narcotics division of the Texas Department of Public Safety. Harrell followed this win with hard-fought victories on racial profiling and sentencing reform. He had a knack for attracting grant money from national foundations, some of which had previously written off organizing in Texas, and he accomplished all of this at a time when progressive wins were few and far between at the Capitol.

In addition to the piece on Harrell, TM web editor Eileen Smith published a companion "web extra" Q&A with yours truly regarding a wide range of criminal justice topics, including TYC, drug task forces, and the role of race and the criminal justice system. (See the interview here; I told her it was really an "A&Q," since a couple of the questions were rewritten afterward!)

Just for a taste, when asked what would be the long-run effect on Texas' death penalty of the current Baze case pending before the US Supreme Court (which will decide the constitutionality of lethal injection procedures), I replied, in part:

There was a brief moratorium in Texas during the 1920s, when they shifted from hanging condemned inmates in the county jails to killing them in Huntsville. When they finally got the new electric chair system set up, they electrocuted five men on the same day in 1924 to make up the backlog. I don’t think we’ll see that many at once, but we might set a [modern] record for the number of executions in a single month as soon as the death penalty is reinstated.

Read the rest, check out the interview with Harrell, or see who else TM profiled among its 35 movers and shakers, including Charles Kuffner, our good pal from Off the Kuff.

Does camera surveillance in public areas reduce crime? New Austin police chief thinks so

So which is it: Is Dallas one of the most crime-ridden cities in the country with robberies of businesses on the rise, as the Dallas New tells us ("Banks continue to cope with spate of robberies: 2007 total falls just below record, business breakins rise 10%," Jan. 9), or have surveillance cameras miraculously reduced crime in Dallas' business district by 28% in their first year, as the Downtown Dallas Association told the Austin Statesman this week ("Acevedo wants to put police cameras in key areas," Jan. 24)?

I'm betting the Dallas News' sources are a better reflection of the real overall crime rate. Whaddya think? (There's a vigorous debate on the subject of surveillance cameras already occurring, btw, on the Statesman's blog.)

Even if crime has decreased that much, I personally doubt surveillance cameras had much to do with it. The best longitudinal camera studies say they do little or nothing to reduce crime when used for general public surveillance, as Acevedo proposes, and are more frequently used for leering at attractive women on the street than preventing crime. (When used on specific, high-value assets like car parks, and when they're monitored, they're more useful, but not just out in the street. See prior Grits coverage of a landmark study by the British Home Office finding little crime reduction from camera surveillance.)

I've argued previously that instead of "multiplying" officers' ability to monitor crime, even when they "work," surveillance cameras usurp police management decisions by over-allocating scarce resources to monitored areas.

While cameras in public spaces do little to reduce crime, they open up easy avenues for abuse. As I've written previously:

Great Britain has become the most surveilled country in the world, largely in response to IRA terrorism. Dr Clive Norris and Gary Armstrong of the Centre for Criminology and Criminal Justice at Hull University, UK, authored a study of the British experience called The Unforgiving Eye: CCTV Surveillance in Public Spaces, in which they found:

• 40% of people were targeted for "no obvious reason", mainly "on the basis of belonging to a particular or subcultural group."
  
• "Black people were between one-and-a-half and two-and-a-half times more likely to be surveilled than one would expect from their presence in the population." Thirty percent of targeted surveillances on black people were protracted, lasting 9 minutes or more, compared with just 10% on white people.
• Those deemed to be "out of time and out of place" with the commercial image of city centre streets were subjected to prolonged surveillance. "Thus drunks, beggars, the homeless, street traders were all subject to intense surveillance".
• One out of ten women were targeted for “voyeuristic” reasons by the male camera operators.
• "Finally, anyone who directly challenged, by gesture or deed, the right of the cameras to monitor them was especially subject to targeting.

There's another problem with camera surveillance for crime fighting purposes that's seldom discussed. Cameras can be defeated with inexpensive, low-tech means, like sunglasses, hats, hoods, minimal disguises, or a six cent paintball pellet. So it's very easy to thwart the cameras, but whenever a crime occurs, officers have to watch hours and hours of video, usually with little benefit to the case. And while they are doing that, they are not investigating crimes.

That last bit about cops wasting time watching video isn't just me talking. I borrowed the notion from a "world-weary" London cop/blogger who wrote in 2006 that "CCTV viewing occupies a disproportionate amount of police time with very little tangible result. This fact is well known to street criminals."

When both cops and the street criminals know cameras don't actually combat crime, the only reason left to favor cameras is to fool the public into thinking you're doing something as a PR stunt.

RELATED: Pink Dome has some questions for the Chief that can't be answered with more government camera surveillance.

Half of TX prison doctor positions currently vacant

Dr. Ben Raimer from UTMB says more than 50% of physician slots at UTMB are vacant!!

CORRECTION: Apparently I (and every reporter and senator in the room) misheard Dr. Raimer; the UTMB PR director contacted me to say that Raimer said 15%, not 50%, of doctor positions are vacant. I apologize for the error.

I've been listening on and off this morning online to the Senate Criminal Justice Committee's hearing on medical care at TDCJ, which has mostly been a laboriously detailed questioning of officials involved with the inmate described in this Houston Chronicle article ("Injured inmate spent two days on cell floor," Jan. 24). (NOTE: The hearing is over; archived video will be available here soon.)

In addition, said Raimer 18% of registered nurses slots and 18% of mid-level practitioners positions are currently unfilled. Raimer said the Lege increased salaries for nurses and pharmacists, therapeutic staff, and as of Jan. 1 increased pay for physicians, who make between $140K to $160K per year.

Sen. Robert Deuell, who is a medical doctor, was particularly concerned that L.V.N.s were making "medical assessments" of seriously ill or injured people, or at least in the case described in the Chronicle. UTMB claimed the LVN may have called a physicians assistant working at another unit, but Deuell walked through the documentation to show that such a conversation was never recorded in the file.

The state is still suffering, Raimer said, from the 2003 budget cuts, and also higher cost related to the increase in the number of older and elderly inmates. Every year 1.5% more people come into TDCJ, he said, but 14% more every year turn 55 years old, after which they have 5-6 times more medical visits than younger offenders.

Related MSM coverage:

• Statesman: Staff shortages get blame in inmate death
• Star-Telegram: Inmates death is focus of hearing
• Chronicle: Inmate's death called 'highly complex'
• AP: Panel mulls neglected inmate's death

New rules for TDCJ phone service approved; bids to be solicited soon

Nearly a decade into the 21st century, Texas prisons will finally enter the 20th and install phones soon in all TDCJ units, thanks to legislation approved by the 80th Texas Legislature.

Nearly 80% of Texas prison inmates will qualify for phone privileges under new rules promulgated yesterday by TDCJ, AP reports ("Texas prisoners on verge of getting regular phone privileges," Jan. 24):

The Texas Board of Criminal Justice on Wednesday approved rules governing use of telephones, and agency officials said they would draw up within a few days proposals for bids from companies hoping to land a contract to install and manage the phones in the nation's second-largest corrections system.

Texas is believed to be the only state not to have such a phone operation. Prison administrators traditionally had opposed routine phone privileges, arguing telephone access raised security and staffing concerns.

But state lawmakers, saying technology had overcome the long-standing uneasiness, overwhelmingly passed a measure last year that directed prison officials have a phone system contract in hand by Aug. 31.

"We're following what we were told to do," said Christina Melton Crain, chairman of the prison board. "During the last legislative session, the state leadership mandated that the board and agency put such a phone system in place.

"The implementation of these policies is the first step toward making this mandate a reality."

Following the bill's passage, Gov. Rick Perry said he had misgivings the measure would allow pedophiles and violent offenders among the state's some 155,000 inmates to have phone access, but he chose not to veto it because he believed prison officials could set up appropriate rules governing phone use. The measure had passed unanimously in the Senate and cleared the House by a vote of 142-1. ...

Some corrections experts believe the availability of phone communication allows inmates to keep in regular touch with relatives, that allowing continued phone access can be used as an incentive for good behavior by a convict, and that it can ease the financial strain on relatives who want to visit an inmate in a prison far from them.

How much it would cost people receiving the calls is not known, Livingston said. The rules allow friends and relatives to purchase time for phone use that an inmate could use like a debit card.

The vendor will install and manage the system and the state will get a portion of the revenue. The first $10 million each year from commissions generated by the calls is to go to the state Crime Victims Compensation Fund.

The Legislative Budget Board last year estimated annual revenue about $5.8 million, meaning all of the money would go into the victims fund. If revenue topped $10 million, 50 percent of the excess would go to the compensation fund and the other 50 percent to the state's general fund.

The rules don't overly restrict an inmate's phone access but do limit calls to people on a preapproved phone list for each inmate.

In general, prisoners eligible to make calls would have to be free of major disciplinary violations within the previous 90 days, have a prison job, be in school or in a treatment program. Officials believe that accounts for about 120,000 inmates. One phone will be installed for each 30 inmates, meaning about 4,000 phones will be put in common areas of prisons like day rooms.

Calls would be allowed only within the continental U.S. and could be made only to land lines, not cell phones.

Inmates would have unlimited calls but couldn't exceed more than 15 minutes per call and 120 minutes per month. Calls to an inmate's lawyer of record, protected under attorney-client privilege, would not be monitored or recorded.

Under the current procedures, inmates with good behavior records are allowed one five-minute collect call to an approved person every 90 days and only with the permission of a warden. When the call is made, a prison staff member is in the room to monitor the call, a labor-intensive procedure that takes the employee away from other duties.

The phone system also is seen as a way to combat a growing problem of cell phones being smuggled into the state's prisons.

I couldn't find a copy of the policy on TDCJ's website, but in general I favor the plan for a number of reasons not mentioned in the article: It helps maintain family ties, reduces cell phone smuggling, and provides a significant incentive for good behavior among inmates. I'm also hoping more regular phone access will increase information to family members and ultimately the public about problems inside TDCJ; it's a lot harder to cover things up when prisoners have a way to tell somebody in the free world what's happening.

We've seen a surge in prisoners sending letters home that friends and family members use to create prisoner blogs; maybe when this new technology is in place we'll see audio podcasts from prisoners calling home. Wouldn't that be something?

Concerns about the phones' use for criminal purposes, to me, are mitigated by the restricted calling list and recording conversations (except attorney calls). With those restrictions in place, I think the benefits far outweigh the detriments. The agency will put out a request for bids for the project, AP reports, within the next week.

Los Zetas subcommander convicted in McAllen: Details emerge of Gulf Cartel operations

I've heard of tunnels across the Mexican border in California and Arizona, but across the Rio Grande! That's an impressive bit of tunneling!

That's just one tantalizing tidbit arising from the trial and guilty verdict this week of an alleged Los Zetas subcommander in McAllen, providing unique insight into the inner workings of the notorious Gulf Cartel. Reports AP:

Carlos Landin Martinez was found guilty of nine counts including drug trafficking, conspiracy and money laundering over alleged cartel activities from 2005 to 2007.

Prosecutors said Landin oversaw an operation in which traffickers wanting to use lucrative smuggling routes across the border into South Texas had to pay Landin a "piso," or tax, to move drugs in cartel territory. Landin was the Gulf cartel's second-in-command in Reynosa, a Mexican city south of McAllen, prosecutors say.

Drugs came across on people, on rafts and through a tunnel that opened up through a manhole in Hidalgo, Texas, among other means, according to investigators. The proceeds from drug sales all over the United States were then smuggled back into Mexico, authorities said.

Government witnesses, arrested on similar charges and hoping for leniency in their own cases, testified about the operations but did not have firsthand knowledge of Landin, also known as "The Puma."

An exception was Antonio Parra Saenz, who testified last week that he saw Landin in a black Suburban in Mexico before he was taken away to be tortured for 15 days after a large load of drugs was seized from his stash house in Pharr, Texas.

One aspect of this case that particularly interests me is the decentralized nature of the drug trade. The Gulf Cartel, if we're to believe the government's case, is less a smuggling operation than a gatekeeper into the US for many, smaller-scale smugglers. They maintain the access points - tunnels, corrupt cops and customs officials, etc. - through which OTHER criminal gangs move drugs.

By contrast, the Sinaloa cartel has entered alliances with South American cocaine producers and purchased fleets of planes to create a more "vertically integrated" (to use the economists' term) production and distribution system.

Since we've been discussing money laundering recently, here's an old-school, tried and true method of laundering cash that cropped up in the trial:

an alleged cash smuggler for the cartel, took the stand in his own defense. He told jurors that he had never trafficked drugs or money for the cartel, but would often take large sums of cash in to the U.S. to buy cars to sell in Mexico.

I've not seen extensive coverage of the trial in the MSM, but it's a safe bet that to get a conviction based mostly on informants who never met Landin, that a great deal of the details of the Gulf cartel's inner workings were exposed in open court. I wish I'd been there to hear it all.

Ex-Im Bank stonewalling media on weak, new anti-corruption guidelines

One of the most important stories I've seen regarding drug cartel corruption of an important American government institution has gone virtually unremarked by the mainstream media except for a single, dogged broadcast journalist in Dallas, WFAA-TV's Byron Harris, who first broke the story last month about Ex-Im Bank loans to phony companies registered to figures connected to Mexican drug cartels.

Today Harris reports on the new Ex-Im Bank due diligence guidelines for loans that Grits discussed here, although as previously, no one from the Ex-Im Bank will respond directly to Harris.

Unfortunately, as mentioned before, to my mind the new Ex-Im guidelines aren't nearly "diligent" enough - all the key background checks that might reveal whether a loan recipient was connected with a drug cartel are still optional, for example, and are not required to be completed before the Ex-Im Bank gives out new loans.

Harris' piece about Ex-Im loans to cartel figures, to me, was a huge story, but he appears to remain the only person in the MSM who's covering it. (Another fraud case involving Ex-Im Bank loans to finance never-delivered exports the Philippines got a little more play.) The idea of using the Ex-Im Bank as a money laundering vehicle offers so many potential opportunities for smugglers, it literally boggles the mind.

I hope Harris keeps at it and more reporters start to ask questions about what's going on at this shadowy bastard child of NAFTA that may even be financing some of the folks presently shooting it out with the Mexican army in Tamaulipas.

RELATED GRITS POSTS:

• New Ex-Im Bank guidelines won't prevent loans to drug cartels
  
• Who are the big American drug bosses? How about the Ex-Im Bank?
• Ex-Im Bank scandal looks like tip of corruption iceberg

Bexar DA Susan Reed prosecuting needle exchange nonprofit volunteers

Though health policy activists in Bexar County had swapped clean needles for dirty ones for years in San Antonio's poor neighborhoods, reports the Express News ("Syringe swap activists handed citations," Jan. 23):

a San Antonio police officer cited Day, a 73-year-old retired commercial real estate appraiser and co-founder of the nonprofit group Bexar Area Harm Reduction Coalition, along with two board members, on a charge of possession of drug paraphernalia — a Class C misdemeanor, which is punishable by a fine of up to $500.

Now police say they plan to refile the case this week with District Attorney Susan Reed as a more serious Class A misdemeanor, distribution of paraphernalia, which carries a punishment of up to a year in jail and a $4,000 fine. Meanwhile, a legal team that includes high-profile criminal defense attorney Gerald Goldstein is assembling to represent the three in court.

"These are enormously decent, charitable people, and what's happening with them smacks of persecution," said Neel Lane, an attorney with Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld, which is representing the coalition at no cost and has filed a brief with the state attorney general's office on the group's behalf.

Looming over it all is a larger legal question, one that doesn't directly involve Day or his group.

Legislation passed last year authorized local health officials to organize a pilot syringe exchange program in Bexar County. It would be the first legally sanctioned program in Texas.

The program is stalled since the district attorney declared her view that the legislation authorizing it is faulty. Both sides await an opinion from the attorney general's office.

Assistant Police Chief David Head said the legislation — if it survives the legal challenge — authorizes only Bexar County's health authority to run a syringe exchange program, not a privately run group like Day's.

"Their meetings with this chief (William McManus) and (former) Chief (Albert) Ortiz did not lead to an approval to begin operating," Head said.

Police Officer Oscar Flores said in his report that he spotted a 2003 Chevrolet van parked at South Hamilton Avenue and Vera Cruz Street just before 4 p.m. Jan. 5, "with several known prostitutes and drug addicts next to the vehicle."

Day, Flores wrote, showed him a typical syringe kit, and said he was "swapping syringes" with people on the street. He produced business cards of a sergeant working in the chief's office and Deputy Chief Ruben Garcia with the Bexar County Sheriff's Office, "stating he was given permission" to exchange syringes.

Both Head and Garcia deny that permission was given.

Well do Head and Garcia deny they spoke with the group? Did they tell them they would be arrested? Did the activists leave with the understanding, as they claim, that they could continue what they were doing? It's hard to imagine meeting with police to inform them of your illegal activities, leaving the meeting to continue them, and then not be cited for years on end without local officials' at least tacit support.

But what makes the case more venal and petty was DA Susan Reed's insistence on ramping the charges up from a Class C misdemeanor - the citation the officer wrote - to a Class A misdemeanor that carries up to one year in the county jail and a stiff fine.

Reed did so IMO not for any public safety purpose (this 73 year old volunteer is no big threat to the public), but because Reed opposes a Legislatively approved needle exchange program. So she took this opportunity to maximally harass her political opponents. That's an invalid, politicized abuse of prosecutorial authority.

If you can think of a single public safety benefit to Bexar County from jacking up these charges, please tell me what it is. ("Sending a message" doesn't count - the non-profit would likely have ceased based solely on the Class C charge, since they were operating on the long-standing, empirically accurate assumption the program was tolerated.)

To me, this seems like an abuse of the Bexar DA's position, and an example where she's failing to live up to her oath to "seek justice," and instead seeking either publicity, to score political points, or both. Unless San Antonio has no more real crimes to investigate or prosecute, Reed needs to reduce or drop these charges and refocus her attention on locking up actually dangerous people.

Via South Texas Chisme and several readers via email (thanks, folks, keep them coming!)

Martial law in border towns; masked soldiers oust local police in Tamaulipas

After the most remarkable week of news for Mexican drug enforcement in recent memory, I can only imagine this astonishing scene, via the Dallas News ("Drug operation targets police," Jan. 23):

Elite army soldiers took over police stations along Mexico's border with Texas on Tuesday, disarming police, checking for unregistered weapons and searching patrol cars and personal vehicles for any items that might link the officers to drug cartels, according to an official and the Mexican media.

Special-forces soldiers wearing ski masks took control of police stations in Nuevo Laredo, Reynosa, Matamoros and other cities in Tamaulipas state during the morning change of shifts.

Can you envision the chaos when masked, gun-waving soldiers first descended on local police stations unannounced at dawn? If there were any honest cops left in those agencies, they probably at first thought it was the cartel attacking!

In the annals of police corruption I can think of very few similar scenarios to ski-masked soldiers taking over their own government's local police stations by force, particularly on this scale. What a mess!

RELATED: Pete Guither at Drug War Rant says this is just one of several recent examples of drug-related police dysfunction and corruption.

Challenge DA candidates to say what they would do to reduce racial disparities in drug imprisonment

I wanted to post on this topic yesterday for MLK Day, but an opportunity to spend the day with my granddaughter put off this editorial's more timely publication.

As we contemplate the upcoming primary season and head toward the beginning of Black History Month, it's worth recalling some contemporary black history - really everyone's history - regarding continued discriminatory outcomes in the criminal justice system.

