Why does Travis County assess so many fines?
Travis County stood out as an egregious outlier in a Brennan Center study on fines and fees focused on ten counties in three states. Assessed per-capita fines and fees were $32.30 in Travis County compared to $12.30 in El Paso, $8 in Santa Fe, and $4 in Miami-Dade County. This report casts light on one of the most obscure and little-studies aspect of the Texas justice system. Grits doesn't have resources to replicate this research for other Texas counties, but I wish someone would. We'd learn a lot, I bet. In particular, one imagines we'd learn how much harm a small number of malicious or incompetent judges, (im)properly placed, can do when left to their own devices what amounts to a judicial backwater for decades on end. See the Texas Observer's coverage.
Older, sicker prisoners driving Texas prison health care costs
Increased medical costs for older inmates is among the biggest reasons Texas prison budgets have never gone down despite closing eight units over the last decade, the Texas Tribune reported before the holiday.
The state spent over $750 million on prison health care during the 2019 fiscal year, a 53% increase from seven years earlier, when that cost was less than $500 million.
The main reason, according to experts and officials: an older, sicker prison population.
While the total prison population declined by 3%, the number of inmates ages 55 and older increased by 65%, according to Texas Department of Criminal Justice data.
Inmates over 55 account for about one-eighth of the population but nearly one-half of the system’s hospitalization costs, according to prison officials.Grits has written about this population recently, regular readers will recall, suggesting revamped parole priorities as the only realistic way to confront the problem.
Newsflash: Police unions behave like bullies
When police unions subject professional athletes to the same, abusive behavior they routinely dispense toward #cjreform advocates, suddenly the media notices. smh. Some of us have been slugging it out with these guys for many years. It was never news before!
Junk science of the week
Voice print analysis. It's been more than ten years since the National Academy of Science published its ground breaking analysis of forensic-science flaws, and it's remarkable how little has been done to rectify the problems they identified.
Journalism and wrongful convictions
Grits is looking forward to attending an event on Wednesday in Houston on journalism and wrongful convictions - a fundraiser for Houston Interfaith featuring Pam Colloff and Nicole Casarez. Grits also is scheduled to meet DA-candidate Carvana Cloud for a brief chat while I'm in H-Town; she and Audia Jones are challenging incumbent Kim Ogg in the primary. In related DA-race news, here's an interview with Audia Jones from The Appeal.
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5 comments:
Grits, on sick inmates IIRC, the Federal Bureau of Prisons boots your keister out at 65 on all but the worst cases. They figure you're eligible for Medicare, hence saving costs, and not likely to be a violent criminal, so not threatening society.
No, for "lifer" inmates, that has its own ethical issues, of course.
Oh, it's not just criminal fees. Many medium and larger cities in the US have dropped library late fees since they disproportionally hit the poor and can hurt adult education, etc.
In the mid-90s, I represented a 17 year old who got life for a robbery murder with parole eligibility after 40 years. So, he'll be 57 when the parole board takes a look at him.
He would need 40 quarters of work with $1,350 earned each quarter to be eligible for social security or medicare. That means if he paroles at 57, since he's been incarcerated for 40 years, he'll need 10 years of continuous employment to be eligible for medicare or social security.
An argument can be made that it would be cruel to let him out of prison. He will be totally institutionalized. if released at 57, he will have spent 40 years not having to decide what to eat (or even how to get something to eat), what to wear, when to get up, when to go to bed etc. He'll be like Brooks in Shawshank Redemption. He won't be able to function in society.
He likely will need the support system prison provides.
After all, prison is the ultimate welfare system. And, yes, it's going to cost a lot of money to keep older inmates in prison. Medical care is expensive. And, the government has to pickup the tab.
So then how do we all feel about "punishing" our criminals with welfare to the point they can't take care of themselves?
Travis County is a piker when it comes to fines and fees. Riesel, Texas appears to be the state champ, collecting an average $1,223 in fines and fees per adult resident in 2017. Source: https://www.governing.com/topics/finance/fine-fee-revenues-special-report.html#map
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