Quick Hits

A few quick hits before I head off to Spanish class this morning:

MyPrisonSpace: Prisoners in Texas have no Internet access, but through snail-mail correspondence Jason Everett is still posting from prison on a MySpace account. See particularly his recent good news about getting to take college courses (prisoners pay discounted college tuition, it's not free, which I didn't know). With luck, he hopes to complete an associate degree before he's up for parole.

Prisoner Re-entry Cheaper, Safer: See a video created by the Racine, WS police department with the International Association of Police Chiefs describing their successful prisoner re-entry program. I wonder if Texas cities would tolerate the COPS houses in neighborhoods where the programs are run? The NIMBY folks already tend oppose drug treatment and felon housing. That might be the biggest barrier to implementation, after political will.

Texas Warden of the Year: Teresa Moya. Along with that news, the Back Gate today also describes a new case of alleged smuggling by a corrections officer. You take the good with the bad, I guess.

Crime spike a trend or 'background noise'? John Roman from the Urban Institute says it's a crime what we don't know about crime, and cautions against overinterpreting recent data showing the first increase in violent crime stats in 14 years.

Cash cows with plugged udders? Austin may have decided to install red light cameras, but in Houston they're having trouble so far getting people to pay the tickets.

Children of Prisoners, Children of Promise: I ran across these resources on providing support for children of incarcerated parents from a 2003 videoconference by the National Institute of Corrections, including video from the event and online readings. Lots of interesting stuff here I'll want to get back to.

Job Courts? Here's an idea I hadn't heard before: NPR in September described a Lancaster, PA program where offenders stay out of jail by getting a job and keeping it.