Houston Mayor's Policing Task Force Recap, Part 3: Mental-health first response, What counts as diversion?, the 'all-purpose panacea promoted by people who oppose policy change,' and other stories

Here's Part 3 of Grits' tripartite, annotated analysis of the new report from the Houston Mayor's Task Force on Policing Reform. See Part 1 and Part 2.

Mental-Health First Response
In Austin, Dallas, and elsewhere across the country, one of the approaches to displacing police from non-law-enforcement tasks has been mental-health first response, where many clients do not ask for a law-enforcement presence and end up in involuntary detention, more often than not, because police don't know what else to do with them. Adding insult to injury, when cops drop them off at the emergency room, they get credit for a "jail diversion"!

The Task Force found that "Diversion of mental-health-related 911 calls at the call center level is the earliest point of diversion before any law enforcement involvement. Since the beginning of the [counseling] program, CCD [Crisis Call Diversion] diverted more than 4,902 calls from law enforcement response and saved the equivalent of 7,353 hours of police time (March 2016 to May 2019)." The Task Force recommended funding 24/7 counselors to boost the diversion rate, as well as boosting the number of Mobile Crisis Outreach teams (civilian medical folks who respond to MH crises in the field), and tripling the number of HPD's CIRT teams, which are police officers teamed with mental-health practitioners.

The Task Force endorsed a legislative proposal folks in Dallas and Austin have been clamoring for as well: Amending state law (Chapter 573 of the TX Health and Safety Code) to allow health care professionals to handle decisions related to emergency detentions. Right now, only police can do so, and that law is a barrier to removing law enforcement from the equation in non-criminal mental health calls.

Mental health cases are a growing part of HPD's case load, as they are all over the state. In an article on CIRT teams, the Chronicle mentioned that, "In Houston, encounters between police and people with mental illness ballooned over the last decade from 23,913 mental-health calls in 2009 to 40,884 in 2019." That means that the Crisis Call Diversion handles a rather paltry 3.8% of calls.

Importantly, the CIRT teams are not actually "first responders," but "secondary responders" similar to the EMCOT program in Austin, which also appears to go to relatively few calls (10.5%.). What happens to the other 86% of mental health calls? It appears they get the nearest police officer regardless of training. That's both a big waste and heightens the chance that people in mental-health crisis get shot.

What counts as diversion?
The Mayor's task force claims HPD's CIRT teams focused on mental-health cases has a 95.9% rate of "diversion from jails." But that's a miseading figure. Fewer than one in four calls are resolved at the scene; in all other instances, somebody is taken away, usually against their will, and sometimes against the wishes of their parents, guardians, or care givers.

The data shows that more than a third are dropped at hospital emergency departments because area psych hospitals had no space. Since these patients may not have insurance, and ERs are not set up to handle behavioral health issues at any significant scale, this has been a source of complaint for years in many jurisdictions, not just Houston. 

It's time for H-Town to challenge itself to substantially increase the share of mental-health calls met with a non-police response. A major goal should be boosting that "resolved on scene" number from less than 25% to 2/3 or more, reserving "emergency detention" for situations where a person poses a danger to themselves or others. Those criteria may include abusive behavior toward family and there may be good reason to detain any given individual (so spare me the parade of anecdotes in the comments, I get it). But in a huge number of cases there is not; too often, cops take someone based on a "better safe than sorry" logic. After all, the hospital/ambulance bills aren't going to show up in their mailbox months later.

Domestic calls: Do all of them need a cop?
The Task Force endorses a pilot program at HPD for intervention with high-risk domestic violence victims called DART (Domestic Abuse Response Team), which pairs officers with a victim advocate nurse. The pilot has been ongoing since January 2019, operating three nights per week (7pm to 3am) in three HPD districts. No information on how much it would cost to expand.

For that matter, I'd love to see any outcomes or research based on this pilot, comparisons to control groups, etc.. When I searched on the HPD website regarding the program, I only found one responsive web page: This flyer. If it's been going for nearly two years, one would think there'd be something out there.