In December, the Justice Policy Institute published an analysis of incarceration rates for every US county with 250,000 people or more. (See earlier Grits coverage.) The report revealed two key trends in Texas regarding incarceration of African Americans for drug crimes: Wide disparities between the number of blacks sent to prison compared to whites, and impressive differences in the size of disparities among jurisdictions, including some of Texas more "liberal" areas evincing the highest differences.

For convenience, I republish here the table I compiled from JPI's Texas data ("rates" given are per 100,000 people):



First, look at Texas' two largest cities, Dallas and Houston: Harris County sends black folks to prison on drug charges at 19 times the rate it sends white people, while in Dallas the ratio is just 9-1. Both cities have similar crime rates (near the bottom among major cities). Both have large central city black populations.

What accounts for the difference? I believe it's a function of decisions by local officials - mostly police deployment decisions (and possibly racial profiling) combined with district attorneys' charging practices. (I'm interested, though, in hearing others' opinions in the comments about reasons for such high and wide ranging disparities.)

Similarly, Travis County (Austin) has an amazing 31-1 ratio. (That is NOT a typo!) While in my experience there's no shortage of white drug offenders in Austin, clearly nearly all the enforcement resources go toward policing and prosecuting drug crimes in the black community, which makes up about 11% of the overall county population.

Whatever the reason, it's not simply because black folks do drugs more often. According to the National Survey on Drug Use and Health, in 2005 illegal drug use rates were 8.1 percent for whites, 7.2 percent for Hispanics, and 8.7 percent for blacks. These modest differences do NOT account for the differences in imprisonment documented by JPI.

Indeed some counties with (relatively) lower black/white ratios, like Denton and Tarrant, were that way in part because of higher than average rates for incarcerating whites.

Both Travis and Harris counties are in the midst of heated primary races to fill their District Attorneys' slots. I'd like to see every candidate for DA in those counties confronted with these numbers and asked point blank: What do you think are the reasons for these disparities and what if anything will you do to reduce them?

Speaking as a Travis County voter, our absurdly high rate of incarcerating black folks for drugs is unacceptable to me and I'd like for somebody in officialdom - at APD, the DA's office, somebody - to explain why that is occurring. With a month to go before Texas votes, there's plenty of time to demand that DA candidates face questions about these disparate outcomes before voters go to the polls.

Even better, I'd like to vote for a DA candidate who has a plan to change that discriminatory outcome. I wonder who that might be?

Goin' Down to Mexico: The front lines of a "hot" drug war

I was on my way down to Mexico,
there was trouble on the rise.
It was nothing more than I'd left behind,
which was much to my surprise.

- ZZ Top, "Goin' Down to Mexico"

I suggested earlier that last week was perhaps the most eventful in memory since I've been paying closer attention drug enforcement issues on the border the last couple of years. Here are a few more details bubbling up from the front-lines of the increasingly "hot" war in Mexico targeting multinational drug smugglers:

Wave of Mexican executions, violence
More than 160 people have died in drug-related violence in Mexico so far this month. At least 15 drug-related executions took place in Mexico last week in one 24-hour span.

US Attorney General promises gun crackdown
US Attorney General Michael Mukasey met Mexico City security officials and reiterated the Bush administration's promise to crack down on smuggling firearms. Earlier, Bush officials said the crackdown would focus on (currently) legal sales at gun shows.

Law enforcement under siege
The former public safety director from Juarez - El Paso's sister city across the river - was arrested in El Chuco for "possession with intent to distribute, conspiracy to possess with intent to distribute and bribery of a public official." He was appointed head of the Juarez police in January 2007. Four more police officers were arrested in Nuevo Laredo, along with seven other alleged cartel employees, including a US citizen. In Tijuana, seventeen died in drug violence last week, while cartel thugs attempted to assassinate the new police chief.

Sinaloa cartel leader arrested
I've been wondering whether Mexico's strategy to reduce violence was to take out the Sinaloa cartel's opposition and leave them in charge of drug smuggling, but this news complicates that theory, or perhaps dismisses it: the arrest of a key Sinaloa cartel smuggling figure yesterday as part of an Army sweep in that state's capital. Texas Congressman Brian McCaul said of the arrest,"You're really cutting the head off the snake. They lose a lot." Let's hope so, but I wouldn't expect such arrests to cause the violence or smuggling to decline; these folks lead massive organizations with significant infarstructure and a stunningly large profit stream. This is not a snake but a hydra.

Big-time US cartel connection?
Who in the United States allegedly sold 50 planes to representatives of the Sinaloa Cartel? We can only speculate for now, but according to Mexican law enforcement, someone in the US sold those aircraft to Mexico's largest and most powerful drug cartel. Mad Cow News reports that:

According to an indictment released over the holidays by Mexico’s Atty. General, Pedro Alfonso Alatorre, already indicted as the cartel’s chief financier, purchased the DC9 (N900SA) airliner, the Gulfstream II business jet (N987SA), and 48 other planes not yet identified for Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel with laundered drug money, using a company he controls which owns currency exchanges at major airports in Mexico.

I've discussed before the evidence gathered by MCN that US political interests numbered among the prior owners of a cartel-owned plane downed in Mexico full of powder last year. The Mexican indictment does not name which US interests allegedly sold the planes to the cartel, but if some US Attorney somewhere isn't vigorously trying to find out and prosecute them, I'd sure like to know why?

The egregious Sharon Keller: Imagine a family court judge who is "pro-husband"

Regular readers know Texas Court of Criminal Appeals Presiding Judge Sharon Keller openly considers herself a "pro-prosecution" judge. Noting that Keller attended SMU law school, the blogger at Appellate Law & Practice suggests:

While I don’t have much hope that this will happen, I would like to see the dean of the law school, John B. Attanasio, explain whether it is appropriate for a judge sitting on a “Court of Criminal Appeals” to describe themselves as “pro-prosecution" and whether it tells its law students to declare that they are "pro-husband" if they plan on going to be family court judges.

I'll email this post to the dean and see if we can get his position on the matter. (Don't hold your breath.)

RELATED: From the Dallas Observer, "Sharon Keller is Texas' Judge Dread."

Prison healthcare on Senate committee agenda

The quality of prison healthcare will be back in the spotlight this week when the Senate Criminal Justice Committee takes up the topic. Here are the time and place details of Thursday's hearing in Austin (invited testimony only).

According to the Austin Statesman editorial board (Jan. 19), "nearly 2,000 inmates died over a recent four-year span, the most in any state in the country - even California, with its larger prison population." Mike Ward supplied an overview piece in preparation for the meeting last week ("Texas medical neglect cases stir concern about prison healthcare," Jan. 16):

From 2001 to 2005, federal statistics show, 1,933 convicts died in Texas prisons, more than in any other state including California, which had 1,672 deaths and has a larger prison system than Texas. California had 175,115 prisoners and Texas 172,889 as of June 30, 2006, according to the federal Bureau of Statistics.

Whitmire, D-Houston, has scheduled a Jan. 24 hearing of the Criminal Justice Committee to examine prison health care, which is provided by the University of Texas Medical Branch in Galveston and Texas Tech University. Both universities declined to comment Tuesday.

At nearly 500 deaths per year, that breaks down to about one annual mortality for every 350 prisoners or so.

The point to make here isn't just to blame the UTMB, Texas Tech and the prison system for failing to provide adequate healthcare, though we know they do not. For taxpayers, though, each of those deaths represent an abnormally high set of medical costs leading to the prisoner's final demise. Even though prisoners with HIV/AIDS make up a small portion of the inmate population, for example, their prescriptions make up about 40% of TDCJ's pharmacy costs. The lifetime cost of treating an HIV positive prisoner easily heads into the range of six figures per person.

Just like in the free world, prevention and better front end healthcare leads to fewer overall costs. Every staph infection prevented, for example, saves thousands of dollars in unnecessary followup care.

One looming problem that will make prison health MUCH more expensive over the next decades: Elderly inmates tend to cost much more than younger ones, so super-long prison sentences inevitably set up taxpayers to foot those seniors' medical bills.

I'll be looking forward to hearing testimony at next week's meeting, but we've heard a lot about the problems before. The question becomes, are there solutions besides throwing massive amounts of new money at the system? That's all they could come up with in California, where court-ordered inmate health spending is now twice that in Texas, and it's the only solution I've ever heard besides living with the status quo until the court makes Texas do something. We'll see what Whitmire and the Lege come up with, though, for 2009.

See prior, related Grits posts:

• Texas underspends on prison healthcare
• Elderly inmates health costs rising
• Thirty percent of Texas inmates former MHMR clients
• Faculty blog fears healthcare for TX prisoners gives UTMB a black eye
• UTMB should make telemedicine work better at Texas prisons before exporting it
• I guess if it's possible to have "phone sex" you can have "telepsychiatry"
• Why Texas per-inmate healthcare costs are (relatively) low and why it's an illusion
• Death sentence for stealing a Playstation: Texas prison healthcare problems not unusual
• Sex crimes and elderly prisoners' health costs
• Prison health is a budget buster
• Lack of accountability explains why counties dropping UTMB healthcare
• Healthcare poor for kids in TYC, committee told
• UTMB mental healthcare quality declining at TYC
• Harris County kids in TYC don't receive prescribed medications, treatment

Chuck Rosenthal Haiku Contest

As the media snowball continues to roll forward regarding Harris DA Chuck Rosenthal's indiscretions, part of me wants to cover the blow by blow, but Kuff is doing a great job at that. So let's for once take a somewhat lighter approach.

Why don't we hold a Haiku contest (that's a Japanese poem with a 5-7-5 syllabic structure)? Here are a couple I came up with this morning:

Chuck Rosenthal can't
blame anyone but himself
for losing his job.

Or,

The DA's mistress
gets a cushy job
and a county car.

I'll choose the best ones and highlight one per week in Grits' sidebar.

Give it a shot - it's a fun little diversion. Leave your submission in the comments, via email, or post it on your own blog and send me a link.

Texas Jail News

Just a few jail-related headlines from around the state:

Staffing improved, though Dallas jail still fails inspection
The Dallas County Jail failed its state inspection last week for the fifth straight year. Officials knew the jail would fail, though more was out of compliance than they earlier thought. The good news: For the first time in years, staffing at the jail met minimum state requirements. That won't last for long, though, once Dallas opens up a new 2,300 bed jail wing next year.

What can Harris DA do about county jail?
Harris County Criminal Lawyers Association president Patrick McCann has a good column in the Houston Chronicle suggesting questions for District Attorney candidates, including what they'd do about the local jail being overstuffed with mentally ill and low-level drug offenders.

New information system speeds up Midland jail processing
In Midland, a new record keeping system helped reduce jail overcrowding enough in just 23 days that the county could stop leasing beds from other county jails. The system will also help the problem of offenders simply being forgotten: "By being able to monitor the names and time they've been in jail, someone doesn't become forgotten in the system," said District Judge John Hyde. "With as many as 300 people in jail in a county this size, sometimes names can be overlooked." The improved data system has sped up processing time all through the system, processing low-level offenders out of jail sooner and prison-ready offenders to the state more quickly:

Another thing the ... system does is allow judges to keep track of inmates who have all their paperwork ready to enter the state prison system. The so-called pen pack includes the judgment, the offense report and all the documents necessary to transfer inmates to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

The system also can show judges if a pre-sentencing report or any other paperwork is missing, Hyde said.

District Attorney Teresa Clingman echoed Painter, saying the computer system has helped, but it's the cooperation of the pretrial bonding department, sheriff, police, jail and the city's computer system has helped speed things up.

"It allows us to go straight into (the city's) system and download the officers' report within about 24-48 hours of the officer having written it," Clingman said. Previously, it took a minimum of 10 days for the DA's office to get police reports.

"We are whipping and spurring," she said.

Waco judge uses shaming in lieu of jail time
A McLennan County (Waco) judge allowed a shoplifting defendant to choose a shaming punishment over jail time. Said the defendant: "For one thing, nobody wants to spend time in jail and for another thing I have a life."

TYC hit on unbudgeted office expenditures

Grits commenters called this one months ago: The Dallas News reports today that the Texas Youth Commission spent $550,000 "meant for hiring new corrections officers on renovating and relocating offices – even though lawmakers turned down their request for such spending." ("Texas Youth Commission defied lawmakers, spend funds on new offices," Jan. 20).

Texas DA News

The New York Times ran a story this morning critical of Harris County DA Chuck Rosenthal for squelching the indictment of Texas Supreme Court Justice David Medina. I'm thinking Chuck Rosenthal's troubles may soon turn into a full-blown national media frenzy!

Kuff has more, as does today's Houston Chronicle.

In other District Attorney news, via Burnt Orange Report, check out this Texas Observer feature on the Travis County DA's race to become "the most important prosecutor in Texas" - that because the Travis DA by law operates Texas' statewide "Public Integrity Unit."

Jerry Madden facing bizarre attacks in primary campaign

Quorum Report lets us know that Texas House Corrections Chairman Jerry Madden has been the target of a negative push poll, allegedly from his primary opponent, John Cole, whose main political background is a stint working for drug czar John Walters in Washington D.C. before moving back to his hometown in Plano. The Young Conservatives of Texas issued a press release (doc) criticizing the negative push poll and calling on Cole to run a clean campaign, declaring:

“Jon Cole needs to come clean on whether or not he paid for or supports these dirty tactics that seek to smear the reputation of one of our state’s finest leaders,” Laura Elizabeth Morales, Director of Public Relations for the Young Conservatives of Texas said.

“Representative Madden is a West Point graduate with a sound conservative voting record. It’s shameful that these attacks are coming from such an inexperienced opponent. While Cole is new to politics, he needs to understand this type of behavior is unacceptable and wrong.”

In December the YCT, in a unanimous vote, endorsed Rep. Madden for re-election, citing his strong conservative record of making our streets safer and fighting government growth. In the 17th installment of their Legislative Ratings, Rep. Madden has a career rating of 85, indicating excellent standing with YCT.

The press release doesn't say what were the content of the negative attacks, but we can get a pretty good idea by looking at young Mr. Cole's website. The three main points of his campaign message are:

• Stop Liberal Drug Decriminalization in Texas
• Get Tough on Sex Offenders
• Protect Texans, not Criminals

Go read his whole issues page for a truly disconnected view of Texas justice issues. Full prisons, no problem! We should "Increase the penalty for those who sell [drugs] to children" and "Double the penalty for those who addict children and turn them into drug dealers." No treatment options mentioned; forget that we can't staff the prisons we've got now. Lock 'em up, is his sole plan, ignoring Texas' practical and fiscal realities.

For that matter, his call to "double" sentences shows he doesn't understand Texas' indeterminate sentencing process, where a third degree felony is punished with 2-10 years, and a first degree felony with 5-99. I don't even know what "doubling" the sentence would mean. He obviously (wrongly) thinks Texas operates similarly to federal sentencing guidelines.

Perhaps my favorite bit on Mr. Cole's website declares that he will:

Expose and prevent liberal legalization schemes. Legislators in Austin are minimizing the rights of children and crime victims and allying themselves with liberals such as the ACLU and George Soros to decriminalize drug crimes and retroactively review previous criminal cases.

There are no specifics or documentation, given, of course, because the allegation is absurd and false. Not only has Madden never pushed to "decriminalize" drugs, he expanded the number of drug treatment beds available and passed legislation to expand drug courts (which even Cole's literature supports as a viable strategy). In Jerry Madden we're talking about the Republican chair of the Corrections Committee, a West Point graduate, an engineer, and a Tom Craddick loyalist. What an odd target against whom to run a "soft on crime" campaign!

Another bizarre moment comes when Cole implies that Madden and the Lege have somehow coddled sex offenders, decrying Texas' "current 'catch and release' policy" (?... !) on sex offenders and calling for tougher penalties. But nobody's at the Lege has done more to improve Texas' supervision of sex offenders than Jerry Madden, plus he helped draft the version of "Jessica's Law" (which Cole supports and Grits strongly opposed) that finally made it through the process.

Cole says he supports "punishment over rehabilitation for all sexual offenders," but Madden's committee, which oversees the prison system, has to deal with the practical reality that sex offenders constitute one in six Texas prisoners, so many will eventually get out. For those offenders, Texans are safer if the system made an attempt at rehabilitation. Honestly, Cole's position seems flat out juvenile and irresponsible; I doubt, for example, the sex assault victims groups would support his "no treatment" hard line.

So Jerry Madden is taking cheap shots in his district from a baby-faced Drug War hawk. I guess I shouldn't be surprised, but I hope GOP voters in his district see past it. They've got a good one representing them right now, and given the crises he's managing in the youth and adult prison systems, not to mention his multi-year effort to strengthen community supervision (probation), for now Texas needs Jerry Madden to stay right where he is.

MORE: See coverage from the Collin County Observer.

Nedelkoff will move quickly to find permanent TYC ED

Texas Youth Commission conservator Richard Nedelkoff plans to hire a permanent executive director soon, he says, and it sounds like it won't be current acting E.D. Dimitria Pope. Wrote Nedelkoff in a letter to employees this afternoon:

I have begun the process of posting a permanent executive director position. While there will be a number of people I would like to consider, I hope to move swiftly on the identification and selection of this person.

That doesn't sound to me like the current E.D. is a prime candidate for the permanent spot. Making me even more hopeful, Nedelkoff looked to outside sources, not within Texas' corrections bureaucracy, for juvenile justice experts to assist him in the short term. He wrote in the same email that he had:

contacted three people who will be "on loan" to us from their current jobs and they will be working on a variety of TYC projects during the next 30 to 60 days in a part-time capacity. I will task them to become involved in various projects, including policy analysis and operational issues that I feel are a priority. These are some people that will be assisting TYC:

Rex Uberman, Assistant Secretary, Florida Department of Juvenile Justice

Mr. Uberman has more than 30 years of experience in juvenile justice, child welfare, substance abuse and mental health services. He has expertise in developing clear public policy and operational procedures and implementing interventions that stabilized high risk operations and reformed failing programs. Mr. Uberman has provided consulting services to the District of Columbia Juvenile Justice Reform, State of New Mexico Juvenile Justice Project, the State of Florida Department of Children and Families, the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, and many other state, federal and private entities.

Dianne L. Gadow, Deputy Director of Operations, Arizona Department of Juvenile Corrections

In her current capacity, Ms. Gadow oversees the department's secure schools and community corrections programs. These include youth on parole, medical and mental health programs, classification and assessments, education programs, and partnerships with community resources. Ms. Gadow has a history of successfully establishing major reforms and enhancing educational and mental health components in youth correctional facilities and the community. She is currently the chairperson of the American Correctional Association Juvenile Corrections Committee.

Leticia Pena Martinez, Director of Family Initiatives, Child Support Division, Office of the Attorney General

Ms. Martinez has extensive experience in juvenile justice issues, including creating a new office in the Office of the Attorney General focused on programs and initiatives that strengthen families and promote responsible parenthood. While serving as the Deputy Director/Director of Strategic Planning in the Criminal Justice Division of the Office of the Governor, she led the development and administration of innovative grants and programs that involve juvenile justice and delinquency prevention, criminal justice, law enforcement, victims services and community volunteerism programs.

These are good signs. If the first several high profile appointments had come from the adult prison system like the last round of managers, it would have been very disheartening. Not only that, bringing in his own people makes him less reliant on the adult prison transplants who currently hold most of the management slots, and should help him exert greater control over the agency more quickly.

