Light blogging from me today, but there are several
bills up in the House Corrections Committee today aimed at giving the Department of Criminal Justice more tools to manage its inmate population and facilitating reentry to reduce recidivism among ex-prisoners:
- HB 93 (Terri Hodge) Relating to the restoration of good conduct time forfeited during a term of imprisonment.
- HB 94 (Terri Hodge) Relating to the application of laws awarding credit to an inmate for time between release on and subsequent revocation of parole, mandatory supervision, or conditional pardon.
- HB 1711 (Sylvester Turner) Relating to requiring the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to establish a comprehensive reentry and reintegration plan for offenders released or discharged from a correctional facility.
See more detail on HB 1711 in this
fact sheet (pdf) from the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition.
Why aren't you informing your readers that Hodge is facing a federal felony indictment for corruption and that she has allegedly wrongfully used her position to assist inmates? If she was a Republican, is there any doubt you would mention such a critical fact? isn't that an obvious bit of bias on your part?
ReplyDeleteYouknow Grits will help cover for demo; otherwise there would be some info about this here.
ReplyDeleteThe court filings accuse Ms. Hodge of "receiving payments from families of Texas prison inmates in return for her political support and assistance on proceedings affecting the inmates before the Texas Board of Pardons and Parole."
ReplyDeletehttp://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/dn/latestnews/stories/081908dnmethodge.3c81715.html
Man, I feel so much safer now that I know that the FBI is going after politicians for trying to help prisoners actually get a fair hearing before the Board of Pardons and Paroles. Thanks for exposing that Anon. I'll sleep much better tonight.
ReplyDeleteNow that the Republican AUSA's have been kicked to the curb, we can only hope that some real criminals start getting indicted.
Innocent until proved guilty, anyone? Or is it just the substance of Ms Hodge's Bills that you don't like?
ReplyDelete8:47 and all - I've written about Hodge's legal troubles in the past. I just neither had time (note this is a short, quickie post) nor saw the need to rehash it just because her bills were up.
ReplyDeleteOFFENDERS - the problem on our land of Texas is the large number of Offenders on the Public Payroll. If they were held accountable to the Law, there would not be some any labeled offenders requiring re-entry.
ReplyDeleteI am trying to figure out what the impact of HB 94 will be. Isn't Tex. Gov't Code Section 508.283 the section that determines whether inmates get street-time credit? If so, does that mean that any inmate prior to 2001 will now be eligible for street-time credit if they have met the mid-point rules and aren't ineligible because of their offense? I read through the notes on the bill but they didn't provide much clarification. Thanks.
ReplyDeleteI appauld Terri Hodge for trying to improve our justice system. So, what if, and I'm saying if she did receive money for inmates' families, lawyers receive money from inmates families all the time. And, some attorneys are crocks. She is trying to improve sitautions for the inmates. If you ever had a child in tdcj, you would be very thankful for someone like Terri Hodge. Go Girl Go.
ReplyDeleteWell, Grits, deep down, you know that your bias is showing. Truth is you don't ever pass on the chance to take a shot at anyone you perceive as Republican or conservative. Taking money for helping inmates, as alleged by the federal indictment, is a form of bribery.
ReplyDeleteRep. Hodge's bills can be summarized in this way: whatever we can do to speed the release of criminals through fancy credits is good. After all, that's what she was paid to do.
The last time the Legislature fell for this game, criminals ended up serving about one month for every year of a sentence. The parole rate skyrocketed to 80%. And the crime rate went through the roof.
To all those anons wanting Ms Hodge locked up even before she has been proved guilty of anything more than doing what politicians do ~ are you happy that a portion of your tax dollars will be spent on that?
ReplyDeletehi scott, can you make a small correction. instead of SB 1711 can you make it HB 1711. Thanks for all of the wonderful work you do.
ReplyDelete