When agencies do pilots, Grits believes they should always budget a research and data collection component. Domestic violence policies and police responses have always been all over the map. Maybe this is a great program; maybe other approaches would be better. When experimental programs are tested, somebody should be tasked with reporting on what they're doing, including any relevant metrics. Even better: Evaluating the program compared to a control population. That doesn't appear to be have been done yet for DART.

Regardless, Grits remains unconvinced that police need to go to every domestic disturbance call, even as security, as described in the DART program. There must be a response, and if a cops are needed, they should be called. But once the cop engages in violence or pulls their gun, that trumps clinicians' authority or decisions. Sending them only when needed reduces the chances that happens.

Indeed, one can make an argument that cops are simply the wrong messengers on this topic, as our pal Jessica Pishko recently reminded:

Other studies have found that police themselves are often the perpetrators of domestic and sexual violence, rendering them undesirable as a source of help, particularly for women of color who experience much greater rates of violence, including sexual violence, from police. Interactions with the police can also exacerbate existing conditions, like economic instability or trauma.

Pishko quoted law prof Aya Gruber expressing a sentiment your correspondent has held for some time: "victims may be making a rational choice when they decline to testify against their abusers. 'Domestic violence prosecutions have little benefit to women and in fact can harm them,' she explained, 'but the prosecutors are very convinced they are saving women’s lives.'"

Task Force: Decriminalize prostitution! But make them work in criminalized environs.
Grits didn't foresee the Mayor's Task Force recommending that prostitution be decriminalized. That said, they weren't exactly suggesting the re-establishment of the city's red-light district: They still think the state should to prosecute "pimps, brothel and illicit massage parlor owners and managers, sex tourism operators, and sex buyers." But right now, they declare, "Law enforcement is arresting the wrong people."

Here's the oddity: Clearly they consider most prostitutes victims who deserve protection. Different folks feel differently about that, including sex workers, and I'm not trying to launch that debate. But I do question the virtue of claiming to "decriminalize" prostitution and then criminalizing everything about the industry except service provision.

In the age of the internet-personal ad, many prostitutes operate individual sole proprietorships without a formal "pimp" or brothel. For them, the Task Force's distinction doesn't make a difference.

If we're now going to express sympathy for prostitutes, then let's be clear: The biggest dangers they face all stem from the government banning their services and forcing members of the Oldest Profession to provide their wares in a black market. The sole proprietor of the liquor store may rely on police for protection; the sole-proprietor prostitute seeking security must turn to a pimp, which is an inherently unhealthy partnership.

Training: The all-purpose panacea promoted by people who oppose policy change
Look, I'm all for good police training. Indeed, much of what I've learned about police practices (and jailers, and prosecutors, and defense lawyers, and district judges, and appellate judges, and forensic analysts, etc.) has come from attending their professional training sessions, conferences, and CLEs over many years and/or reading training materials (plus chasing down items from their footnotes) from those events. While, between my illness and COVID, 2020 has been a dry spell, in the past I might normally attend several such events per year, including many that put me in rooms filled with police officers. Frankly, I've never had a bad experience doing that and highly recommend it.

That said, having worked on police reform now for more than 25 years, here's Grits' view: "More training" is the first thing reform opponents suggest whenever substantive reforms are proposed. It's always the first "reform" suggested and, as soon as it's implemented, reform opponents push hard to stop there. Every time. Some of the trainings on implicit bias and racial equity in particular appear to have little effect on outcomes. Grits didn't consider it good enough a quarter century ago and it's certainly not good enough now.

Yes, change your policies, train on the improved ones, and consistently, effectively punish officers who fail to follow them. That's how you change departmental culture. But training alone won't help.