Just as promising, Nedelkoff identified several key areas for "review" that also make me think he's started off in the right direction:

·The treatment and rehabilitation programming;

·The use of force/pepper spray policy;

·The security placement procedures and behavior modification program;

·The population management and facility utilization;

·The continuous assessment and evaluation of youth during their entire length of stay at TYC; and

·The institutional staffing patterns.

All of these, regular readers know, are areas where TYC administrators over the last year adopted strategies and tactics from the adult prison system to apply inappropriately to youth prisons. I still haven't heard back about the interview with Nedelkoff I requested, but his first few public acts have been cause for cautious optimism.

UPDATE: Jerome Williams replaced by Mike Davis as superintendent at Crockett, reports the Dallas News.

Sheriffs email deletion violates law, smells of coverup

Given that the emails which so embarrassed Harris County DA Chuck Rosenthal were generated in a lawsuit alleging a cover up for misconduct at the Sheriff's office, who really believes that the timing of a brand new Harris County Sheriff's policy to delete all email after 14 days is really a "coincidence"? Reports the Houston Chronicle ("Sheriffs office email purge catches some deputies off guard," Jan. 18):

Under state law, local governments and their departments must retain correspondence related to the department's administration for two years and correspondence about policies and program development for five years. ...

Austin lawyer Bill Aleshire, a volunteer with the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas, said he has noticed more local and state entities are enacting e-mail destruction policies.

The policies, he said, violate portions of the Texas Government Code if officials are deleting e-mails that relate to official county business.

"People under the Texas Public Information Act have a right to access to public information," Aleshire said. "If government agencies are destroying that information, they're interfering with the rights under the public information act."

Gov. Rick Perry's office has begun deleting e-mails every seven days, and a number of school districts delete e-mails every two weeks. None of the policies has been challenged by lawsuits, Aleshire said.

He also expressed doubt about arguments that deleting e-mails is primarily done to save electronic storage space.

"You don't have enough storage capacity to keep all the records when the records retention policy says you should, then you should get a bigger computer," Aleshire said. "Storage on computers is amazingly cheap."

Other county departments are not following the sheriff's lead.

Individual departments can develop their own policies. But Steve Jennings, the county's chief information officer, said he knew of no other departments purging e-mails after two weeks.

If you really believe this new policy wasn't a reaction to Chuck Rosenthal's email scandal, we should talk - there's a bridge across Buffalo Bayou I'd like to sell you.

Having it both ways on immigration: Crackdown on illegal immigrants coupled with slowdown on legal ones

With all the money spent on wall building, expanded border patrols and other immigration enforcement to keep people out of this country, according to this AP story ("Lawmakers criticize immigration backup," Jan. 17), the Bush Administration and Congress have underfunded the infrastructure for letting immigrants enter the country legally, adding to pressure on the system.

A deluge of immigration applications in the months preceding a filing fee increase last year should have been foreseen, lawmakers on Thursday told Bush administration officials. ...

Some 1.4 million people applied for naturalization in the 2007 fiscal year, which ended Sept. 30.

More than half were submitted in the summer months, just before Citizenship and Immigration Services, a Homeland Security Department agency, significantly increased applications fees. The flood of applications means people who applied after June 1, 2007 to become citizens won't naturalize in time to vote in November's elections.

"This should not have been a surprise. It was totally predictable," Lofgren said after presiding over a House Judiciary subcommittee hearing on the applications backlog.

Emilio Gonzalez, Citizenship and Immigration Services director, said his agency did anticipate an increase in applications and the increase was manageable. "What we did not anticipate, and I'll be honest with you, is a 350 percent increase in one month," Gonzalez told the subcommittee. ...

Gonzalez said the agency will soon conduct six classes of 48 students each to train workers to deal with the increased workload. Also, the agency is hiring an additional 1,500 workers, about half of whom will be trained to adjudicate files. The agency has asked the White House for permission to transfer money between accounts to address the backlog, [Rep. Zoe] Lofgren said.

But the agency faces the challenge of a backlog of FBI name checks that slow down application processing.

Any real world solution to illegal immigration must include expanding ways for people to legally enter the country. To judge by this story, while the feds have been happy to throw good money after bad on the enforcement side, US policies are functionally tightening restrictions on new immigration - raising fees and failing to timely perform background checks and process paperwork.

This is the first I've heard of the increased naturalization fee, but it logically seems counterproductive. There's no way it can raise enough money to offset the massive expense of militarizing the border with Mexico. The complementary policy to a "crackdown" on illegal immigration should be expanded legal immigration, not policies that make it harder and more expensive to get in.

The sentiment "send 'em all home and seal the borders" may play well as a political slogan, but it doesn't remotely represent a realistic border policy. When you hear folks call to "secure the borders," the caveat is often offered, "I don't mind if they want to come here legally and go through the process to become a citizen." But when higher fees and an underfunded, belabored bureaucracy restrict legal immigration, those same voices are mostly silent.

The United States is and always has been a nation of immigrants and their progeny. Bottom line, when people can't come here legally, they're more likely to come here illegally. Which would you prefer?

Ombudsman's report on solitary confinement at TYC available

I've not had a chance to read this thoroughly yet and I'm about to leave the house - I'll go through it more closely in the morning - but I wanted to post a link to Texas Youth Commission Ombudsman Will Harrell's memo referenced in this Grits post about TYC's use of its "Behavioral Management Program," which he says is devolving to adopt more features from the adult prison system's administrative segregation model.

See the memo, titled, "Concerns regarding increased utilization of isolation and security."

Texas Supreme Court Justice Indicted

A bit off topic, but here's some bizarre political-legal news:

KHOU is reporting that Texas Supreme Court Justice David Medina and his wife "have been indicted in connection with the arson fire that destroyed their Houston-area home last summer. ... The investigation was fueled by a substantial trail of financial troubles for his family, including foreclosure proceedings and tax liens against the fire-ravaged home, according to court records and other documents"

Medina is a former Harris County state district judge appointed to the state Supreme Court by Gov. Rick Perry to fill a 2004 vacancy. The Supreme Court in Texas only hears civil, not criminal cases.

UPDATE: DA Chuck Rosenthal has declined to pursue the case, even though it was his office who presented the information to the grand jury! Earlier his office intervened to try to prevent the indictment. The grand jury foreman has cried foul.

As Mexico fights a "hot" drug war, US not holding up its end in fight against multinational cartels

I've been trying to keep an eye on what's happening with drug enforcement along the Texas-Mexico border over the past couple of years, and can't recall such an eventful week, with the Mexican Army fighting a hot war with cartel forces south of the river, a leader from Los Zetas on trial in McAllen, and a law enforcement summit in El Paso to combat gun purchases by cartels in the US.

It's an axiom in the smuggling trade that drugs flow north, while money and guns flow south. While much Sysiphian effort is made at stopping the drugs and capturing the money, here in the US nobody really prioritizes stopping the illegal smuggling of thousands of guns across the Mexican border every week.

According to the Dallas News this morning ("US, Mexico set sights on stopping flow of weapons to cartels," Jan. 17):

Officials said that many of the weapons – including powerful handguns and semiautomatic assault rifles – are purchased legally at shops and gun shows, and that Houston and Dallas are two of the top sources. The guns are typically carried south across the border by multiple couriers whom some officials referred to as an "army of ants."

Even black-market military-style weapons, such as .50-caliber machine guns, bazookas and grenades, have been seized in raids.

The increasingly sophisticated and powerful weapons pose a risk on both sides of the border, officials said, but especially in Mexico, where at least 105 people have been killed in drug-related violence since 2008 began.

"Drug-trafficking organizations have made life at the border increasingly dangerous," Michael J. Sullivan, acting director of the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, said in El Paso. "And this danger extends across the border and into several parts of Mexico."

In Mexico City, U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey said the goal of what officials are calling Project Gunrunner is to dry up the cartels' arms supply in the U.S. by punishing gun dealers who knowingly sell weapons to "straw" buyers who then resell them illegally.

I've no doubt that's how a lot of those weapons are purchased, but the National Rifle Association has diligently worked in the past to weaken gun show restrictions. Rightly or wrongly, I don't expect that to change. If the Bush administration goes ahead with plans to crack down on gun shows in an election year, I'd expect a backlash from gun-toting voters.

Mexico, by comparison, has undertaken an even more dangerous and unhappy task. Mexican President Felipe Calderon's crackdown against the Gulf Cartel marks only the beginning of a baleful and bloody campaign against organized crime in Mexico, hardly the denouement. Reports Reuters columnist Bernd Debusmann ("In Mexico, the state struggles for control," Jan. 16):

What's happening in Mexico now is reminiscent of Colombia in the 1980s, when the Medellin and Cali cartels had more sway in parts of the country than the government.

Mexico has not reached that stage. There is no way that a leader of a Mexican drug cartel could win a seat in Congress, as did Pablo Escobar of the Medellin cartel, or run for a senate seat, as did the Cali cartel's Carlos Lehder.

But there are parallels. "The violence Mexico's drug traffic generates is similar to ours in the 80s," according to General Oscar Naranjo, the head of Colombia's national police force.

"Mexico is experiencing a second generation of drug traffickers...who try to assert territorial control in parts of the country to ensure their monopoly," Naranjo said in an interview with Reuters last year. ...

Colombia's success in breaking the power of its big cartels was due partly to close cooperation with the U.S. which provided money and intelligence. The unintended consequence: much of the illicit business previously run from Colombia moved to Mexico.

Now, along the border, Mexican drug traffickers are trying to extend their culture of corruption to the north, targeting Border Patrol and military officials they think might be tempted by easy money.

"In the U.S., the region most vulnerable to corruption is the U.S.-Mexican border and particularly the border with Arizona," said Paul Charlton, the former U.S. Attorney for Arizona who is now partner in a law firm. "The temptations are just extraordinary."

Over the past few years, investigators have uncovered scores of U.S. public employees who accepted bribes for helping to move drugs or look the other way.

Whatever the fate of President Bush's proposed $1.4 billion anti-drug package for Mexico, if the United States wants to reduce the power of multinational drug cartels it must do (at least) three things we don't do very well right now: Reduce US-side drug demand, stop arms smuggling from the United States into Mexico, and do more to eliminate corruption among US law enforcers. The rest is basically up to God and the Mexican government.

I'm not sure we'll ever see Mexican smugglers running for office like Pablo Escobar, not because they're not that powerful but because I think high-level smugglers learn from the mistakes of their peers. Observers like Debusmann have long feared the "Colombianization" of Mexico, but that may not quite capture what's happening: Mexico is its own ball game, with its own rules.

Mexican cartels wisely seem content with buying politicians (or renting them) rather than pursuing their own first-hand political ambitions, and instead have infiltrated law enforcement on a scale that never occurred in Colombia. Consider the case of Carlos Landin Martinez, the alleged Reynosa subcommander of Los Zetas, the enforcement arm of the Gulf Cartel, who is currently on trial in McAllen. How's this for a profile of a cartel kinpin:

[Landin Martinez, who is] accused of running a drug smuggling operation for the Gulf drug cartel while also working as the Tamaulipas, Mexico, state police commander, faces 10 counts of drug smuggling, conspiracy and money laundering in connection with the cartel's purported activities from 2005 to 2007. He has pleaded not guilty.

When the state police commander is a leader in your organized crime gang's enforcement wing, the fix is pretty much all the way in, isn't it? Wow! That's an impressively well-connected organization. (We can't be too judgmental, of course, since it wasn't that long ago we found out the head of the El Paso FBI division had been corrupted by an informant.) On the other hand, only the bravest would not cooperate when the alternative is having drug gangs target you or your family. "Plata o Plomo" ... silver or lead, is the choice cartels offer Mexican police officers.

I don't know what is the solution to that; maybe President Calderon and the Mexican Army are doing what can be done. But I certainly think they'd have an easier time of it if Americans weren't providing their opposition with high-powered weapons and endless supplies of cash.

UTEP Eyewitness ID Research Lab creates one-stop shopping website on police lineup procedures

Having become increasingly aware recently of faulty eyewitness identification practices commonly used by police and the wrongful convictions that can result when investigators use scientifically invalid methods, I'm increasingly under the impression that improving police lineup procedures could be a pivotal innocence reform proposed when the 81st Texas Legislature convenes in 2009.

To that end, there's really a lot of information available on the topic of improving eyewitness identification procedures on the website of UTEP's "Eyewitness Identification Research Laboratory," where you can:

Read basic information on appropriate lineup construction procedure, and how to evaluate lineup fairness.

Get our Do-It-Yourself Kit for assessing the fairness of an eyewitness identification lineup.

View a series of lineups from real cases that present certain problems of fairness, both to the suspect and to the public.

Access our research bibliographies on selected topics.

See information about the members of the Eyewitness Identification Research Laboratory.

Access publications of the Eyewitness Identification Research Laboratory.

View faculty and grad students Curriculum Vitae, and download a ".pdf" copy.

Follow links to other important sources of information in eyewitness identification research, education and training, as well as related criminal justice and psychology sites.

What a great resource! Good job, UTEP! I'll be combing through more of this material when I have time in the coming months.

Contrarian views on the steroids hysteria

Bioethicist Norman Frost "says, as he has for many years and virtually alone, that the maelstrom [over steroids in sports] is nothing more than 'the hypocrisy, bad facts, inconsistency and moral incoherence of anti-drug hysteria.'" Read why.

Meanwhile, Kuff cites testimony from yesterday's hearing to question the "performance enhancing" part of "performance enhancing drugs," suggesting:

it may be that the main benefit is quicker recuperation time for injured players, something I daresay the public might consider a good thing. Maybe the best way to go here, instead of doing the War On Drugs writ small, is to really pursue the research, and if it turns out that the risks far outweigh the benefits (if there even are any), to push education of that at every level of competitive sports.

Kuff recognizes that the "off with their heads" approach will probably prevail, but for my money I think his suggestion represents a wiser path.

Properly staffing Dallas jail cost big bucks, with more to come

Nobody expects the Dallas jail to 100% pass its inspection this week by the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, but if they've really solved their short-term understaffing crisis it will be a big accomplishment.

After many years of non-compliance with state standards, Dallas County has nearly eliminated staffing problems at the jail, the Dallas News reports, but only by spending more than $9 million last year in overtime. In the end, hiring enough guards to minimally staff the jail required the county commissioners to pony up an additional $11 million per year. Reported the News ("Overtime bill at Dallas jail tops $9 million," Jan. 16):

Sheriff Lupe Valdez's department spent more than $9 million on overtime at the five jails during fiscal 2007, according to a report made public Tuesday by the county auditor's office.

Some guards volunteered to work long hours to make up for staffing shortages, doubling their salaries with overtime.

In fiscal 2006, the department spent $9.4 million on jail overtime, which at the time was the most anyone could recall being spent. In 2005, the department spent $5.3 million on overtime. In 2004, it came to $1.7 million.

Commissioners approved 266 new jail guard positions last fiscal year, costing $11.5 million, according to the budget office. As of Tuesday, all but 25 of those positions have been filled, said Dr. Mattye Mauldin-Taylor, the county's human resources director.

The new positions were needed to meet the state's minimum staffing requirement of one guard for every 48 inmates – a standard the county hasn't met for the last three years.

Sheriff Valdez inherited the jail overcrowding problem, and since she took charge the county has both hired more guards and taken steps to reduce the jail population to bring the staffing ratios in line. Though she's receive a lot of flak for various problems, she deserves credit for that accomplishment.

However, the achievement will be short-lived if plans to open a new 2,300 bed jail wing in February 2009 stay on schedule. More expensive than building the jail itself will be staffing it. The $11 million per year the county just forked over won't make a dent into that additional staffing need.

At the state's 48-1 staffing ratio (a too-high number for safety's sake, if you ask me, but that's the rule), assuming three, eight-hour shifts, the new jail will require 144 additional front-line guards - perhaps 175 or 200 by the time you add in supervisors, travel details and backup, plus administration and support - call it an additional $8-9 million or so annually, as a ballpark guesstimate, just to staff the planned new unit.

If voters want to use incarceration as the primary government response to every social problem, at some point they have to pay the tab. Dallas taxpayers are discovering that they're only barely able to do so.

TYC's Brookins, Hernandez ordered to trial

Ray Brookins and John Paul Hernandez - the two former TYC administrators whose alleged abuse of youth under their charge plunged the agency into public ignominy and fiscal conservatorship - will stand trial this spring over the charges, reports AP (Jan. 16):

Brookins, 41, the former assistant superintendent at the Pyote jail, faces two counts each of having an improper relationship with a student and improper sexual activity with a person in custody. He pleaded not guilty to both charges. [District Judge Bob] Parks scheduled his trial for April 28.

Hernandez has pleaded not guilty to one count of sexual assault, a second-degree felony punishable by up to 20 years in prison, and nine counts each of improper sexual activity with a person in custody and improper relationship with a student, also second-degree felonies.

Parks set his trial date for June 2.

Given all the trouble and heartache caused at the agency over the allegations against this pair, I suppose it's a good thing for the charges to finally go forward, though I'm afraid it means we're in for another media circus over these same allegations during the two men's trials.

Say 'Howdy'

Go say "Howdy" to Life at the Harris County Criminal Justice Center, a new anonymous blog by a Harris County criminal defense attorney. The current reader poll asks, "How does the Chuck Rosenthal crisis end?" I don't know for sure, but I'll guess "badly."

Via Mark Bennett.

Life of a Supersnitch: Kill 20 people, rat out your boss, get $20K

Here's a classically disturbing informant story for you: Kill 20 people, rat out your boss, then get $20K from the taxpayers after you finish your 12-year prison stint. ("US paid hit man $20,000 on release," Boston Globe Jan. 16)

This is the same informant I mentioned that was recently interviewed on 60 Minutes who ratted out Boston mobster Whitey Bulger and the FBI agents who protected him. In all, he spent seven months in prison for each murder, at least the ones he admitted, then received a "$1,000 a head" cash bonus on the back end.

By comparison, the New York Times reported last year that 40% of innocent men exonerated by DNA evidence weren't compensated by the government at all for their wrongful incarceration. But this mass murderer gets $20K?

What's wrong with that picture?

Readers: Chuck Rosenthal should resign

The results weren't that surprising, but they were overwhelming. With 250 Grits readers registering an opinion in last week's blog survey, 89% of you (222) said Harris County District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal should resign over revelations that racist and lewd emails were found on his office computer, as well as evidence that he used county resources for his political campaign.

A lot of Republicans think Rosenthal should resign because his presence might hurt GOP candidates, while some Democrats suspect he may be guilty of official misconduct. But the main reason I think it's time for him to go is that we will inevitably see a long string of local stories like this one ("Analysis: DA has history of judgment issues," Jan. 15) bringing up all his old baggage. Reported the Chronicle:

Sometimes his behavior seemed mere foolishness. There was the oft-cited instance when he set off firecrackers in an office stairwell that some workers feared was gunfire. There was his less-publicized and highly personal judicial "voters guide" that he shared with other prosecutors. He offered opinions on candidates, including sitting judges, in language that often lapsed into the vulgar.

There were other instances over the years when Rosenthal's conduct has had more serious connotations. In 1986, for example, his tactics as a prosecutor were questioned when he was accused of sending two undercover police officers posing as defense lawyers into the city jail to talk with a defendant there on cocaine charges. The alleged trick was an attempt to learn more about a reported kidnapping. Even Holmes questioned whether his assistant, one of two prosecutors assigned to the case, had pushed the envelope.

The defendant's attorney, Dan Gerson, was incensed when it happened, and his opinion did not lessen over time.

