Wednesday, July 01, 2015

Criminal justice reform accomplishments from the 84th Texas Legislature

Grits had earlier suggested that the 84th Texas Legislature was characterized mainly by missed opportunities on criminal justice reform, and part of me still feels that way: I remain unhappy that they failed to do much to curb police abuses or rein in asset forfeiture. And except for adjusting property thresholds for inflation, they largely failed to address sentencing, allowing the corrections budget to balloon massively. The deaths of widely supported bills like ban-the-box, raise-the-age, and needle exchange were dispiriting. I also find the border buildup to be one of the most irresponsible boondoggles I've ever personally witnessed. Finally, when Greg Glod of the Texas Public Policy Foundation lauded this session's accomplishments, I found myself underwhelmed with the examples he cited. "Weak tea," I thought. (And I still don't quite understand how you'd look at this session and highlight those bills!)

Even so, now that the dust has settled following the veto period (and the Governor vetoed a couple of good criminal justice bills based on deeply flawed reasoning), Grits must admit that the big reform bills passed this session, taken together, constitute a pretty impressive array of criminal-justice policy accomplishments. They just weren't the things most people were focused on when the session began. To me, these are the highlights, in no particular order:
  • Adjust property thresholds for inflation. Passed as an amendment after a senate bill failed to get a House floor vote, this legislation will reduce incarceration for property crimes at the margins in a move Grits has advocated for years. The big budget impact will come from shifting state jail felony charges to the misdemeanor courts and reducing the proportion of theft cases charged as serious felonies based solely on the property valuation.
  • Diligent participation credits for state jail felonies. State jail felons can now earn sentence reductions through diligent participation in education, vocational, treatment, or work programs.
  • Eliminated the pick-a-pal grand jury system. A significant change, Grits remains a bit emotionally winded from the drama surrounding its passage. I'd considered this a lesser reform in a sense because we were literally the last state to do it; Texas wasn't leading the way on this one, we were bringing up the rear. But smarter folks than myself assure me this is no small thing. While there's more to do, with hindsight I'm starting to feel pretty good about this one.
  • Decriminalized truancy. Like grand jury reforms, this basically brought us in line with virtually all other states. But we're talking about diverting tens of thousands of juvenile cases out of the criminal justice system which is nothing to sneeze at. Between this and the state eliminating most Class C ticketing in schools last session (another John Whitmire bill), Texas has pretty quickly moved away from treating low-level juvenile behavior through the justice system.
  • Shifted juvenile incarceration from state youth prisons to regional detention centers. Somehow the estimates for how many kids would be shifted to counties under SB 1630 declined over session. At one point, press accounts had the final number at 200-300 kids in youth prisons post-reform; by the end of session the estimates were 700-800 kids remaining, down from 1,100. Either would be significant but, having not tracked the bill closely, Grits remains unsure whether it's the estimate that changed or the underlying policy.
  • Created innocence commission to study causes of false convictions. This is a well-timed project; Texas has passed all but one of the recommendations from the last such study panel.
  • Afforded habeas corpus relief to defendants falsely convicted based on junk science. Grits readers are sick of hearing about this one, but I'm still giddy the governor signed this thing.
  • Provided counsel for habeas corpus petitioners in agreed cases. In innocence cases or other situations where the state agrees a defendant is entitled to relief, judges must now appoint a lawyer. This will also provide a vehicle for representation of clients convicted of crimes which were later struck down as unconstitutional.
  • Expanded jurisdiction of the Office of Capital Writs to include forensic writs referred from the Forensic Science Commission. Likely few cases will be referred in the near term - they got no additional budget to go along with the new authority - but the cases they do get are likely to be important, with the potential to impact big swaths of the system.
  • Required licensure of forensic analysts by 2019. And with a license comes the ability of the state to revoke a license. This is a significant accountability reform.
  • Provided notice to defendants when courts schedule an execution. Hard to believe that wasn't required before, but there you go (see a discussion here).
  • Expanded access to post-conviction DNA testing: Every few years, the Court of Criminal Appeals says someone can't get testing done under Ch. 64 of the Code of Criminal Procedure and the Lege tells them they can. SB 487 was this year's version.
  • Reformed sex offender civil commitment program. Not a complete fix for the failing program, since it didn't address the lack of available housing, but a big, important bill.
  • Funding bodycams: The Lege approved a $10 million grant program for body cameras, though Grits is not so enamored of the rest of the bodycam legislation.
  • Reviving in-person visitation: The Lege insisted that jails cannot eliminate in-person visitation when they expand to include video visitation, but grandfathered a baker's dozen facilities that changed their policies before the state changed the law.
Taken as a whole, that's a non-trivial amount of reform legislation passing. It's just the trajectory didn't follow the path most observers anticipated (except, perhaps, for John Whitmire, who authored more than his share of bills that became law this go-round).

Yes, with the exception of the property threshold and diligent participation bills, the Lege failed to address Texas' fundamental over-reliance on mass incarceration. But neither would it be fair to disparage or poo poo how much was accomplished.

MORE: State Rep. James White offered an addendum to this list.

20 comments:

Anonymous said...

Grits,

Grand jury reform is a lot like the argument over the battle flag. It's really all about perception. And sometimes, when perception becomes reality, it just needs to get addressed.

Best,
:~)

Anonymous said...

Grits Texas CCA is granting numerous habeas relief on drug convictions where lab results later proved no evidence of drugs(especially cocaine). I also noticed that they are mainly Harris County convictions. Are you gonna use your new gig to push for actual innocence for these guys? Surely if there were no drugs found you have to be innocent right? Maybe? I don't get it.