Reflections on Mayor's Task Force Recommendations
Having now gone through the entire report, what to make of it as a whole? There are moments where it is bold, for example, recommending changes to the 180-day rule and insisting officers suspected of misconduct should be questioned at the beginning of the investigation process. And I was excited to see the recommendation that un-redacted bodycam video should be released, though I don't agree to limiting that to critical incidents.

Similarly, the suggestions that 1) Houston PD create a complaints database and 2) publish an annual report on disciplinary actions against officers, would constitute a major leap forward in transparency for the department. But it falls short of what's needed: Police departments also need to begin publishing data and detail about use of force incidents in online databases where researchers and the public can access them. Grits knows for a fact legislation requiring that statewide will be filed during the 87th Legislature, and the an executive order from Donald Trump mandated creation of a national database documenting "instances of excessive use of force."

Texas already has good data on police shootings and deaths in custody. That's the next step.

Grits remains less than confident they've figured out the right way to keep Houston cops from shooting people on mental-health calls or domestic disturbance calls. I'd prefer to see them working to expand the subset of those encounters at which police are absent entirely. They can always be called in if needed.

Other suggestions seem more like half measures that don't really get at the problems they hope to solve - redesign a website, issue a report on diversity efforts, etc.. All perfectly reasonable stuff the government must think about, but boring and unlikely to be decisive in addressing the problems.

Finally, I don't believe they've identified the right model for the Independent Police Oversight Board, potentially designing it to perform a fruitless, Sisyphean task that leaves them set up to fail. The Task Force acknowledged that the all-volunteer IPOB needs significant staff to do its job, and that more staff are needed to process complaints, both from the community and from officers themselves. Why not follow Austin's lead and create a full-blown Police Monitor to manage that staff, add value through regular reporting, and to advise the Mayor and Council on issues related to departmental conduct, discipline, and culture from an independent perspective?

Grits sees these Task Force recommendations as the beginning of a conversation, not in any sense the final word on what reform in Houston might look like. If all of them were implemented tomorrow, it would be a Banner Day for Criminal-Justice Reform. And yet, it would be insufficient. In just a few years, many of the same problems would arise.

This report had a great deal of crossover with recommendations from several city council members earlier this week, and was in a sense even more aggressive. Between them, they're a good conversation starter, but now the conversation must move forward. 

Data on waiting lists for TX competency restoration

The Appropriations bill during the last Texas legislative session required the Health and Human Services Commission to periodically report on waiting lists for mental health services. Here's the chart from the report related to forensic beds, where mentally ill folks are sent for "competency restoration" before they can stand for trial, plea, etc.:

This has been a problem now for many years. Once someone has been deemed incompetent, they can't even plea out and must typically remain incarcerated until they can get into a state hospital and receive treatment. For maximum security beds, that can take nearly a year. And that's just the wait to get in the door, it doesn't include treatment time! The Lege at one point created pilot programs to do outpatient competency restoration, but that system never scaled up to solve the problem.

Humpty Dumpty, the Castle Doctrine, and other stories

Here are a few odds and ends that merit Grits readers' attention:

Humpty Dumpty and the Castle Doctrine

The judge in former Dallas police officer Amber Guyger's murder trial for the shooting of Botham Jean gave the jury instructions on the Castle Doctrine defense, despite the fact that Guyger entered Jean's home and shot him, and wasn't defending her "castle." Her lawyers employed this argument as their primary defense (that it wasn't her home was a "mistake of fact," they said) so the judge had no choice but to address it, but Humpty Dumpty would be proud! The claim didn't help Guyger, however. She was convicted, anyway. UPDATE: Guyger was sentenced to ten years.

Death of trailblazing deputy raises difficult, familiar questions
The tragic shooting death of a Harris County Sheriff's deputy - a trail blazing figure who was the first Sikh to work in Harris County law enforcement - raises familiar questions with no satisfying answers. The alleged killer is a severely schizophrenic parolee who had gone off his meds and heard voices telling him to kill people. Is the criminal-justice system the best way to deal with people whose offenses are rooted in severe mental illness? How did this convicted felon and parolee get a firearm? He already was the subject of a warrant for violating his parole, should more resources be allocated to search for high-risk parole violators? His family had told officials he was dangerous and off his meds: Are there "red flag" laws that could have allowed them to act sooner? The circumstances surrounding this awful episode will provide fodder for these and many other debates in coming years. The public dialogue would have been easier, in a sense, if this had turned out to be a hate crime. The issues surrounding mental illness and the politics of gun proliferation are much more complex and difficult to deal with.