"I thought it showed a willingness to cross the ethical line, and that Rosenthal believes that the end justifies the means," Gerson recalled in 2003.

Those are interesting stories, but the only reason they qualify as "news" is that Rosenthal's enemies see his blood in the water, so they'll inevitably continue to pound him with everything they've got, including events from the past about which the media long ago quit focusing ... until now.

That kind of constant drumbeat about their boss puts immense unspoken pressure on employees at the DA's office and discredits the whole system, not just one man. Grits readers are right - it's time for Chuck Rosenthal to go. Even if he's nearly the only one who doesn't see it.

RELATED: From Mark Bennett, "Harris County's Diversity Policy is 'Pretty Much Ignored'."

Mexico prevents graffiti by encouraging it at Azteca stadium

The last time I was in Mexico City in 2006, Kathy and I visited the UNAM campus and witnessed first-hand the graffiti-scrawled outer walls of El Estadio Azteca, one of the largest sporting events stadia in the world. (Texans may know the massive 112,000-person arena best because the Dallas Cowboys frequently play preseason games there.)

Cleaning this massive stadium must be an incredibly big job, so I guess after forty years of scrubbing graff off the walls, officials figured, "If you can't beat 'em, join 'em" (or whatever the equivalent saying would be en Español). "A graffiti contest with the aim of ending vandalistic graffiti in the surroundings of the stadium was held in Mexico City recently. The best 300 designs received got the chance to be done on the walls of the stadium."

That makes me want to go visit again! See a photo gallery of images from China View.


See related Grits' posts:

• Reduce graffiti by pursuing the crime, not the criminal
  
• Toward a restorative graffiti policy

RELATED: From Unfair Park, "Tag, DPD, You're It."

US made fewer cocaine seizures in 2007

After all the hype we heard last year from drug czar John Walters declaring that cocaine availability in US cities was drying up, now we know that not only is cocaine still widely available, the US stopped fewer cocaine shipments in 2007 than in 2006. Reported AP ("Fewer cocaine shipments stopped in 2007," Jan. 15), overall, "seizures fell from 262 metric tons in 2006 to about 210 tons last year."

Think about that: With all the increased presence on the border, the billions spent boosting the border patrol, the National Guard and overtime for local departments to curb smuggling, cocaine interdiction declined?! The reasons, as reported by AP, are frustratingly predictable; smugglers can change tactics faster than the government can:

"In any given contest of offense and defense you've got to adjust your tactics," [Navy Adm. Jim] Stavridis said, alluding to a conclusion reached by [Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Mike] Mullen and others that the drug cartels are nimbler than the U.S. government. They are finding new ways of eluding detection at sea, such as shipping drugs in semi-submersible vessels, and are flying drug routes from sites in western Venezuela that are harder to stop, officials said.

So that's why all these politicized border security programs, apparently, have done less than nothing to stop the flow of cocaine into the country; in fact, this massive increased spending coincided with a reduction in overall seizures. (Pete at Drug War Rant rightly wonders how Walters will explain himself?)

It's not like US security officials don't understand the real problems. Last year the deputy assistant secretary of defense for counternarcotics declared that "'The No. 1 narcotics problem we face is demand in the United States.” And yet most all the focus - certainly the bulk of drug war spending by the government - goes toward supply-side interdiction and incarceration, not treatment or other demand reduction.

Words fail me, other than to ask, how do you define success? Does this look like it? Ugh.

Ombudsman: TYC overusing solitary confinement

A report from TYC Ombudsman Will Harrell claims the agency is overusing solitary confinement to handle unruly behavior, reports Lisa Sandberg at the Houston Chronicle this morning ("Watchdog: TYC isolating youth offenders," Jan. 16):

Contrary to promises for reform, the Texas Youth Commission has stepped up its policy of isolating unruly offenders in solitary cells for days or weeks at a time, sometimes violating its own rules in doing so, the agency's independent watchdog said.

In a scathing depiction of life inside the troubled agency, TYC's ombudsman Will Harrell said the agency has embraced the use of isolation as a form of punishment, turning two prisons into de facto segregation camps where hard-to-manage youths languish in individual cells up to 23 hours a day.

"They're taking policies from (the adult prison) and applying them to TYC," Harrell said. "It is straight-up isolation for the sake of punishment."

"You can put kids in isolation to separate them from other youth or from staff for safety reasons, but you can't just leave them there," he said. "And don't lessen their programming. You enhance it. You address the issue that's driving the kids to be disruptive."

Harrell identified the two lockups as Unit I and II of the McLennan County State Juvenile Correctional Facility in Mart, east of Waco. He said the increased reliance on solitary confinement was happening in units throughout the state, often without the required due process hearings and without the required individualized treatment plans and intensive treatment services.

Agency records obtained by the Houston Chronicle indicate that the number of inmates in isolation has been steadily creeping upward since August, from 52 then to 82 now.

What's known as "administrative segregation" or ad-seg in adult prisons at TYC is referred to euphemistically as the "Behavioral Management Program," or BMP. As I described the process after visiting the TYC unit in Giddings at Thanksgiving:

Kids "on BMP" are in solitary confinement. They live in what amounts to a dungeon, in small individual cells secured by thick metal doors with a slot at knee level for passing through food trays. It's known as a "Behavior Management Program" because supposedly kids earn their way out of solitary through improved behavior, at first being allowed to spend pockets of time with other kids, then slowly being integrated back into the general population. Six kids at Giddings (out of a total of approximately 450) were on BMP when we visited.

Blue Ribbon panel member and national youth corrections expert Barry Krisberg told the Chronicle that best practices dictate against keeping kids in isolation for weeks at a time. "Nothing good happens when you isolate youth. These are youth that are already having trouble communicating," Krisberg told the Chronicle.

I've not gotten a copy of Harrell's report, yet, but I'll post it here when I do. UPDATE: Here's a copy of the memo.

Was TYC's Evins unit understaffed when a "small riot" forced staff to use pepper spray?

Even as the Texas Youth Commission conservator reconsiders the agency's proposed policy for using pepper spray on inmates, reports emerge of a pair of pepper spray incidents last weekend - including one involving 15-18 youth in a "small riot" - at the Evins Unit in Edinburg. Reported KGBT-TV (Jan. 14):

there were no injuries in either of two incidents that flared up on Saturday. One was in the cafeteria. The other was in the dorm rooms.

Now, an internal investigation is underway along with a state review by the Office of the Inspector General into the actions by TYC staffers. Representative [Aaron] Pena says what transpired over the weekend may have been one of those "rare situations" where the pepper spray was warranted.

But Action 4 News asked this: "Is there a difference between a rare situation and perhaps a lack of staff and lack of training?"

Representative Pena answered, "That's what we have to get to the bottom of."

I'm glad to see the local news in Edinburg is learning to ask the right questions: Would these incidents have arisen if understaffing wasn't chronic? To me, the use of pepper spray during a "riot" engenders little concern. Of greater import is the agency's failure to adequately staff large facilities.

What acting Executive Director Dimitria Pope and Co. attempted to do last year in defiance of the courts with their relaxed use of force policy was use pepper spray as a means of control to compensate for a chronic lack of experienced, qualified staff.

While it's one thing to use OC spray in the "rare" event of a "riot," it's quite another for TYC facilities to be so understaffed that "riots" and use of pepper spray become routine.

DoJ media ploy on steroid investigation rightly decried as 'foul'

Via Sentencing Law & Policy, at least somebody in the legal community agrees with me that the US Department of Justice shouldn't have used threats of prosecution to force uncorroborated public accusations against Roger Clemens and other big-league baseball players.

Writing in the online magazine Slate ("Foul Ball," Jan.14), law prof Frank Bowman declares that "the U.S. Department of Justice had no business feeding [Sen. George] Mitchell, and through him the public, damaging information about players it lacks the evidence or the will to prosecute."

While I disagree strongly with Bowman's complaint that more players haven't been prosecuted, his second main point captures perfectly why and how the Justice Department misused prosecutorial resources on behalf of the Mitchell report. He writes:

In public filings and proceedings, the DoJ's Principles of Federal Prosecution require prosecutors to "remain sensitive to the privacy and reputation interests of uncharged third-parties," which "means that, in the absence of some significant justification, it is not appropriate to identify … or cause a defendant to identify, a third-party wrongdoer unless that party has been officially charged with the misconduct at issue." (The italics are mine.)

Of course, that's exactly what the feds did in their treatment of the informant accusing Clemens in this case, Brian McNamee. Bowman's analysis also demonstrates how the coerced informants relied upon in the Mitchell report were hung out to dry by prosecutors in ways that don't usually happen in more typical, less PR-driven prosecutions:

In addition, forcing cooperators like McNamee and Radomski to talk to a private party set them up for defamation suits. It's fine for a prosecutor to require a cooperator to divulge everything he knows, provable or not, in the privacy of the debriefing room, because, in general, only the provable parts will become public, and then only in official proceedings. But McNamee and Radomski were given a Hobson's choice—refuse to tell Mitchell everything they knew and go to jail, or tell him everything, including the very possibly true but unprovable bits, and, once Mitchell went public, get crushed by rich guys' lawyers. Not an outcome likely to encourage others to come forward.

Bowman concludes that Congress should formally investigate the DoJ's misuse of authority on behalf of the Mitchell report, major league baseball, and by extension the media. I would add that Congress should do so in lieu of holding more hearings about steroid use in baseball.

In fact, make me philosopher king and I'd say Congress should then continue Bowman's prescribed investigation into law enforcement practices with a full-blown Congressional query into steroid use in law enforcement, a subject with much more significant public policy implications than steroid use by athletes.

See prior, related Grits posts:

• Marion Jones already punished, why send her to prison?
  
• Clemens informant shielded from prosecution: Do snitch agreements give incentives to lie or tell the truth?
  
• Baseball's Mitchell report relies on uncorroborated, coerced informant testimony to accuse 'Rocket' Roger Clemens
  
• Barry Bonds perjury indictment is pure USDOJ media ploy
• Why test Texas high school athletes for steroids but not police officers?
• Arbitrator reinstates steroid using police officer
  
• Cops on Steroids
• Insert Shrunken Testicle Joke Here: Book by ex-Texas cop defends steroid use by police
  
• Feds should check names of steroid customers with state law enforcement registries
  

How many tragedies must befall innocent people from false eyewitness IDs before police use scientifically valid methods?

I've been focused on Texas-based exonerations of wrongfully convicted inmates, especially in Dallas, but my brother brings word of another case just a couple of hours east of Dallas down I-20 in Shreveport, LA, where Rickey Johnson, 52, just got out of prison after doing 25 years of a life sentence for a sexual assault he didn't commit ("Leesville man freed after wrongful conviction," Shreveport Times, Jan. 12)

A rape victim made a positive identification that Johnson was her assailant, but:

DNA testing completed Dec. 21 determined that the Leesville man could not have raped a Many woman on July 12, 1982. The man who did was convicted in May 1984 of committing an aggravated rape April 30, 1983, at the same apartment complex

How many more such cases must we see before police practices and the rules of evidence are changed to strengthen eyewitness identifications?

What good argument is there for police not using double-blind lineup procedures with neutral administrators?

Given how many eyewitnesses simply get their ID's wrong, when will the Legislature require corroboration for victims who did not previously know the assailant (or for that matter, for informants who cut a deal for their testimony)?

I'd asked in a recent post how a value could be placed on wrongful convictions, and quoted my father, a civil defense attorney who said tort law allows compensation, among other things, for "lost consortium" with one's family and a more general loss of "companionship and society." Putting aside the legalese, what does that really mean? Here's an example:

During his 25 years of incarceration, Johnson has missed watching his four children grow. One was born just after he went to jail. He's kept in touch as best he could.

One son, a LSU engineering graduate, just moved to Baton Rouge. "I'm the only one he has now since his mother has passed."

And, of course, there are the grandchildren that he's never met.

How can this fellow ever really be compensated for what was taken from him? In my opinion, it's impossible, no matter how much money he's ultimately awarded (if any). He and others in his position deserve a legacy for what happened to them, not just a settlement.

The only way to adequately honor such an unfathomable loss is to strengthen protections against it happening again, adjusting policies and practices within the system that allowed his wrongful conviction to occur. Otherwise, compensating payments come to be considered just part of the cost of doing business (it's OPM - other people's money - to the pols, after all), and more wrongful convictions become nearly inevitable.

We know why wrongful convictions occur. What's missing is the political will from either major party to do what' necessary to minimize them in the future.

MORE: For more information on improved eyewitness identification practices see the website of UT El Paso's Eyewitness Identification Research Laboratory.

Dallas jail gets surprise inspection

The Texas Commission on Jail Standards decided to conduct a surprise visit to the Dallas County Jail rather than wait for their regularly scheduled inspection in March, reports the Dallas News ("Jail gets surprise inspection," Jan. 14). Despite tons of county resources poured into the jail in recent months, the core problems remain the same: Chronic understaffing and intolerably poor inmate healthcare.

County commissioners approved millions of dollars worth of new jail guard positions during the past year. The jails will have to meet the state's minimum staffing requirement of one guard for every 48 inmates.

Mr. Munoz said he understands that the county is working to complete its south jail tower and other large projects but that he expects to see improvements in jail staffing and other things "we've asked them to improve."

County commissioners will be debriefed by the team on Friday morning; the meeting will be open to the public. The final inspection report could be released by the end of next week.

At last year's inspection, healthcare documentation was so poor inspectors couldn't determine whether the jail was in compliance with state regulations. Since that time the US Justice Department has filed suit over poor healthcare at the jail. Reported the News:

Inspectors also noted in last year's report a lack of "sufficient documentation" to ensure that sick inmates were receiving prompt care. And they reported crowded cells and day rooms in the north and west towers.

Jail administrators expect TCJS to cite staffing, again, as one of the jail's major shortcomings.

So here's my question: How does Dallas expect to open new jail wings to eliminate overcrowding when they've experienced a chronic guard shortage that makes them unable to staff the jails they've got? That's essentially the problem we're facing at state prisons, too, and at some point it's absurd to keep pretending that guard understaffing will take care of itself.

In terms of new jail and prison construction, the old adage, "If you build it, they will come" is certainly true of inmates, but empirically speaking, it doesn't necessarily apply to prison and jail guards any longer, at least at current wage levels.

New Ex-Im Bank guidelines won't prevent US loans to drug cartels

Reacting to an investigative report from WFAA-TV in Dallas that the Ex-Im Bank has been giving multi-million dollar loans to drug cartel members who never paid them back, the agency has issued a new set of non-binding due diligence guidelines aimed at addressing the problem, but to me they seem to leave open many loopholes that could let this happen again.

You can read the new guidelines for yourself here (pdf). Called the "Know Your Customer" initiative, the guidelines sound positive on their face but contain a loophole that corrupt bureaucrats could drive a dope-laden truck through, declaring:

The guidelines do not constitute a checklist. Nor do they create any specific legal obligation. Rather, Ex-Im Bank’s partners are encouraged to consider these best practices in conducting due diligence.

In other words, these are completely voluntary, and nothing happens to loan officers who don't comply with them. E.g., they suggest that loanmakers check whether "any transaction participant or principal appear on a U.S. Government prohibited parties list (for example, Office of Foreign Assets Control or Excluded Parties List System)?" But since this due diligence document is only a suggestion, not a requirement, nothing happens to loan officers who fail to take that important step.

In addition, the due diligence non-checklist itself doesn't go far enough: Suppliers and key financiers for loan applicants should also be checked in those databases before making loans to be sure that Ex-Im Bank money isn't falling into the hands of organized crime. It's pretty easy to form a company whose top officers come up clean, but who do business with much shadier characters if the "due diligence" delved just a little deeper.

I'm glad officials at the Ex-Im Bank have recognized they need to address this problem, but they're going to have to do more to actually fix what ails the agency.

RELATED GRITS POSTS:

• Who are the big American drug bosses? How about the Ex-Im Bank?
• Ex-Im Bank scandal looks like tip of corruption iceberg

Mexican Army launches Gulf cartel crackdown

Open fighting between multinational drug cartels and Mexican troops and police has reached a fever pitch in recent days, nearly entirely focused on the Gulf Cartel, which has been battling the Sinaloa Federation for control of key smuggling routes along the Texas-Mexico border for the past several years.

According to this report, Mexican police arrested 30 suspected members of Los Zetas, a paramilitary group and enforcement arm of the Gulf Cartel, formed by Mexican military turncoats who'd received US Special Forces training at Fort Benning, GA. "In a communiqué, the Public Safety Secretariat (SSP) said Sunday that the arrests were made following two separate operations in the northern state of Coahuila." The Dallas News suggested that the operations evidenced a new strategy by President Felipe Cardenas:

"Since the first of January we have changed our operations," Mr. Patiño Arias told reporters. "It's no longer just patrolling, but rather a direct fight, a direct fight against specific objects, against specific targets that has grown out of important intelligence work."

One U.S. law enforcement official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the Mexican government appears to be seeking a direct confrontation with the Zetas, many of whom are former military officers or police.

Meanwhile, according to the Houston Chronicle, "Five people died in fierce firefights between suspected Gulf Cartel gunmen and Mexican troops and federal agents in Rio Bravo and Reynosa." Several Gulf Cartel smugglers arrested recently were US, not Mexican residents. Authorities said the "Gulf cartel had cells in Houston, Chicago, Atlanta and other U.S. cities."

Calderon's doing the right thing by having the military take the fight to Los Zetas instead of simply patrolling the streets, which so far hadn't accomplished much. Los Zetas aren't just murderous thugs, they've become an iconic symbol of the Mexican cartels that cannot be tolerated: US trained elite soldiers and police officers, turncoats, and wealthy, feared drug titans with as much influence in some border towns as the government.

I can't help but wonder once again, though: Even if the Gulf Cartel were successfully decimated and the Sinaloa Federation takes control of their routes, will the Mexican and US governments declare "victory" because violence has declined, or continue to target Sinaloa and other criminal smuggling gangs? For that matter, I'm not sure, yet, that the Mexican government can defeat the Gulf Cartel and its associates. Only time will tell.

UPDATE: Yikes! These raids by the Mexican military produced new but predictable intelligence that Los Zetas allegedly are in cahoots with local municipal police and other border-area law enforcers at the highest and most intimate levels, according to media reports. From the Statesman's Jeremy Schwartz,

According to Monday’s Reforma newspaper, Alfredo Zamora, commander of the municipal police in San Pedro de las Colinas (located near Torreon, a good six hours from the Texas border) was in charge of hiding weapons for the Zetas. Another official was responsible for finding the homes of kidnapping targets, a third official alerted the group to legitimate police operations that might impinge on their activities, while others committed the actual kidnappings.

The feds say that in addition to kidnappings, the narco-cops sold drugs, found housing for hitmen, stole gasoline from Pemex pipes, trafficked in guns and engaged in telephone extortion.

Photo of federal anti-drug troops via the Houston Chronicle.

Texas Criminal Justice-Related Races to Watch

What Texas criminal justice-related races are you paying attention to this election season? Here are the ones at the top of my own list of races to watch. Has anyone heard of new votes scheduled on county jail bonds? What additions would you make? Let me know in the comments.

Texas Court of Criminal Appeals:
No primaries here, and Given his past record, there's no telling whether J.R. Molina will even show up to run. But at least Susan Strawn is a qualified Democratic candidate against a CCA incumbent, and you can't take 'em out unless there's an alternative to vote for. I'm also pleased to see the GOP put someone up against Judge Womack, who arguably is Presiding Judge Sharon Keller's closest ally on the court among those running in 2008. Let's hope the MSM focuses on these and other downballot seats - Place 3 in particular, in my opinion, may be Democrats best chance to pick up a statewide seat in any race.

