In the news and around the blogosphere

Just a few quick hits before I focus elsewhere this afternoon:

Say "Howdy" to The Crime Analyst's Blog out of Bell County, TX. Good stuff there, particularly the ongoing 60 Steps series.

Also I just noticed the Vera Institute of Justice has begun its own blog - well worth watching since it appears to be regularly updated. (I've learned a lot from these folks' research and materials over the years.)

See this letter (pdf) to the Harris County Commissioner's Court from the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition and an array of religious and community groups supporting the creation of a public defender office.

Texas Office of Court Administration chief Carl Reynolds at Courtex has been discussing court technology in a wonky but useful fashion.

The Dallas News Crime Blog has coverage of the Dallas City Hall corruption trial and an officer who received a 15-day suspension for a false arrests that costs the victim 10 months in jail.

The Texas Court of Crimnal Appeals Blog has a post about a case in which the CCA ruled that a hit using "Light Detection and Ranging" equipment (LIDAR - a different technology than RADAR) did not by itself give probable cause for a speeding stop unless the state could verify the technology's accuracy or it corroborated an independent observation by the officer. Blogger R.J. MacReady thinks this will set the stage for evidentiary hearings in the future over LIDAR reliability.

An allegedly corrupt clerk in a Bexar County Justice of the Peace's office was reportedly caught in a sting soliciting bribes in exchange for wiping traffic tickets off the county's computers.

Arnold Scharzenegger won't comply with an order from federal judges (historically not a sound strategy) to submit a plan reducing the state's prison population by 40,000 inmates. As I noted in the comments to a post at Sentencing Law & Policy, California actually has a plan to lower its prison population by that much, they're just not submitting it to the feds.

Meanwhile, Thinking Outside the Cage has a lot of great coverage of Colorado's debates over cutting correctional costs.

Corey Yung at the Sex Crimes Blog says sex-abuse claims by inmates at federal prisons doubled in the last seven years.

Crime is down 40% in New York City. Notably, running counter to the argument that crime rates and incarceration rates are linked, New York is the only state in the union that reduced it's incarceration rate more rapidly than Texas over the last few years.

I'm not sure where the webmasters are going with this, but check out the Con Artist's Hall of Fame.

And speaking of con artists, White Collar Crime Prof begins the Monday Morning Quarterbacking on the 477-page Madoff report from the SEC.