Private jail operator keeps screwing up
At the Liberty County Jail, which is operated by the Geo Group, "In the last 60 days, there have been two felony escapes, one of their correctional officers was arrested for stealing from inmates while on duty, and most recently, there are questions surrounding the death of a prisoner who hanged himself while in their custody. Apart from those instances, they have also flunked two jail inspections this year, one on April 22 and the second on June 28," the Houston Chronicle reported. Local officials are considering whether to terminate ties with the private prison contractor.

The economics of high probation fees
Check out a new article from our friend Todd Jermstad, probation director in Bell County, on the history and future of court-imposed fees at Texas probation departments. Especially interesting was his thesis that policymakers should take into account reduced means of Gen X and Millenial defendants, whose economic prospects remain less robust than earlier generations. Grits may delve more deeply into this soon, but for now, here's the link.

Bail litigation roundup
See a write-up from The Appeal of recent bail-litigation news, including from Houston and Galveston. See also related Grits coverage and our discussion of the topic in Just Liberty's most recent Reasonably Suspicious podcast.

Over friggin' pot?
In Hutto, a police officer responding to a call that someone was smoking marijuana beat up a man in his driveway and made false accusations in official documents to justify it. The victim had no marijuana in his possession, and bodycam video proved the cop was lying about the victim pushing the officer before he was attacked. The officer was fired, was indicted in May, and the victim has filed a civil rights suit, reported KXAN-TV.

Homelessness problems and solutions
In the wake of Austin's tendentious debate over homeless policy, I was interested to see this excellent New Republic article on "housing insecurity in the nation's richest cities." When, in the 1990s, my wife and I could rent a dilapidated three-bedroom house in East Austin for $190, homelessness wasn't such a big problem. Now that rents in my neighborhood for similar homes approach $3k per month, it's little wonder more people are on the streets. Meanwhile, Bloomberg News had an informative piece a couple of months back on how Finland all but eliminated people sleeping on the streets by investing in preventive strategies like rent subsidies.

How police misconduct gets covered up by plea bargaining
Here's an excellent analysis from Brooklyn public defender Scott Hechinger of how mandatory minimums and the threat of long sentences help cover up police misconduct that would otherwise come out in court. That's because "victims of police abuse — illegal stops and frisks, car stops and searches, home raids, manufactured charges and excessive force — routinely forgo their constitutional right to challenge police abuse in a pretrial hearing in exchange for plea deals." This is undeniably true. It's only in cases like the episode in Hutto, described above, where victims face no charges that officers can be held accountable through regular court processes.

Financial motive not only reason prosecutors oppose actual-innocence claims
The New York Times published a feature on falsely convicted people who've been exonerated by the evidence but cannot secure an "actual innocence" ruling because prosecutors fear the financial consequences of civil rights lawsuits against local jurisdictions. All of the examples are from other states, but Texas' situation casts additional light on this topic. I was policy director at the Innocence Project of Texas when the Legislature passed the best-in-the-nation compensation package for exonerees in 2009. We hoped to avoid this dynamic by having the state compensate innocent convicts instead of the locals. Indeed, the bill was sold as a form of "tort reform," eliminating local liability for what were seen as systemic flaws causing false convictions. But it turned out, the real, underlying complaints weren't financial. Many prosecutors and some judges on the Court of Criminal Appeals simply don't want to see falsely convicted people compensated, ever, and go to great lengths to oppose actual-innocence claims, despite the fact that locals weren't on the hook. So Grits is skeptical of the article's thesis that the motive behind opposing actual-innocence claims is financial. I think it's more pernicious than that.