Place 3:
Democrat Susan Strawn vs. GOP incumbent Tom Price

Place 4:
Democrat: J.R. Molina
Republicans: Dallas District Judge Bobby Francis vs. incumbent Paul Womack

Harris County District Attorney
Before incumbent Chuck Rosenthal bowed out of the race, this looked like a strong candidate for a D win. Now the election will likely turn as much on the national political mood instead of anti-incumbent anger, unless perhaps Republican Kelly Siegler wins her party's nomination.

Democrat: Former Houston police chief C.O. Bradford
Republicans: former homicide detective Pat Lykos, assistant district attorney Kelly Siegler, defense lawyer and former prosecutor Jim Leitner and Doug Perry, who listed himself as a Houston police captain, lawyer and accountant

Harris County Sheriff
It remains to be seen how much incumbent Sheriff Tommy Thomas may be weakened by revelations about his relationship with disgraced DA Chuck Rosenthal, whose personal emails were revealed in a lawsuit alleging he was protecting the Sheriff from revelations about past misconduct.

Democrats: Guy Robert Clark, Deputy Charles Massey El, and former city councilmember Adrian Garcia
Republican: Incumbent Tommy Thomas vs. police officer Paul Day, who ran in 2004, and Michael Plagens

Harris County Judges
For the first time in years, Harris County Democrats have filed competitive candidates in every judicial race up in 2008. (See here [xls] for the full list.)

Dallas County Sheriff:
Incumbent Lupe Valdez entered office in 2004 on a platform of change then didn't fix the department's problems, particularly at the local jail. While there are reasons for that, in a campaign they sound like excuses, making her vulnerable.

Democrats: Incumbent Lupe Valdez vs. Sam Allen, Dallas lawyer Peter Schulte and Roy H. Williams Jr
Republicans: defrocked former Sheriff Jim Bowles, former Irving Police Chief Lowell Cannaday, Mesquite police Lt. Charlie Richmond and Cockrell Hill Police Chief Catherine Smit

Dallas Judgeships:
Judge John Creuzot may have trouble retaining his seat after switching parties and drawing a Democratic primary challenger, but this long-time drug court advocate has been pivotal pushing for more treatment and saner probation alternatives, both in Austin and from the bench, and it'd be a shame to lose him.

Democrats: John Creuzot vs. Hiram Macbeth III

Travis County District Attorney
Democrat Ronnie Earle is retiring after more than 30 years on the job, and four of his staff members are vying in the Democratic primary to replace him:

Democrats: First Assistant District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg and Assistant District Attorneys Gary Cobb, Mindy Montford and Rick Reed. Earle has endorsed Lehmberg.
Republicans: Yeah, right!

El Paso Sheriff:
With long-time Sheriff Leo Samaniego's passing, a lot of folks who've been waiting in the wings, particularly among Democrats, now think it's their turn. One thing's for sure - it'll be somebody's turn!

Democrats: Robert Almonte. Mary Lou Carrillo, Maria Guadalupe Dempsey, Luis Garcia, Carlos Leon, Alejandro "Al" Patiño, Jose Ramirez, Marvin Carrasco Ryals, Gabriel Serna, Richard Wiles, Larry G. Wilkins
Republicans: George Stoltz

Bastrop County Sheriff:
This position was vacated last year by former Sheriff Richard Hernandez after his indictment on corruption charges.

Democrats: Former DPS trooper Tommy Oates vs. former FBI agent Wayne Smith and Bastrop Deputy Glenn Wobus.
Republicans: Rosanna Abreo vs. Terry Pickering

Let me know what other Texas DA, Sheriffs or criminal judicial races your paying attention to during the 2008 election cycle.

Texas ACLU hires former newspaper editor as new chief

My former employers at the ACLU of Texas - an organization led mostly by lawyers in the past - appear to have decided to go in a different direction with the hiring of Terri Burke as their new Executive Director. She's a former editor at the Abilene Reporter News and a past deputy managing editor at the Austin American Statesman. Burke replaces interim director Richard Alvarado, who by all accounts did a fantastic job after the previous E.D., Will Harrell, left last spring to accept an appointment by Governor Perry as Texas Youth Commission ombudsman. Buena suerte, amiga!

Photo via the Abilene Reporter News

Floating prisons?

Though I hesitate mentioning it lest I give any Texas Youth Commission officials more bad ideas, I enjoyed this somewhat theoretical but informative article from Bryan Finoki at his blog, Subtopia: A field guide to military urbanism, on the history of "floating prisons." His essay not only details and links to a great deal of history I'd never read before, he hints that floating prisons may still be used today by the US military or intelligence community as part of the War on Terror to incarcerate suspects outside of territorial waters where local or US laws may fetter their activities.

From this source we learn a bit about the unhappy history of using ships or "hulks" as floating prisons in Britain, an idea which apparently endured trouble from the start: "The plan of confining offenders on board hulks was first adopted in England in 1776; but so early was their management abused, that in 1778, it was inquired into by Parliament; and in 1785, reported to have singularly improved the practice of villany."

Much more recently in the United States, Subtopia informs us, floating prisons have been met with less than enthusiastic welcomes from federal authorities, though New York City still operates a jail ship at Rikers Island:

during the early 90’s when New York City, aiming to fix its overcrowded prison problems, built a “five-story jail barge” –- the Bain -- as big as two football fields, to store 800 prisoners, that was at one point being considered as something perhaps to be mimicked in Norfolk, Virginia, and New Jersey, but who would later scrap that plan. At the time, it was considered New York’s most expensive jail at $161m, and was delivered 2 years late and considerably over budget. The city operated two other barges prior - the Bibby Venture and Bibby Resolution – which were eventually closed in 1992 when “they ran afoul of federal authorities.” The Vernon C. Bain Center (VCBC), moored nearby Rikers Island (an island jail) is still used today.

Fascinating stuff. Clearly the idea has declined significantly in popularity in the modern era, but has yet to have been completely extinguished among corrections officials looking for ever cheaper ways to house prisoners. The Dutch constructed a floating prison for illegal immigrants, for example, albeit amidst significant opposition.

I present this information not as any suggestion or practice I'd endorse, but only to point out a quirky approach to incarceration from a past, less civilized age. Floating prisons today are likely a bad idea, certainly for Texas with its hurricane-prone coastline. But given the topics this blog covers I was intrigued by the history Finoki provided, and thought other Grits readers may enjoy reading his essay as well.

(Image: A British ship that some officials want to transform into a floating jail.)

Might 'open sourced' criminal intelligence protect journalists and strike a blow against multinational drug cartels?

In the 21st century's information age, perhaps the role and function of "intelligence" in law enforcement needs to change to adapt to ruthless tactics by multinational drug cartels?

The Los Angeles Times today has a story today titled, simply, "The drug business has become so deadly those covering it are risking their lives." Bottom line, not only reporters but even pop singers who name names of drug runners have been gunned down in Mexico with increasing and frightening frequency.

As an hypothetical thought experiment, what could law enforcement do to help that problem?

I'm thinking of a potential media strategy where government systematically exposes what it knows about drug cartel operations in order to a) protect and assist journalists and b) generate additional intelligence and public cooperation. That might create new opportunities in the battle against organized crime, especially compared to the tactic of concealing information from the public, which leaves truth tellers in the media and informants horribly exposed.

The traditional role of intelligence gathering in law enforcement, as in national security, has been to develop secret knowledge and expertise, but decades of law enforcement efforts have failed to stem the tide of drug smuggling, until today illegal drugs make up 14% of global agricultural exports, and are widely available in every corner of the United States. Those traditional approaches have failed.

I remember listening during a legislative committee hearing in 2007 to a DPS narcotics commander identify the various "plazas" along the border where drugs routinely came across (at the major checkpoints, basically). He said they'd identified each drug trafficking organizations' leaders and top lieutenants at most plazas, but wouldn't give details.

Here's my question: Why not expose what you know about these folks, and that way more journalists don't get killed doing the job for you? Given the utter failure at arresting and prosecuting multinational drug cartels on a scale that affects supply, what benefit does law enforcement gain from keeping that information a secret?

Even if Mexican or US police can't capture or convict cartel figures for their crimes, you can publicize them, increasingly over time educating the public on their misdeeds and turning them into pariahs instead of some sort of latter day Robin Hoods.

When an informant is killed, tell the media who they were prepared to rat on. When a police officer is murdered, tell the public who they were investigating that got them killed. When arrests are made, don't just give the media names and charges but the narrative as to how they fit into this, that or the other drug trafficking organization's overall operations.

That way, reporters won't have to die telling the public information their government already knows.

There would still be some information that couldn't be revealed because it could only have come from a particular, readily identifiable individual who would be endangered, but the more information generally that's circulating about drug cartels, the more difficult it will become to pinpoint any one source for any particular piece of datum.

Plus, putting information out in the world inevitably means law enforcement would get information back. That's the lesson of the blogosphere compared to the MSM: There's always someone out there with more or different information or views who we may not know about, and we learn more by engaging them in conversation. That's arguably more true about black market criminal activity than it is, even about more commonly debated public policy topics.

Spreading information widely invites an interactive relationship with the public in a way that wasn't possible 10-15 years ago, when limitations on technology dictated more of a one-way exchange. That's been true in the media, and it's an argument, to me, for law enforcement changing its historic information strategies when battling multinational drug cartels.

In the same sense that open source software tends to be more secure than proprietary systems (because more eyes are scanning the code looking for mistakes and problems), "open sourcing" criminal intelligence gathering - or portions of it - might achieve important policy objectives, assisting in winning hearts and minds of the public and empowering the public with knowledge that will help them recognize when they run across information that could help authorities.

If cartel thugs can intimidate the media into not reporting their names or actions, they win a significant victory. Law enforcement in both the US and Mexico could seize that victory from the cartels' grasp and protect journalists in the process, simply by telling us what they know.

Even better, if they include a comment section, or its equivalent, the public can return the favor. What do you think? It's a bit of a radical idea, and no doubt there would be risks, as there are with the current strategies; but then, extreme times call for extreme measures.

Aren't Martha Stewart and other Felons "People"?

Doc Berman made this great catch over at Sentencing Law & Policy: In an amicus brief to the US Supreme Court, the Bush administration takes the position that convicted felons are not "people" as defined in the Constitution for purposes of determining whether they retain a 2nd Amendment right to bear arms, Berman responds:

Notably, the Bill of Rights uses the phrase "the people" in four other Amendments (the First, Fourth, Ninth and Tenth). I have never before heard a claim that all convicted felons are categorically denied the individual rights protected by all these Amendments. The Fourth Amendment, notably, speaks of the "right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures." The Supreme Court has never suggested that individuals, once convicted of a felony, thereafter cannot assert Fourth Amendment rights.

Despite Berman's clear logic, I wouldn't be surprised if SCOTUS buys this absurd argument. After all, they've already declared that a search isn't a search if police are only looking for illegal things.

We Are Not Alone: California may resort to early release for nonviolent offenders to stem prison overcrowding

As Texas considers whether to release parole-ready offenders early to respond to chronic prison guard understaffing, it's interesting to note that California is already two steps ahead of us with their plans to release prisoners ("Early release plan is praised, decried," Los Angeles Times, Jan. 11):

Overall, [Gov. Arnold] Schwarzenegger's budget estimates that his plan would cut the prison population, now 173,000, by more than 28,000 inmates next year and nearly 35,000 by 2010. As many as 2,000 prison guards would face layoffs.

For the state to reduce the inmate population enough to save, as it hopes, more than $370 million by 2009 and $750 million annually by 2010, it would have to keep 50,000 or more convicts out of prison, by some estimates. That is because many serve only a few months at a time; the state might have to get rid of three short-timers to eliminate one bed.

The secretary of California's Department of Corrections says he believes the state's prison system is "too big to manage." If so, then so is Texas'. California incarcerates around 173,000 inmates, compared to about 157,000 in Texas (although California's overall population is more than 50% greater than ours).

Even critics of Schwarzenegger's plan in California appear recognize the self-defeating trends that brought them there: "'I voted for these measures like 'three-strikes' too,' said [Richard] Word, president of the police chiefs association. 'I guess this is the price you have to pay. The bill is due now.'"

Marion Jones already punished, why send her to prison?

News that disgraced world-class sprinter and 32-year old mother Marion Jones will be serving her six month prison stint in Bryan, TX, gives me a Texas news hook to mention that I'm as disgusted with the feds' pursuit of this star athlete as with the perjury prosecution of Barry Bonds and coercing the informant against Roger Clemens with threats of federal prison time. (You can read Jones' own account of events here.)

I tend to agree with Alan Gold, writing in The Australian, that prison for Jones consitutes the least of her real punishment, and serves no public safety purpose:

The six months, though, is only a small part of her sentence. Quite as punishing has been her exposure before the world's media, an admission to her family and her fans that she's a liar and a cheat; being stripped of her medals; and the expurgation of her name from the record books. Not allowed to represent her nation at the Beijing Olympics, Jones no longer has an athletic career, her life is in tatters and all the years of sacrifice and exhaustive training have come to naught because of her weakness and artifice. Her use of drugs and the lies she told to avoid punishment have ruined any future to which she might have looked forward.

Which begs the question, what additional value is there in locking her up in prison when she is already serving a sentence of humiliation witnessed by people across the world? ...

For Jones, and for criminals who pose no real threat to society, to be sent to prison for their misdemeanours adds a substantial financial burden to the state and exponentially increases the severity of the sentence. In Jones's case, prison is arbitrary and unnecessary. What value is there, other than revenge, in Jones's incarceration? As one of the world's most brilliant athletes - with or without drugs - surely society would be far better served by her doing neighbourhood charitable work, or training youngsters, or sweeping the streets under a community service order. By doing so, she would be purging her crime to society, benefiting those less fortunate and returning daily to her young children.

As to her punishment for her crimes, or the rehabilitation which is the theoretical value of incarceration, the fact that no American team or event will accept her as an athlete is surely chastisement enough.

Over at Sentencing Law & Policy, commenter William Jockusch made a comparison that shows how bizarre this punishment seems to me:

[C]ompare Marion Jones with Mike Nifong:

A prosecutor lies to try to get three innocent people convicted, continually denies his crime, gets a state sentence of 1 day, and the Feds decline to investigate.

A non lawyer lies to investigators about steroids. A federal prosecution ensues. The defendant pleads guilty and gets 6 months.

What is wrong with this picture?

What's wrong, indeed? That observation gets a lot closer to my own beef with the hypocrisy of steroid investigations in sports: Federal investigators are ignoring a rising epidemic of steroid use among law enforcement officers, while targeting athletes many of whom committed no crime at the time they took the since-banned substances. Where are the headlines about feds securing indictments against juicing police officers or military contractors?

Marion Jones will be and has already been punished ... by her sponsors, by her sport, by her friends and peers, and through her general public disgrace. What is gained from locking her up away from her family compared to all that? I sure don't see it.

UPDATE: Marion Jones talks to Oprah.

When probation is a "free ride," it means local leaders have failed

On Thursday at the Texas Public Policy Foundation's briefing, I heard Bexar County DA Susan Reed describe offenders who receive probation sentences instead of jail as getting a "free ride," which always strikes me as an odd thing to say, though you hear it a lot (an audio of her remarks has been posted online). She made the comment to criticize a bill passed in 2003 (described here) requiring probation for first-time offenders for low-level drug possession.

Probation, or "community supervision," doesn't have to be weak and ineffective, even if that's how she ran things when she was a judge (and how many counties operate). Given that more than three times as many Texans are on probation as locked up in prison, if it's really true that probation is a "free ride," it speaks more to the failures of folks like her running the criminal justice system than it discredits the idea of supervising offenders in the community.

In reality, Reed's description isn't always accurate, at least when probation functions like it should. More than a few offenders reject probation deals, preferring to accept incarceration sentences because probation is too tough.

Here's a great example from Dallas of how stronger probation programs can generate superior outcomes to incarceration for low-level, mentally ill offenders ("'Jail diversion' gives those with mental illness a chance to take control of life," Dec. 19, 2007):

"If they can stay out of the criminal justice system for a year or two, that's a success," said Judge [Kristin] Wade, a county court appellate judge who was recruited by former County Judge Margaret Keliher to lead the program three years ago.

The notion is sterling in its practicality: For some people, close supervision is much more effective than jail.

Minor offenders with mental illness are often revolving-door inmates. They're arrested, incarcerated and released, and they promptly return to their old habits.

The state-authorized "jail diversion" program offers them a chance to stay out of lockup and have the charges against them dismissed. In exchange, they have to submit to a program of close supervision much more demanding than most probation programs.

Case managers make sure they stay on their medications and off drugs and alcohol. They must attend counseling sessions, stay out of trouble, prove they're keeping doctor appointments. They have to find housing and jobs – many are homeless when they start the program – and submit to drug testing.

The star of the party was Jerome Benavidez, who was a crack addict living under a bridge when he enrolled in the diversion program.

"I got stable on my meds. That was the first thing," said Mr. Benavidez, 36, whose bipolar disorder was gradually brought under control with monitored medication.

The court program provided the resources and support – a step-by-step guide for returning to ordinary, law-abiding, independent life. Mr. Benavidez had to do the work himself, but the tools and the instruction manual were there.

Today, he's a preppy-looking student working toward a degree in bilingual education (he earned two A's and a B this semester).

"I'm on a level playing field now with everybody else," he said. "I can make my life as good or as bad as I want it."

Jail diversion doesn't work for everybody, but it works. Judge Wade estimated that 65 percent of the program's participants stay out of the system for at least a couple of years, easing the crushing incarceration burden on county resources.

These aren't average offenders; mentally ill, homeless people may wind up in and out of the jail many times per year, so if 65% stay out of jail for two years, that's a highly successful program

Judge Wade's court's example shows that stronger probation can work better than incarceration, even for (some of) the most difficult recidivist offenders. If a probation sentence ever turns out to be a "free ride," it's because the judges who run the probation department and the DA who negotiates probation terms aren't doing their jobs as well as they should.

Governor: No crisis from prison understaffing - move along, nothing to see here

Texas' shortage of prison guards, which in some cases has resulted in three correctional officers supervising 500 inmates in a dorm setting and recently forced the closure of a wing at the Dalhart unit, isn't a "crisis," says Governor Perry, contradicting Sen. John Whitmire who'd used that word earlier in the week.

Retorted the Austin Statesman editorial board, "It would be tragic if proof of a crisis arrived in the form of a prison riot that overran, and perhaps murdered, guards." Indeed, it would be both "tragic" and preventable. Gov. Perry and the Legislature have been warned of this growing dilemma for several years, but in 2007 preferred to construct new prisons (that we probably can't staff) instead of addressing the lack of guards at current ones.

On Thursday at the Texas Public Policy Foundation's legislative issues seminar, I asked House Corrections Chair Jerry Madden in the public Q&A how they planned to staff new prisons when they're so short on guards now. He replied that new prisons would be built near larger population centers to make it easier to hire guards. I didn't follow up, but larger population centers also have a much higher cost of living than Dalhart, Palestine, or Livingston - I'm not sure that will necessarily solve the problem.