Gritsforbreakfast said...

I don't have to push for that, 3:58, it's already that way under current case law.

@3:44, I agree with you to an extent, actually, but the flip side is that perceptions come from somewhere. Alfred Brown really was railroaded, his girlfriend really was jailed for 75 days to coerce her to contradict his alibi. That stuff is all true, it's not just somebody's perception, and it's the main reason the bill passed.

Anonymous said...

I am curious: can somebody tell me about what's being done about changing/improving: heat-related deaths? Abuse of solitary confinement for minor offenses? Rampant drug trafficking and use (by guards AND inmates)? Crappy food quality that gets worse every day? Better training for guards?

Anon to avoid harassment said...

Texas needs a less expensive and less procedurally difficult means for an RSO to get off of the list and no longer have to register. The system treats everyone, regardless of the offense and their behavior as if they raped a child, when many are there from having sex with a person that was just under the age limit or a case of he said, she said adult-adult sex. People on the list cannot get employment, even decades after the one offense in their life, and cannot afford the steps necessary to even apply to get off the list.

After some period of time, say ten years, without an offense and living within the rules, it should be possible and not complicated or expensive to get off the list. A person who offended at 17 or 18 is condemned to a life of poverty and harassment.

Gritsforbreakfast said...

Guards got a pay raise, 2:18, but it'll take a win in court to do anything about the heat, at least as long as John Whitmire is in the senate.

Thank God for Texas Voices, ATAH, they're the main ones out there consistently spreading that message.

Jordan said...

Seems like a lot happened in Texas! I think a lot of these things are going to be either overshadowed by the national news happening right now, or by their design will take a while to have a noticeable affect - but it's still important to note that all of this got done. Thanks for sharing.

texasjailbird said...

For the approximately 400 pregnant inmates incarcerated in county jails each month, the passage of HB 1140 was pretty important. It's the one time study requiring county jails to report on the medical care, food, vitamins, housing, and work assignments that they provide. That report, collected by the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, will let families, advocates, and legislators know how many calories the Ellis County jail provides as opposed to the Brazos County jail, which could mean the difference between a low birth weight baby and a healthy baby. Even more importantly, we'll be able to see and correlate the rate of infant death and miscarriage with the access to obstetricians and medical care. Thanks to Rep. Celia Israel.

Anonymous said...

Grits - any idea why Abbott vetoed a pretty innocuous mediation bill for low-level offenses?

Anonymous said...

12:04 PM It was all about the money. The fiscal note applied by the LBB to that bill did not adequately portray the actual cost. While some counties already have great active mediation programs (Bexar and Lubbock are tops on the list), the majority do not and to implement it would be costly. The LBB simply performed a snapshot of a few counties across the state and applied that to the law of averages to come up with the fiscal note presented, which was far from being accurate. The discrepancies were brought to the governor's office which caused a concern. Therefore the veto. It will be presented again next session and with a true fiscal note attached and language making it permissive not mandatory it will fly. Current statute already allows for mediation though so why another law??
Same fiscal note implications apply to the Raise-the-age issue but on a grander scale. Significant funding will need to be set aside for this to work in Texas and without guaranteed funding it will fail again.

Soronel Haetir said...

Grits,

Given how the legislative process is structured I have a hard time seeing disappointment being the reasonable response to any bill failing to become law. There are simply so many points at which a bill can fail to advance that IMO the default assumption going in should be that the bill will not become law, no matter how desirable that outcome might be.

Gritsforbreakfast said...

Soronel, that is a highly rational analysis and an acceptable attitude for losers. If you want to win, you have operate under the assumption that success is possible, not that defeat is inevitable. Hope is not rational, but little gets accomplished without it.

Soronel Haetir said...

Given my attitude toward government (I would be an anarchist were it not for everyone else) my default desire is for legislation to fail. What we have may be far from perfect but I also recognize it could certainly be worse.

Gritsforbreakfast said...

"default" implies that additional facts can change one's opinion on any given bill. Anarchist or not, a rationalist must acknowledge that, since they file 6,000, some are worthy just on the stopped-clock-is-right-twice-a-day principle.

The bills listed in this post all improved current law. Many hundreds more passed that may deserve your default judgment.

Soronel Haetir said...

Actually, I disagree with you on the overdose prevention bill. I see no reason to protect people from such mistakes of their own making.

Anonymous said...

Shana, they bought their tickets...
They KNEW what they were getting into.
I say, let 'em crash.

Anonymous said...

This legislative session was brought to you by the folks at The Geo Corporation, Corrections Corporation of America, and MTC Private Prisons. Follow the money trail / lobbyist and it will lead you back to the pillars of incarceration.

Gritsforbreakfast said...

Soronel, if that's all you disagreed with on this entire list of bills, then you've made substantial progress from where you started. Congratulations on whatever spawned such humanitarian advancement!

Unknown said...

Texas corrections budget balloons. Time for public safety reinvestment that is #smartoncrime http://bit.ly/1av9GHF - saves lives, violence and taxes - stops waste on more prisons

Anonymous said...

you really want felony youth loose in your neighborhood? The kids in youth prisons have committed terrible crimes & have committed numbers of them before they went to facilities, where they continue to act in an anti-social manner on a daily basis. They are not going to "grow out" of this behavior. They will grow into the adult system. Get a grip Grits, face reality