The Statesman's Mike Ward, whose earlier reportage first revealed the Dalhart-wing closure, pointed out that thousands of trusties - who perform routine guard functions and frequently are allowed free passage in TDCJ vehicles to run errands outside facilities - are eligible for parole and could be immediately released. Sen. Whitmire believes that as many as 11,000 convicts who've already been approved for parole - but who're waiting for paperwork to be processed or for access to required treatment programs - could possibly be released in the short term to reduce overcrowding. Reported Ward ("Speeding release of parolees could ease guard shortage, lawmakers say," Jan. 12):

Although guard shortages have been building for several years, primarily because of low pay and poor working conditions, the magnitude of the current problems took some state leaders by surprise this week when it was disclosed that a 300-bed wing in a Panhandle prison had been closed because there weren't enough guards to staff it. And although lawmakers began talking Thursday about how to remedy the situation, nobody was suggesting a pay raise for correctional officers. Legislative analysts said a pay hike that correctional officers are seeking is not currently possible because it could cost upward of $500 million, a big-ticket item not in the state budget.

"In my judgment, we have thousands of people locked up who don't need to be there," said Whitmire, D-Houston, chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee.

"Last year, there were 6,200 trusties in the system — the lowest, lowest-risk offenders — and 5,700 of those were parole-eligible. But they were still locked up. ... There were 1,500 that were already approved for parole with a release date for next summer.

"Why not go ahead and process them out, drop the population of the system so we have enough correctional officers to properly cover shifts?"

Trusties are the lowest-risk, lowest-security prisoners in the system, and they often are assigned jobs helping run the units, including cooking, laundry and filing.

"These are the inmates who are helping staff these units, and I have to wonder whether they (prison officials) want to keep them there just to keep the units running," Whitmire said. "The public safety danger now is really not over whether to let these already paroled inmates get out — it's about not doing anything."

In the past, suggestions of speeding up releases have triggered criticism from prosecutors and victims' groups who insist that freeing thousands of convicts is not the best way to address prison problems.

Two decades ago, they note, such a decision resulted in a spike in violent crime in Houston and other areas, triggering a backlash for longer sentences and more prisons.

Madden, chairman of the House Corrections Committee, agreed that the already approved parolees still in prison should be reviewed.

"We shouldn't let anyone out of prison who shouldn't be out, but I would urge (prison and parole officials) to look at this," said Madden, R-Richardson. "We must ensure that we have safe staffing levels in our prisons — which I can't say now that we do at some sites — and closing some additional wings of some units seems a wise way to stretch the short staff farther."

Ward also brings news that guard shortages could stall the re-opening of former TYC units in Marlin and San Saba as TDCJ facilities:

The moves marked the first time in recent years that chronic staffing shortages have forced such changes. Prison officials insisted that proper security is being maintained, an assertion challenged by some correctional officers who warn that the situation is becoming dangerous.

Whitmire, Madden and other lawmakers on Thursday questioned the opening of two new prisons — former Texas Youth Commission lockups in San Saba and Marlin are to open this spring as 616-bed adult prisons — when existing units are plagued by critical shortages.

Overcrowding and guard shortages have grown increasingly worse for several years, but now reality has begun to impose functional limits on increased incarceration, belying the Governor's assurances that all is well.

Governor Perry needs to rethink his cavalier attitude toward prison overcrowding because, when the chickens inevitably come home to roost, it'll be hard to get past the historical fact that his vetoes and his appointees at the Board of Pardons and Parole are the main cause of the short-term crisis. We shouldn't have to wait, as the Statesman prognosticated, for "a prison riot that overran, and perhaps murdered, guards" before the system's mismanagement becomes a priority.

RELATED: California early release plan is praised, decried

Two crimes solved by informants show snitching pros and cons

Here are two police informant stories I heard this week, one old, one new, that resulted in arrest of perpetrators, including a dirty cop:

First, at a Texas Public Policy Foundation event on Thursday, state Sen. John Whitmire told a story I've heard him relate before about the time in the '90s when he and his now-ex wife were robbed at gunpoint in their garage. An armed "crackhead" stole his money clip and wallet, then took off, but Whitmire added an tidbit I hadn't heard him mention before: The robbers were captured weeks later, he said, because one of the five people in the car turned out to be a police snitch! (Go here to listen to Whitmire's talk at the TPPF event.)

I don't know the particulars, but let's assume for a moment that person had been in trouble with the law, and authorities put him back out on the street to gather information instead of prosecuting, which is the usual method for turning a snitch. Then that person turns around and participates in armed robberies?

I'm sure there was a lot of internal pressure to solve this high-profile case, but do you suppose the informant told them about all the other crimes committed that night (or other nights) by the same crew, or the full extent of his own culpability? Probably not.

We learned last year that the FBI sometimes tolerates "serious violent crimes" by their informants without violating internal policies. One wonders whether HPD employs a similarly lenient policy, given this anecdote?

Another, much more recent case in Houston shows police using informants in a more controlled environment: A sting setting up a drug dealing police officer. Reported the Houston Chronicle ("Prosecutor: Officer got drug money from informant," Jan. 11):

Houston police officer Traci Michelle Tennarse and her boyfriend used $17,000 they got from a police informant to buy 50 pounds of marijuana, assistant Harris County District Attorney Anna Emmons said Friday

Tennarse was arrested Wednesday after she carried the marijuana to the second floor of an East Freeway motel and handed it to the informant, Emmons said.

The arrest followed an investigation that dates back to October, but Emmons declined to say Friday whether officials believe Tennarse and boyfriend Clarence Davis, 48, have been trafficking in marijuana for a long time. ...

"She took the buy money from the confidential informant and gave it to Clarence Davis," Emmons said.

Davis left home with the money and is believed to have retrieved the marijuana soon after, Emmons said. Tennarse was arrested at the motel shortly before 4 p.m. Wednesday.

Emmons' office, HPD's internal affairs division and HPD narcotics investigators were involved in the sting operation.

Tennarse was sworn in as a police officer in January 2006. She worked at a desk job that involved checking fingerprint records of people processed through the city jail, police said.

This example of police informant use poses fewer problems to me than does Sen. Whitimire's snitch. For starters, the informant was aimed at a specific investigative target - Officer Tennarse - not just riding around town with a bunch of stick up artists participating in armed robberies.

Also, the $17,000 in buy money means they were going after some pretty big fish; I've been a lot more critical of using informants to generate large numbers of low-level busts. Plus, with that much buy money involved, I'm sure the informant's actions were monitored a lot more closely than the snitch in Sen. Whitmire's case.

The prosecution of Sen. Whitmire's assailants shows how there may be problems with employing snitches, even when the tactic "works." But Tennarse's arrest shows why calls to "stop snitching" go too far. In that case, were the philosophy implemented, it would have prevented making a serious police corruption case, and even the "stop snitching" crowd doesn't like dirty cops.

Corruption case shows jails becoming too full of pretrial detainees to punish offenders

At this point, the self-inflicted overcrowding crisis at Texas county jails has long ago passed over the threshold into absurdity, certainly in the bigger counties.

Making that point, I was struck by coverage in the Austin Statesman of a corruption story ("Vision Village defendant will work off jail term after all," Jan. 12) featuring Preston Ervin, who was convicted in a scandal costing taxpayers millions of dollars for a project called "Vision Village" that never came to fruition. (Conflict alert: Ervin is a past aide to former Austin City Councilmember Eric Mitchell, and in the interest of full disclosure, I performed the opposition research in an extraordinarily bitter campaign that unseated his former boss.)

Ervin's case shows how the purpose of local jails has become muddled. Historically jails were for prisoners serving sentences assigned them based on a guilty verdict. Today, they're more frequently used to detain offenders pretrial, both to appear "tuffer" to voters and to make it easier for prosecutors to extract plea bargains.

Bottom line: The judge would like to sentence Ervin to jail time - preferably weekend jailings that would allow him to stay employed and make restitution payments, but county jails in both Dallas and Travis Counties for years have been too full to accommodate him. Reports the Statesman:

The 180-day term imposed by [state District Judge Charlie] Baird on Friday calls for the time to be served on weekends.

But because of jail crowding, the Travis County sheriff's department last year converted its weekend overnight jail-stay program to a day-work program, in which offenders do manual labor and then go home. ...

Ervin, who declined to comment as he left court, was the only person sentenced to jail in the scandal surrounding Vision Village, conceived in the 1990s. Organizers received more than $5 million, including almost $1.5 million from Austin and Travis County, to build a social services campus in East Austin that included low-cost housing.

The project never materialized, and investigators have said that almost $1 million was improperly spent.

Lawyers in the case and Wisser agreed that he could serve the time in the Dallas area, where he had worked at the time. When he wasn't accepted into jails there because of crowding, Ervin's lawyers asked for him to serve the term in Travis County on weekends. At the time, though, the jail had stopped its weekend program, so Baird deleted the jail term, he said.

Now that the sheriff has a weekend day-work program in place, Baird said, he reinstated the sentence.

Ervin will serve 30 days a year on weekends for the next six years. Baird also increased Ervin's restitution payments from $200 a month to $500. In 90 days, Baird said, those payments will rise to $1,000.

Ervin's case demonstrates the bizarre place Texas county jails have come to - they're so filled up with pretrial detainees, many jails don't have room for offenders to serve their actual sentences, which then get lowered to reduce jail overcrowding. He'd have served his jail sentence long before now if Dallas and Travis County Jails weren't completely full.

The shift toward greater pretrial detention at the expense of actual, judicially awarded sentences is a relatively recent one. In 2005,

An analysis by Grits of data from the Texas Commission on Jail Standards found that, while county jail populations increased 27% between 1995 and 2005, almost all that stemmed from more frequent detention of defendants before trial. ... In other words, there are many more defendants who can't make bail awaiting trial these days in the county lockup. Particularly for misdemeanants, just a decade ago many of those defendants would have been released on personal bond so taxpayers wouldn't pay to house them.

Bottom line: These trends represent harsher decisions by judges about when defendants should be released on bond -- another case where being tough on crime amounts to being tough on taxpayers, with little public safety benefit. A decade ago, pretrial defendants made up 30.3% of the statewide Texas jail population. Today the number is nearly half, at 48.3%.

Historical data from the Texas Commission on Jail Standards shows dramatic increases in pretrial detention since 1995. The number of felony defendants statewide being held pretrial increased by 60%, while the number of misdemeanants increasd by a whopping 116%. In addition, a new class of defendants that didn't exist before-- those awaiting trial for state jail felonies, mostly low-level drug offenders -- went from zero in 1995 to occupying more than 5,400 county jail beds statewide on September 1, 2005.

What does that mean to the average defendant? Judges are more likely to require them to put up bail than ten years ago, when they may have been released on 'personal bond,' or a promise to appear. Now if they can't pay, more defendants must sit in jail awaiting trial.

(See the rest of this Grits post for a table detailing pretrial detention rates in larger Texas counties, most of which are well over 50%.)

I don't believe this trend best serves public safety. While some offenders may pose a flight or dangerousness risk that warrants significant bail, that's just not the case with the vast majority of defendants cycling through the system, many of whom will receive probation, anyway.

The first priority for using jail space should be to house offenders sentenced under convictions. When pretrial detainees, especially for low-level, nonviolent offenses, come to dominate local jail populations, at that point jail administrators and local judges have lost control of their facilities and lost sight of what they're doing and why.

Another notable conflict arose in Steven Kreytak's story that deserves attention - the question of the purpose of punishment, and whether incarceration or restitution best serve justice:

Assistant District Attorney Patty Robertson said that although she is pleased that the jail term was reinstated, "we'd like to see him do his jail time in one big block."

"You can't put him in there for a flat period of confinement," [Judge] Baird said. "He would lose his job and could not pay back his restitution, which everybody agrees is the most important part of this."

Judge Baird states his reasons for favoring restitution and episodic confinement, and I agree with them. I wish, though, the story had allowed ADA Robertson to explain what benefit she anticipated from her request for a straight up 6-month incarceration stint. The Travis DA's office has a reputation for being "progressive," but that stance seems regressive, counterproductive, and nearly inexplicable.

While I've been highly critical over Ervin and his (mostly never prosecuted) co-schemers in the Vision Village affair, not to mention some of his earlier projects, I don't find Baird's punishment - episodic incarceration over a six-year stretch and $1,000 per month restitution payments virtually ad infinitum - to be particularly soft. As Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman John Whitmire is fond of saying, there are many "tuffer" things in the world than being incarcerated, like living up to one's responsibilities.

The lesson here: Jails should be reserved for punishment, when possible, not filled with pretrial detainees. And sometimes justice is better served by a focus on prioritizing safety and making victims whole than by maximizing harsh penalties on every offender.

First steps from 3rd TYC conservator seem positive

Though he was pretty quiet over the holidays, initial noises emanating from the Texas Youth Commission's new conservator, Richard Nedelkoff, so far sound pretty encouraging, at least judging by this morning's Austin Statesman ("New Youth Commission Conservator Vows to be Hands On," Jan. 12):

"I have clearly articulated my desire to be a very active conservator," Nedelkoff said in an interview with the American-Statesman. "I am a person who knows operations and the juvenile justice system, and (Pope and I) are going to be working together.

"I'm about building a team, a team that works together with common goals and works to develop a plan to bring the agency out of conservatorship within a certain period," he said. "In the next 30 to 60 days, I plan on developing a plan ... that will be needed to do that."

On Thursday, Nedelkoff began putting his mark on the agency's leadership team, forcing the resignation of Billy Humphrey, a top Pope lieutenant who was criticized for supporting the expanded use of pepper spray and solitary confinement to control unruly youths.

In another change, legislative leaders said Alfonzo Royal, Perry's liaison to the Youth Commission who was accused of inaction during early stages of the scandal, has been reassigned.

Pope, who has been criticized in recent months for the sometimes rocky implementation of changes mandated by the Legislature, was out of town Friday and could not be reached for comment.

Nedelkoff said he is reviewing Pope's decision in August to expand the use of pepper spray, which was reversed a month later after a lawsuit was filed by two advocacy groups. Nedelkoff did not say whether he plans to alter the policy.

State auditors and legislative leaders have been critical of some lockups for their isolated locations and conditions and have suggested that several should be considered for closure so programs could be closer to urban areas, where most youth offenders call home.

Youth Commission staff members are conducting a review of which lockups should be closed or repurposed — among the biggest political issues the agency faces — and Nedelkoff said he wants a detailed study of all alternatives before any decisions are made.

"It's like a jigsaw puzzle," he said. "We have to decide how much reconfiguring we should do before we can determine youth placement, how locations should be utilized and which ones should be closed."

All of this sounds pretty positive. The last conservator was anything but "hands on," and the agency floundered under his absent leadership. The departures of Humphrey and Royal cleared some deadwood from the field, and I'm pleased at the declaration that he plans to revisit TYC's "Spray First" policy.

Most of all, it's great to hear that somebody is actually putting together a written implementation plan on how to move the agency out of conservatorship. I've frequently been under the impression over the last nine months that the agency's leaders were flying by the seat of their pants.

The other big news in Ward's story, though, is Nedelkoff's declaration that he intends to reconfigure TYC and close or re-purpose some facilities. Already two TYC units have been transferred to TDCJ (although it remains to be seen how it's possible for TDCJ to staff them), and the agency removed youth from a third private unit because of abusive conditions.

Over the holidays, I heard a credible, specific, but unconfirmed rumor that Ms. Pope planned to shutter the Sheffield Unit in Iraan, from which the majority of youth have already been removed, within the first three months of 2008, possibly transferring it to TDCJ as well. Now it sounds like more units' fate than that, even, may be in play.

I put in a request this week to interview the new conservator, so maybe sometime soon we can get more details straight from the horse's mouth.

Take Slampo's Current Events Quiz

How well have you been keeping up with the fiasco over Harris County DA's revealing emails and Roger Clemens' steroid denials? Take the quiz at Slampo's Place to test your knowledge. I'll bet Grits readers know the answer to the Bonus question:

BONUS: At the heart of the Chuck Rosenthal email scandal lies

A. Arrogance
B. Hubris
C. Stupidity
D. Insularity and in-breeding

Hah! it's a trick question ... all are correct. Via Houston's Clear Thinkers.

UPDATE: A commenter perhaps correctly suggests that "the question needs to be thrown out. The heart of the matter is the wrongful arrest lawsuit against the Harris County Sheriff." True enough. I neglected earlier to link to this Houston Chronicle story describing the background on the lawsuit that caused the recent email kerfuffle over at the Harris DA.

How do you place a value on lost time for the wrongfully convicted?

Yesterday afternoon I had the chance to chat briefly with Dallas County District Attorney Craig Watkins and I brought up the case of Charles Chatman, the latest innocent man freed as a result of DNA testing in old Dallas County cases. "He won't be the last," Watkins assured me, shaking his head as though in disbelief.

Sometimes, I guess, the wheels of justice turn slowly, but I'm glad they're turning!

At least 39 wrongfully convicted people have been exonerated in Dallas County since 2001, 15 through DNA testing and another 24 when a lying informant set them up with fake drugs. Following the blog Tort Deform, I'd earlier asked how individuals should be compensated who are wrongfully convicted?

Many states do not compensate exonerated prisoners at all, or leave it to the civil courts; the New York Times last year found that 40% of inmates exonerated by DNA nationally received no compensation. In Texas, a statutory $50,000 per year incarcerated compensation rate has been established, doubled just last year from $25,000 which was the original amount when compensation was first put into law earlier this decade.

In that vein, I'd mentioned last week that "Over the years as a corporate defense lawyer, my father has spent a great deal of time arguing in and out of court over the value of lives lost or the financial consequence debilitating injuries, and I've always thought based on that second-hand experience that the $50,000 per year Texas compensates wrongfully convicted people is probably too low."

So I emailed my Dad, Tom Henson, a Tyler-based barrister who's practiced Texas tort law for more than 45 years and is the president-elect of the Texas Association of Defense Counsel. Here's how he replied:

I agree that, on its face, the figure of $50,000 sounds low.

You asked me how a monetary value is calculated in a wrongful death and survival case under our tort law.

Under the "survival" statute, the survivors/estate of the decedent are entitled to seek recovery of those damages the decedent would have been entitled to had he or she survived; that is, for pain and mental anguish suffered up to the time of death, medical expenses, and the estate would be entitled to seek recovery for funeral and burial expenses.

Under the "wrongful death" statute, the statutory beneficiaries of the decedent are entitled to seek recovery of the damages they have suffered for pecuniary loss in the past (loss of the care, maintenance, support, services, advice, counsel and reasonable contributions of a pecuniary value that the beneficiary would have received from the decedent had he lived); pecuniary loss in the future; loss of companionship and society sustained in the past and then in the future (loss of companionship and society means the loss of the positive benefits flowing from the love, comfort, companionship and society the beneficiary would have received had the decedent lived); and mental anguish experienced by the beneficiary in the past and in the future.

Neither of these causes of action exactly fit what you are talking about, but this does answer the question you asked me. Obviously, the dollar amount to be awarded is rather subjective except for the loss of income and support which usually has a specific factual basis; mental anguish, for example, is not easy to calculate or predict. The type of person who was killed has a lot to do with what a jury might award, as does the nature of the relationship between the decedent and those bringing suit.

To calculate the value of a claim for wrongful imprisonment would probably take into account the elements of lost wages, lost consortium with one's family, mental anguish and the like. I am saying this without researching the issue, and I do not recall having personally handled such a case in recent years. However, in the ordinary situation the figure of $50,000 does sound rather low. However, if the claimant was a low wage earner or had no real history of wage earning capacity, and if that person's conviction was not the result of intentional misconduct on the part of the prosecution, the figure might be a bit high. The situation depicted in Grisham's The Innocent Man might call for a much higher figure, for example, and a conviction that was not the fault of the prosecutor but the result of a good-faith mistaken identification by the victim (proven erroneous by DNA later) might call for something lower.

Since most actually innocent people would likely go on to hold jobs and enjoy increasing income over the years, and since they would qualify for most other categories of compensatable loss, I take it that the Legislature probably low-balled reimbursements to wrongfully convicted prisoners, even after Sen. Rodney Ellis' laudable legislation last year to boost the figure to $50K.

At a minimum, wrongfully convicted people suffer lost wages (in 2006, median income for a Texas male employed full time was $38,797), lost consortium with one's family, and plenty of mental anguish. Plus, both they and their families surely suffer a loss of "companionship and society," using this terminology. If each of those may be compensated under tort law, the total could add up pretty quickly in the case of a innocent person who's been exonerated.

At $50,000 per year, Texas may be getting off pretty cheap.

RELATED: See this interview with John Grisham on the problem of wrongful convictions.

Fringe Criticisms of Snitching Tread Dangerous Ground

But if you're talking 'bout destruction
Don't you know that you can count me out.

- "Revolution," The Beatles

Long-time readers know I've never been a fan of the "Stop Snitching" mantra (although I think its popularity portends tremendous political and sociological implications). I don't believe it's possible or wise to 100% eliminate the tactic of "flipping" informants from law enforcement's repertoire.

The problems arise because coerced informants have become a major source of police corruption and the second leading cause of wrongful convictions. To me, a more effective rhetorical and strategic approach would focus on identifying policy changes to reduce or mitigate bad outcomes from police reliance on criminal informants.

Here are two more grass roots political responses to snitching that take approaches toward the problem I disagree with, even if I may share some of the participants' goals:

First, the Whosarat database (discussed earlier on Grits here, here, here and here), has offered a $500 bounty for the "most interesting" informant case:

Who’s A Rat (www.whosarat.com) is running a contest with a prize of $500 for the “Most Interesting” new informant profile. The contest will begin on January 8th and all new informant profiles posted between January 8th and February 8th will be considered for the prize. In order to be considered for the contest, all entries must contain documentation of their co-operation with the government.

I understand the impetus behind the Whosarat database and even consider it a quite clever activist business model. As I've written before, though, "Whatever the intent, the tactic risks becoming a stalking horse for thuggery -- protected by the First Amendment and existing case law, to be sure, but irresponsible, I think, to say the least. Bottom line, I think we shouldn't stop snitching, but reform it."

I don't mind naming informants who've been revealed in court documents or investigating their background. Not only have I done so on this blog, I think there needs to be a lot more disclosure and transparency about police use of criminal informants. But the Whosarat approach walks and IMO sometimes crosses a narrow line between generating information needed by attorneys, defendants and the media and intentionally creating and marketing a target list that invites retaliation against the people in it.

Meanwhile, I recently ran across another misguided approach to the topic of "snitching" from the "National Hip Hop Political Convention," which adopted as its theme for a political forum last summer in Atlanta: "F**k the Police: Why Hip Hop Does Not Cooperate."

I can't think of a more foolish and harmful message. The Whosarat people, IMO, are behaving more responsibly.

At least you can argue that Cam'ron was caught off guard on 60 Minutes when he gave his dumb as dirt declaration that he wouldn't snitch on a serial killer ... if you can imagine, a group of political activists actually sat down and thought about the "F**k the Police" event before coming up with that title and message! I wonder who they're trying to convince?

Listen to the video for examples of the kind of narcissistic, short-sighted BS that apparently passes for Hip Hop political analysis these days.

Indeed, art and political strategy are two entirely different things. (Though there is surely "art" to political strategy, the tactics, sadly, do not typically translate across media.) I'm not sure Hip Hop has its own "politics" any more than one can embrace the politics of the violin concerto or of barrelhouse piano. But I know for sure the overall political message promoted at this event was destructive.

Thankfully at least one speaker, Dereka Blackmon, had the courage to tell the crowd that the "F**k the Police" theme was "irresponsible," basically selling kids a political message that was likely to get a bunch of them killed. (She got applause for the line, but hers was a minority opinion.)

A real-world political approach must insist on and reinforce the distinctions between a "witness" and a "snitch" or government informant who trades away their own culpability for a crime in exchange for testimony. Failing to report crime harms real people, just as it harms the neighborhood when criminals are allowed by police to ply their trade because they gave information on someone else. In other words, by framing the debate this way, IMO the Hip Hop Political Convention emboldens and empowers their most bitter and disingenuous critics.

And yes, before it's said in the comments, some speakers did make that distinction, criticizing those who don't take responsibility for their own actions in the justice system as "dishonorable" and distinct from typical witnesses. But who would come to the event to hear those distinctions given how they promoted it?

Just telling youth they should "not cooperate" plays directly into reactionary dismissals of the recently publicized "stop snitching" campaigns. Though several speakers criticized Cam'ron's 60 Minutes response, the truth is that organizers of this event made the same mistake he did, and then some.

"Bronco" Billy Humphrey Removed from TYC

I heard this rumor this afternoon then got home to find it confirmed by the Dallas Morning News: The Texas Youth Commission's "Bronco" Billy Humphrey has finally been terminated.

Let me be the first to issue a hardy "Yee-Haw!" This is a fellow whose open defiance of agency rules and a Travis County district court perhaps did more to discredit new TYC management than any other person. Reported the Dallas News ("Texas Youth Commission Executive Billy Humphrey Abruptly Quits," Jan. 10):

Mr. Humphrey’s departure was initiated by new TYC conservator Richard Nedelkoff, who was appointed by Gov. Rick Perry in December.

“This was a decision that the new conservator came to after his overview looking into agency operations and management personnel,” said Mr. Hurley.

Mr. Humphrey couldn’t immediately be reached for comment. A person who answered the phone in Mr. Humphrey’s TYC office said: “I can’t give you any information at all, sir.”

Mr. Humphrey, 39, an 18-year veteran of the state’s adult prison system, was hired by Ms. Pope last summer to help reform the troubled agency. As deputy director of residential services, responsible for all TYC institutions, halfway houses and contract-care facilities, he quickly clashed with TYC administrators over his efforts to expand the use of pepper spray and solitary confinement as ways of controlling unruly inmates.

Ms. Pope and Mr. Humphrey have defended the efforts to expand the use of pepper spray against inmates as a means of reducing injuries to TYC staff and inmates.

Within weeks of his hiring, Mr. Humphrey clashed with TYC administrators as he imposed policies that expanded the use of pepper spray and segregation of disruptive inmates, according to Teresa Stroud, superintendent at TYC’s Brownwood juvenile prison, and Jeffrey Berry, an assistant superintendent at the Mart juvenile prison until Mr. Humphrey transferred him to a TYC facility in Vernon - 270 miles away - in October.

“Administrators want to avoid conflict and interaction with Mr. Humphrey for fear he will move them to a remote location and displace their entire family," Ms. Stroud alleged Oct. 11 in her written grievance.

“Administrators are now tendering resignations, avoiding applying for promotions and asking for voluntary demotions just to avoid direct contact with him so they protect their livelihoods and keep their families intact,” she wrote.

This easily constitutes the most positive move so far by TYC's new conservator. Hopefully it's a harbinger of even more significant change to come.

MORE: From the Austin Statesman,

Free Money, Come Get It! Why not tax out of state prison inmates?

Though I've written in the past that I'd prefer constructing a wall on the Red River instead of the Rio Grande, here's an idea (via Corrections Sentencing) that Texas ought to import from the Sooner State: A "surcharge on every out-of-state inmate residing in OK prisons, public or private. $2 a head per day." Reports Tulsa World ("Fee is pushed for certain private prison inmates," Jan. 9):

"Out-of-state inmates drain taxpayer dollars that should go to other purposes," Rep. Brian Renegar, D-McAlester, said. When such an inmate escapes from a private prison, Oklahoma foots the bill for capturing the convict, he said.

Texas houses lot more out of state inmates, even, than Oklahoma, and to be frank, the states housing prisoners here, in general, have nowhere else to go. As Michael says, "A million here, a million there, pretty soon you’re talking about real money. The ramifications are (understatement alert) numerous."

The ramifications become even greater if you include massive immigrant detention centers in the mix, since the vast majority of immigrant detainees are housed in private prisons or city and county jails. I don't know if the state could require such a surcharge from the feds, but it could for private vendors.

On its face, there's little political downside to accessing this funding source: No one affected votes in Texas!

Where's the Potty? If you know the answer, you may be qualified to be Harris County District Attorney

From Musings, witness the degraded level of public debate it's come down to in the Harris County DA's race:

Kelly Siegler, Assistant Harris County D.A. and candidate for Romancethal's job, wants you to know that:

"To put it bluntly, Judge Lykos, Mr. Leitner and Clarence Bradford don't know where the restrooms are in the office," she said.

These are the other candidates for the Harris County District Attorney.

She's on the hot toilet seat because her husband, Dr. Sam Siegler, sent a lot of the egregious emails to his friend, embattled Harris County D.A., Chuck Rosenthal. You know the pornographic ones, the race-baiting ones.

But hey, since she can find the potty at the D.A.'s office, she's the best qualified person for the job!

Is it me or is that just surreal? I'm sure somebody will point out the restrooms to the new DA. But who will let us know that top ADA's go home every night to race-baiting dinner conversations with their porn-sharing hubby? I doubt Siegler would have ever told us. She's too busy practicing her Nancy Grace imitation and bragging that she knows how to find the toilet.

When my 15-month old granddaughter can find the potty, then I'll get excited. Coming from a candidate for District Attorney, color me unimpressed.

Rubber, Meet Road: Guard shortages cause closure of wing at TDCJ unit in Dalhart

Rubber, meet road.

Texas' prison overcrowding crisis has just entered a new and dangerous phase: The bill has finally come due for years of bipartisan political opportunism and willful denial. We've reached the pivotal "crossroads" predicted by the Texas Sunset Commission, and although the prison system, the Governor and the Legislature were amply warned of the problem, state government still seems caught unawares.

In an excellent story today from the Austin Statesman ("Guard shortage forces closure of prison wing in West Texas," Jan. 10), the intrepid Mike Ward reports that a 300-bed wing of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice unit in Dalhart was closed last year because of understaffing, and that:

staffing shortages in Texas prisons have reached dangerous levels after years of administrators transferring convicts and tweaking overtime pay and schedules to try to maintain proper security in the face of dwindling staff.

"The situation is serious. It's very scary right now," said William Cook, 54, who has been a correctional officer at the Polunsky Unit in East Texas for four years. "Things are fixing to get worse."

Longtime Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, who chairs a legislative committee that oversees prison operations, echoed the concern: "When we reach the point where we're shutting down beds, it's is no longer a problem. It would be accurate to label this a crisis.

"Because of this chronic shortage, we've had to lower our hiring standards. ... We're now taking 18-year-olds just a few months out of high school; we're hiring 70-plus-year-old guards and others who are physically not able to protect themselves or others."

Prison officials said that adequate security is being maintained at Texas' 112 lockups, which house 157,000 felons. But they acknowledged that staffing shortages are an increasing problem and that low pay is a chief complaint.

The starting base pay for correctional officers in Texas is about $23,000 a year. After eight years, it tops out at about $34,000.

Texas traditionally ranks low nationally in how much it pays its correctional officers. For example, among the 16 Southern states, it ranks 13th, according to prison system officials.

Regular readers know this topic has been a hobby horse of mine for some time. Though so far only the Dalhart unit has actually closed down beds (at a time when the state has decided, supposedly, to build three more prison units and a slew of new treatment beds), it sounds like other TDCJ facilities may not be far behind. Reported Ward:

In November, after the Dalhart bunks were mothballed, the staffing ratio increased to 71 percent. But other prisons remained just as short of staff as Dalhart had been, records show.

The 581-bed Fort Stockton Unit, also in West Texas, had just 58 percent of its jobs filled, and the adjacent 1,374-bed Lynaugh Unit was at 65 percent.

The 2,450-bed Eastham Unit near Lovelady, in East Texas, was operating with just 65 percent of its jobs filled.

Ten other prisons were operating with 75 percent or less guard jobs filled.

In all, prison reports show, the system was at least 3,749 officers short at the end of November, a number that has steadily inched upward in recent years.

Statewide, the system has only 83 percent of the correctional officers it needs.

When enough guards are not available to properly staff prisons, Cook and other correctional officers say, rehabilitation and exercise programs can be curtailed.

Convicts can be confined to their cells almost continuously and, in increasing instances, have had to be served peanut butter sandwiches for several days because staffing was not sufficient to feed them in the chow hall.

At the Polunsky Unit, according to Cook, "we run the chow hall with one officer ... with 100 inmates. There's one officer and two locked doors between you and the outside, and if something happens, all you can do is get out of the way and hope (the inmates) don't find you."

Dorms are supposed to be supervised by five correctional officers, Cook said. But often "there are just three, on a building that contains 500 inmates."

Imagine being one of three guards responsible for 500 prisoners in a dorm setting! That's flat out dangerous for everybody involved, even if TDCJ weren't putting 70 year olds, kids too young to drink, and 115 pound housewives in guard uniforms!

My family on both my father and mother's side come from Dalhart, and my grandfather was county judge in Dallam County for a whopping 29 years. When they built the prison unit, it was touted by local boosters as the solution to the town's dwindling population and stagnant economy. But not long after the facility opened up, a giant industrial pig farm moved in nearby that directly competes for low-wage employees. ("Do you know what that smell is?" an uncle asked me once, as the foul stench of pig feces wafted through the center of town, "It's the smell of money.") So the economics of Dalhart's labor shortage aren't hard to understand: Working with hogs may not be pleasant, but if the pay is the same, who wouldn't choose that over spending 12-16 hour shifts with two other guards in a dorm with 500 prison inmates?

(UPDATE: My father emails to add, "Another major economic engine in the area which you may not be aware of is the heavy influx of new dairies which has occurred in the last 7 or 8 years, climaxed by the construction within the last few months of what is touted to be the largest cheese factory in America. It is estimated that the cheese factory by itself will ultimately require 30 dairies to supply its needs." That sure oughtta increase competition for prison workers, don't you think?)

Earlier this week I predicted a need for massive prison building and thousands of new guards to accommodate the rate of growth Texas has experienced in the last three decades, but offered this caveat:

In reality, I seriously doubt that our current growth rate can be maintained.

Already, reality has reared its ugly head to impose limits on incarceration. Texas prisons today are around 4,000 guards short of minimum staffing, and the problem is only getting worse. Trustees routinely perform functions previously reserved for TDCJ employees. More state employees already work in corrections than any other area. Either significantly expanding their numbers or raising their pay high enough to attract more job applicants would raise the state's artificially low per-inmate cost by an enormous margin.

Obviously, we've already reached that point. The state cannot staff current prisons, even as plans are made to construct three more. (We can thank Lt. Governor David Dewhurst for that boondoggle, the flaws of which must now be apparent.) Current incarceration trends are simply unsustainable, not just in the long-term, but right now, this month, as we speak.

Bottom line: Too many people enter prison and too many low-level offenders stay there for too long a time. Not enough people are willing to take guard jobs at current pay, and raising pay substantially would cost an astronomical sum because there are so many employees involved.

An aside: Governor Perry's veto in 2005 of probation strengthening legislation aimed at preventing these problems directly spurred the current crisis. A very similar bill passed in 2007 and is now being implemented, but the two year lag allowed the overall prison population to expand beyond the system's capacity. Now more must be done.

A past campaign client of mine and former Texas House Corrections Committee Chair, retired state Rep. Ray Allen, is fond of saying that Texas must learn to lock up only those we're "afraid of," not people we're only "mad at."

At this point, Texas had better learn that lesson quickly.

Here's a list compiled by Ward of TDCJ prison units with the worst understaffing:

Texas prison staff shortages
Units with correctional officer staffing rates below 70 percent (more than a 30 percent vacancy rate)

Percentage of guard jobs filled, number vacant

Wallace Colorado City 64%, 74
Dalhart Dalhart 70%. 53
Connally Kenedy 67%, 175
Lynaugh Fort Stockton 65%, 72
Fort Stockton Fort Stockton 58%, 34
Coffield Tennessee Colony 62%, 277
Beto Tennessee Colony 60%, 60
Ferguson Midway 64%, 171
Eastham Lovelady 65%, 65
McConnell Beeville 70%, 159

Statewide 83% 3,749

Figures are as of Nov. 30, latest available. Percentages are rounded.
Source: Texas Department of Criminal Justice

Reduce graffiti by pursuing the crime, not the criminal

Since I first read Bruce Schneier's books, particularly Beyond Fear, I've come to believe that the world of computer security offers tremendously valuable lessons for maintaining public safety and security in the real world, particularly with its focus on preventing and/or minimizing harm instead of only reacting to harmful agents after the fact.

In that vein, a terrific article in ComputerWorld ("Do surveillance cameras detect criminals or deter crime?," Jan. 8) focuses on the nexus between two topics that have preoccupied this blog at different junctures - graffiti and security cameras - describing cutting edge technology that supposedly "detects 'graffiti-related motion,' snaps pictures and e-mails them to the police." Writes CW's Scott Berinato:

At only $5,000 per camera, Graffiti Cam seems like a home run. It arrives at a time when public surveillance has gained tacit, creeping acceptance and when graffiti has become a $12 billion migraine for cities and towns--a kind of aerosol spam that they desperately want to scotch because it's bad for business. Social scientists call this the broken windows theory: Vandalism leads people to sense a place is unsafe and broken down, so they leave, which in turn makes the place actually become unsafe and broken down. Reality follows perception.

So it won't be surprising if cities and towns buy dozens of Graffiti Cams. And those cameras will likely lead to a surge in arrests and convictions of the spray-paint-wielding set, known in current slang as taggers.

Unfortunately, it's unlikely that arrest and conviction of those taggers will actually reduce tagging.

Why? Because Graffiti Cam is a detection mechanism, and while detection is good for stopping criminals, it's not terribly good at stopping crime, especially when the crime in question is one where opportunity is virtually ubiquitous, like vandalism.

Or spam, which provides a nice analogy to graffiti. When notorious accused spammer Robert Soloway was arrested last summer, some good guys suggested that other spammers would now think twice before going into the mass e-mail business, and that consumers could see a noticeable decrease in their junk e-mail.

But less than three months later, spam had surged to an all-time high. What's more, the spammers who filled the void left by Soloway learned from his mistakes and developed new strategies and techniques to avoid his fate. The arrest had zero positive impact on the fight against spam.

Berinato predicts a similar result with Graffiti Cams. There are simply too many potential surfaces to police, he says, and taggers simply become more sophisticated in response to enforcement. He then makes an argument whose logic is rooted in the world of computer security, but which offers an irresistible appeal, to me, for confronting graffiti and vandalism crimes:

It can be argued that detection is actually counterproductive. The thief must be tried and put on probation. A tagger convicted in Boston last summer was fined $10,000 and had his license revoked, reducing his job prospects and increasing the likelihood he will need public assistance, use bad credit, resort to more crime or end up in jail, which also costs money.

Most confounding of all, detection, by definition, must allow the crime to start taking place. Otherwise there's nothing to detect. Hidden cameras still allow paint to get on the wall, which happens to be by far the most expensive aspect of the graffiti problem: the cleanup. An average city spends about $2 per citizen yearly whitewashing graffiti; nationwide, yearly graffiti cleanup costs may be as high as $12 billion, according to Justice Department statistics reported by graffitihurts.org -- a partnership between the nonprofit Keep America Beautiful and The Sherwin Williams Company, which makes Krylon spray paints.

Deterrence, on the other hand -- creating an environment that's inhospitable to the criminal act in the first place -- is a smarter, more efficient strategy than catching bad guys. If a detected tagger still leaves cleanup behind, a deterred tagger reduces cleanup costs to zero.

In fact, studies show that the most effective deterrent to tagging is immediate removal of new graffiti. If a city or town consistently removes graffiti within 24 to 48 hours of its application, repeat incidents at those spots approach zero.

Berinato describes a discipline "called CPTED -- criminal prevention through environmental design -- under which studies have shown that space can be engineered to reduce the likelihood of criminal activity." He also suggests sentencing taggers who are caught to rapid response cleanup crews to eliminate uninvited tagging, a strategy I've promoted before on this blog.

At the end of the day, he writes, "Maybe it's time to spend less pursuing the criminal and more pursuing the crime." Agreed. Berinato's piece is an excellent introduction to alternative, pro-active strategies that prevent crime instead of just reacting to it.

See related Grits' posts on graffiti law and policy solutions:

• Toward a restorative graffiti policy
• Graffiti, art, vandalism and subversion
  
• Graffiti solutions: A cost-benefit analysis
• Paint responsibly: Museum offers hands-on graffiti exhibit
• Adidas: Graffiti is legitimate art
• Graffiti on the brain and around the world
  
• Digital graffiti, or, Is there something to a wall that wants us to write on it?
• R.I.P. Victor Montano: Houston graffiti artist
• Can you be arrested for public knitting?
• Amarillo PD pressures businesses to file graffiti charges
  
• Out of our minds: Isn't felony graffiti overkill for sixth graders?
• Charging graffiti as a state jail felony?

See also these Grits posts on the relation between cameras and crime:

• Why surveillance cameras don't reduce crime
• Safer with surveillance cameras, or just more exposed?
• Britain: Surveillance cameras do 'not stop crime'

Memo to Tyler officials: Listen to your voters and use available new tools to reduce jail overcrowding

Criminal justice officials in Tyler, my hometown, just won't get the message. Twice in two years Smith County voters have rejected a new jail, even though the county already has to pay for dozens of out of county beds to incarcerate offenders. The last vote, in November, turned down a new jail by a margin of 69%-31%.

Still, local officials won't take advantage of a new state law designed to reduce jail overcrowding, despite voters' clear desire that they find alternatives to incarcerating low-level offenders. Governor Perry signed HB 2391 into law last year, enabling police to give citations instead of making arrests for a handful of low-level, non-violent B misdemeanors at officers' discretion (in other words, an arrest could still be made when the officer considered it necessary).

Implementing this one change would likely resolve Smith County's immediate overcrowding problem, but local officials simply refuse to do it, reported Kenneth Dean in the Tyler Morning Telegraph ("A Night in the Joint," Jan. 7):

"I don't believe giving a person a ticket for possessing a controlled substance is a good policy and is not a message we want to send," Smith County District Attorney Matt Bingham said. "I believe these people should be arrested, photographed, fingerprinted and worked into the system and this arrest a part of their record." ...

Bingham said issuing a citation for an arrestable offense takes a key tool away from officers and that is the search.

"If an officer writes a ticket, then they can't search the vehicle or the person and a lot of times a search leads to the discovery of stolen property, more drugs, guns and greater offences being made," he said.

Maj. Mike Lusk of the Smith County Sheriff's Department said his department is making arrest based on the law.

"If it is a violation of the law and we have probable cause then we will make an arrest," he said. "On the surface it looks like this law would help with the overcrowding, but we need to see how it plays out in other areas."

Tyler Police Chief Gary Swindle said officers make an arrest if there is a usable amount of marijuana found.

"Per a discussion with the sheriff and the DA, we will make an arrest if we deem there is a usable amount," he said.

Smith County DA Matt Bingham repeats the canard that it's a record keeping nightmare and impossible to establish procedures to use the new law. Dean's story parrots the false assessment from the Dallas News that Travis County is the only jurisdiction using the new authority. However, Grits has identified at least five other counties where officers are using that discretion, and I've performed no comprehensive survey.

So if at least six other counties, big and small, have already figured out how to implement the law, why can't Bingham figure it out? They do it for Class C tickets all the time. And if offenders are convicted, they can still be sentenced to jail time, just like before. The law only eliminates unnecessary pretrial detention, keeping more officers out on the street every day and reserving jail space for more serious offenders.

County planners already are looking at a possible third election to expand the jail, but if the DA and Tyler police chief won't utilize current tools available to them to reduce overcrowding, I can't imagine voters will give them carte blanche to build the massive new incarceration complex they've been dreaming about. And they shouldn't.

HB 2391 - Cite and Summons for Low-level Misdemeanors

• Note to MSM: Please stop repeating error on jail overcrowding law
  
• Counties balking at giving officers discretion on low-level arrests
• Tuff on crime meet reality at the Nacogdoches County Jail
  
• Sheriffs more likely than PDs to welcome new arrest discretion
  
• Jefferson County works out kinks with new cite and summons authority
  
• How one Texas county will take advantage of new law to reduce jail overcrowding
• HB 2391 could save Bexar taxpayers $10,000 per day
• Bexar jail administrator: Stop arrests for nonviolent misdemeanors
• DA Susan Reed blocking key Bexar jail overcrowding solution
• Midland Sheriff's Captain: Cite and summons for low-level offenses would reduce jail overcrowding
• Cite and summons for low-level offenses could free up jail space
• Texas Lege approved new tools to reduce jail overcrowding, if police can change their thinking
• DAs thwarting jail overcrowding solutions

Smith County Jail Saga

• Counties that rejected new jails must now get serious about diversion'
• Voters who rejected county jails looking for better justice policies
• Texas prison and jail vote results
  
• Public participation required for vigorous jail debates
• The Jail that Ate Tyler' and other stories
  
• Debate intensifies over Tyler's $125 million 'Taj Mahal' jail
  
• Architect: Voters should accept nine-figure pricetag for new jail
  
• Tyler's jail alternative saves $1 million in first nine month
  
• Smith County voters have more options than building Taj Mahal jail
• Tyler's day reporting center reduces overcrowding, saves money
• 'Unsellable' Tyler jail still too small
• Tyler's Alternative Incarceration Center opens; DA thinks no one qualifies
• Tyler judge: End jail overcrowding with community supervision of nonviolent offenders
• More on Tyler's alternatives to jail overcrowding
• Incarceration Alternatives: From Smith County, a plan emerges
• Update: Tyler Alternative Incarceration Plan, Day Reporting Center funded
• Tyler voters: Jail bonds a 'No-No"
• Jail bond vote may become annual affair in Tyler

Every nasty thing you thought about Chuck Rosenthal is probably true

Yikes!

I've thought Harris County District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal was pretty darn awful for years, but the revelations about emails recovered from his county computer seem unfathomably stupid and juvenile, even bigoted, basically confirming every nasty assumption his enemies ever made about him.

For example, in a city with a large African American population, whom the criminal justice system disproportionately prosecutes, imagine finding on the DA's computer, according to KHOU:

an e-mailed photo ... of an African-American man lying on his back on a sidewalk and seemingly unconscious. He is surrounded on one side by watermelon, that has clearly been eaten, and an empty fried chicken bucket on the other. The photo’s sender is unknown, but it does have a title with it: “Fatal Overdose.”

That doesn't sound like any spam I've ever received. Another email, this one borderline misogynist, came to Rosenthal from the husband of one of the current DA candidates:

It’s from a Web site showing unsuspecting women getting their clothes ripped off on public streets. The sender was Dr. Sam Siegler, Rosenthal's personal physician, friend and the husband of Assistant District Attorney Kelly Siegler. She is now a Republican candidate for district attorney.

“I didn't intend for it to be offensive. I didn't e-mail anybody that I thought would be offended by it,” Dr. Siegler told 11 News.

I wonder if that was the same thinking of the person who sent the picture of the black fellow overdosed on watermelon? Perhaps the sender didn't email anybody they thought would be offended?

What may get Rosenthal in the most hot water, though, is evidence that he routinely, cavalierly used county employees to perform campaign work. I've heard that accusation in the past, but these revelations put a hard edge on them that may wind the DA up in court.

The Chuckster has already announced he won't run for re-election, but that may not be enough. He might not be able to functionally run the agency with these kind of revelations coming out in dribs and drabs over the next year before he leaves office. Maybe it's time Chuck Rosenthal retire now, and put him entirely out of his (our?) misery. What do you think?

Vendor that employs TYC conservator won't bid on state contracts

While this announcement would have been better received when his appointment was declared, the Texas Youth Commission's conservator says the Florida non-profit he works for will not pursue contracts with TYC to house young offenders.

When Richard Nedelkoff was first appointed conservator, I wrote on Grits about "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."

Thankfully, according to the Austin Statesman ("New conservator says company withdrew bid on state contract, Jan. 9), the new conservator recognized the conflict and took steps to resolve it:

Eckerd withdrew its proposal in December, when Nedelkoff was appointed to the Texas job.

"I knew there would be a perception of a conflict ... so to remove that, Eckerd withdrew," Nedelkoff said. "It was the right thing to do. Eckerd will not be pursuing business with the state."

In recent months, before Nedelkoff was appointed, agency officials were criticized for awarding a no-bid contract to a politically connected Austin firm, AutoGov Inc., to provide software for classifying and tracking incarcerated youths.

Eckerd provides highly regarded programs for at-risk and incarcerated youths, operating residential and community-based programs in 10 states.

Youth Commission spokesman Jim Hurley said officials are evaluating a dozen or so responses received from bidders. No date has been set for awarding the residential-services contracts.

Of course, that begs the bigger question: Given TYC's lack of oversight of its private vendor at the Coke County facility, should TYC be privatizing more youth detention services at all? I'm hoping once Nedelkoff wraps his brain around the scope of the problem, he'll put the kabosh on that ill-considered plan.

Dallas PD teaming up with U of North Texas for research-training institute

I can't quite put my finger on it. On the surface, it seems like I should welcome news that the Caruth Foundation has devoted $9.5 million to allow the Dallas Police Department to partner with the University of North Texas (DMN, Jan. 8) to create a:

research institute dedicated to training officers and developing crime-fighting strategies.

The city and the University of North Texas will team up to run the W.W. Caruth Jr. Police Institute at Dallas. It will be funded with a $6 million endowment and $3.5 million for start-up costs provided by the W.W. Caruth Jr. Foundation fund through the Communities Foundation of Texas.

Organizers say the institutes's mission will be to train the next generation of Police Department leaders and to give officers opportunities to obtain college degrees through the doctorate level.

The institute also will study the department's crime-fighting strategies to determine what works and what doesn't in an effort to place Dallas at the forefront of the national conversation on best policing practices.

Somehow that strikes me as posing many of the same potential benefits, detriments, and conflicts of interest created by collaborations with the military by universities. Chief David Kunkle said:

"If our supervisors and managers and executives are better trained and have better backgrounds and are better skilled, then they will make better decisions," he said. "If they make better decisions, regardless of what direction the city or the department or the city takes, you're likely to have better outcomes."

It's hard to argue with that. And yet, will the academics at the Institute be comfortable exploring the full implications of their research when working in such close association with field practitioners, and will that create conflicts that potentially harm academic freedom or a commitment to openness and public dissemination of research?

Will DPD impose limits on publication for researchers using their data that eliminate their ability to fully and honestly assess the agency's problems? I don't know. The role of a university is different from that of a consultant: It's supposed to be more independent, not necessarily institutionally intertwined with the subject its researching.

In any event, reports the Dallas News, the new Institutes's research will build on recent consulting work performed by the Rand Corporation

Rand found that one major hurdle facing the department was that crime analysis and crime-fighting efforts are hampered by dozens of databases that don't link to one another. "If you want to do a search on Robert Davis, you'd have to go to potentially 40 places for that information," Mr. Davis said.

Rand also found that the department's efforts to train rank-and-file officers and its leadership needed an extensive overhaul.

Researchers found that only about 10 of the department's 125 senior staff members are sent to outside training programs each year, and less than 40 percent of the senior staff members have had any leadership training at all. Those out-of-town training programs are often expensive, take a lot of time away from the job and are frequently better suited to the needs of smaller policing agencies.

Promotions are also based on an archaic testing process. Only about 30 percent of the department's patrol officers had bachelor's degrees, Mr. Davis said.

Because other efforts are under way to improve the department's technological capabilities, officials decided the remainder of the $15 million should be invested in the department's workforce. The idea for the institute grew out of that realization, Mr. Davis said.

"They need to have the right training, the right motivation and the right career paths and retention to be able to make it possible for the department and the people to carry out the vision that the chief has," he said.

Organizers hope to eventually involve other police departments in their work. The University of Texas at Dallas is also expected to be involved in the institute.

Mr. Davis said Rand will stay involved with the institute because its researchers are in the midst of developing an extensive performance measurement system.

This may turn out to be a great idea, and I support all the stated goals. But something about the partnership doesn't sit right. The academic freedom issues seem too ill-defined and potentially troublesome. I'd like to understand better just what protections will be afforded UNT researchers participating in the program, and what limits are imposed on rights to publish research based on DPD data.

I want to be for this project, but for now count me as "neutral."

Dallas DA Defines "Smart on Crime"

Dallas District Attorney Craig Watkins had a column in the Dallas News (Jan. 7) yesterday reflecting on his first year in office. In addition to describing his much-publicized partnership with the Innocence Project to correct past mistakes and exonerate wrongfully convicted prisoners, he goes further to define what his office means by "smart on crime":

Being smart on crime means we look at ways to keep repeat offenders off our streets, and we are doing so with a new and improved "impact offender" program. In conjunction with the Dallas Police Department and our elected district judges, we are targeting offenders who repeatedly fail to stop their criminal behavior. These impact offenders are tried within 60 days of indictment, and their convictions swiftly take them off our streets, out of our county jail and into the state penitentiary, thus creating a safer community and saving Dallas County taxpayers' money.

Being smart on crime also means that we are seeking the necessary resources to represent and protect citizens. We were fortunate to receive approval in the 2008 budget for funds that will pay for a prosecutor to handle cases of financial abuse against the elderly, which is a growing problem in our community. We also received federal grants to establish a gang unit and a sexual assault unit. The gang unit not only focuses on prosecution, but also on discouraging young people from getting involved in gangs. The sexual assault unit is supported by a $1.48 million grant from the U.S. Department of Justice's Office on Violence Against Women. This funding allows us to finally have a prosecutor, investigator and caseworker dedicated to handling sexual assault crimes.

We also have established a unit that works directly with the county's probation department, the constables and the Sheriff's Department to locate probation absconders and get them back into custody.

In addition, we have implemented a new policy for first-time, nonviolent misdemeanors. Offenders are now held accountable for their actions – often youthful indiscretions – by doing community service and completing educational courses. For drug cases, offenders must also pass two drug tests within a specific period. When these requirements are met, offenders' cases are dismissed, thus keeping marks off their criminal records that would inevitably put their future employment at risk. And as we know, when people can't find jobs, they typically move on to more serious crimes.

More on US-side drug cartel contacts

I've been asking on Grits who are the big American drug bosses? Well, here's one, via AP:

A U.S. citizen who was a top assistant to the leader of a Mexican drug cartel was sentenced Monday to 30 years in federal prison for his role in smuggling drugs across the border.

Manuel Arturo Villarreal Heredia, 32, will also forfeit $5 million. He thanked U.S. District Judge Larry Burns for being fair.

Villarreal pleaded guilty in September to racketeering and conspiracy to invest illicit drug profits.

He was captured with cartel chief Francisco Javier Arellano Felix aboard a fishing yacht off the coast of Baja California in 2006. Arellano Felix pleaded guilty to running the cartel and was sentenced in November to life in prison.

Warden threw a party in the county jail ...

Happy 72nd Birthday, Elvis!

In looking up a version of Jailhouse Rock to post here, I ran across some background on the two authors of Elvis' "Jailhouse Rock" classic, Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, that I didn't know, from a recent column in the UK Guardian (Dec. 28):

Jailhouse Rock was written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, a preposterously successful songwriting team. With tunes such as Kansas City, On Broadway, Love Potion No. 9, Stand By Me, Spanish Harlem, I Who Have Nothing and Hound Dog to their credit, the pair wrote many hits for many different kinds of artist, ranging from forgettable novelty acts to the blues icon Big Mama Thornton to the sultry torch singer Peggy Lee. They also helped launch the career of producer Phil Spector, who helped launch the career of Sonny Bono, who actually did launch the career of Cher. Spector, whose trial on murder charges recently ended in a mistrial in Los Angeles, ruined the soundtrack for Let It Be and produced the Ramones worst LP End of the Century.

Since revulsion at what they had wrought with Let It Be contributed to the Beatles decision to disband, and since End of the Century was viewed as a sellout from which the Ramones never recovered, it can be argued that Leiber and Stoller, by giving Spector work at this pivotal stage in his career, may have planted the seeds for two of the greatest tragedies in the history of popular music. But as neither man could have foreseen or foreheard any of this, they are no more responsible for the strings on "The Long and Winding Road" and "Baby, I Love You" than Richard Wagner is for the rise of the Third Reich.

Thirty-nine songs by Leiber and Stoller were used in the Broadway revue Smoky Joe's Café, the most successful show of its kind ever. Unlike similar revues based on songs by Billy Joel or the Four Seasons, Smoky Joe's Café does not have the fingerprints of Moloch all over it. Jailhouse Rock is one of the last numbers in the show. One verse contains the lyrics:

Number forty-seven said to number three,
You're the cutest jailbird I ever did see;
I sure would be delighted with your company,
Come on and do the jailhouse rock with me.

It has elsewhere been suggested that, even though songwriters didn't generally dwell on such subjects back in 1957, these lyrics may refer to homosexual acts practiced within the walls of American penitentiaries.

Gosh. Do you think?

Last of the 'pen writers' still plying trade in Dallas courthouse

John Henry says to his mother,
Says "A man ain't nothin but a man,
Before I let this steam drill beat me down,
I'll die with this hammer in my hand,
Lawd, Lawd, I'll die with this hammer in my hand."

- "John Henry," folk ballad

When I read this profile of 72-year old Frank Howell, a court reporter in Dallas and perhaps the last of the "pen writers" - i.e, hand stenographers - in an era when most court reporting has entered the digital age, I couldn't help but think of the ballad of John Henry, the 19th century steel-drivin' man who took on a steam drill in a railroad spike-driving contest, and "died with a hammer in his hand."

"Even when I first began to report, people would tell me that someday I would be replaced by a machine," Howell told Texas Lawyer ("Dinosaurs still roam the court," Jan. 8). But it hasn't happened, at least yet. He owns neither a cell phone nor a computer. Still working as a reporter in Dallas competency hearings, Howell transcribes pen-written short-hand onto transcripts using an IBM Selectric. Though some of his peers disbelieve the claim, Howell says his by-hand transcription meets the state's 225 word per minute minimum rate (at 96% accuracy).

In addition to his court reporting skills, Howell also serves another function, as part of the courthouse's long-term institutional memory: "If you wanted to know what was really going on in the courthouse, he has been one of the sources," declared Dallas solo Ron Goranson. "If there is a rumor going around, sooner or later, he would pick it up."

Though the steam drill beat John Henry, in an