Sheriffs and #cjreform
Our pal Jessica Pishko published a New York Times op ed on Sheriff's offices, declaring "The problem of sheriffs is particularly acute in the South and Southwest, where the office has more power and was historically used to prop up white supremacy." She calls for Sheriffs to undertake what amounts to a truth-and-reconciliation process for past wrongs. That sanguine suggestion to me seems unlikely. Texas alone has 254 counties, after all - a few might do that, under the right political circumstances, but most will not. And abolishing the office, as some have called for, doesn't change the fact that someone has to perform those functions. Grits has often thought that sheriffs' jail-management duties should be separated from their responsibilities to patrol unincorporated areas. These are distinct functions involving very different skill sets, and typically those elected to the office only have knowledge of one or the other. Whether Sheriffs should be an elected position is a question for another day.

Deep thinking on sex-offender policies
A recent NY Times piece examined emerging research on people who are sexually attracted to minors, finding that its roots are not genetic, but are "prenatal," and "can be traced to specific periods of development in the womb." And this Marshall Project story looks at evidence-based anti-recidivism programs aimed at people convicted of violent, sexual crimes once their sentence is complete. I found both articles to be thoughtful contributions to the discussion.

Most crime dropping nationally, but look at those rape numbers!
New Uniform Crime Report data is out, and most categories of crime have continued to fall, except rape, which has risen precipitously since 2014. See first-cut analyses from the Brennan Center and the Marshall Project. No one knows for sure what's behind the rise in rape numbers. The feds began using a more expansive definition of sexual assault in 2014, but the numbers increased even using the "legacy" definition. The question arises: Have there actually been more rapes committed over this period, or are we simply now getting a more complete picture of the scope of the problem in the wake of increased reporting thanks to the #MeToo movement? ¿Quien sabe? Regardless, the year-over-year decline in property crimes, murders, robberies, etc., is cause for celebration, while the sex-assault data should contribute to deeper conversations on the question.

Needless shooting shows why cops shouldn't be first response to mental health calls

In the wake of the City of Austin funding an alternative approach to mental-health first response featuring mental-health clinicians taking the lead instead of cops, video has emerged from Corpus Christi of a police officer gunning down a mentally ill man wielding a metal pipe at point blank range. The victim didn't die, thankfully, but this was unnecessary:

Austin funds alternatives to police for mental-health first response

The Austin City Council yesterday approved $1.75 million in its next budget to create a new system for responding to 911 calls involving potential suicides and other mental-health-related scenarios, thanks to a measure promoted by Just Liberty and the Austin Justice Coalition.

The money would pay for 6.5 new positions to put mental-health clinicians on the front lines of 911 calls related to mental health crises along with seven new Community Health Paramedics at EMS.

As a result, according to a "policy direction" memo accompanying the funding, "The Council expects more calls to be appropriately directed to EMS and fewer to APD based on a better clinical triage in the 911 center." In some cases, that will mean mental health clinicians communicating with folks by video-call; in others, clinicians will will show up in person. And instead of uniformed police doing followup visits to the homes of the mentally ill to check on their medical progress (yes, that is what Austin has been doing,) trained Community Health Paramedics will do followup visits to help people address their needs.

In 2018, according to a report from the Meadows Foundation, Austin PD responded to 11,124 mental-health-related calls, most of which should now get clinicians and/or EMS personnel responding instead. This will reduce unnecessary incarceration, involuntary hospitalization and use-of-force incidents - a huge boon to the thousands of sick people involved. Giving a health care call a health response will also free up police officer time.

Austin's reform has been a long time coming. An audit released last year found Austin police shoot people on mental health calls more than in other large US cities. (Indeed, Austin's most recent high profile police shooting involved someone in mental health crisis.) And letters written by the now-disbanded Civilian Oversight Panel revealed its frustration at harmful police policies with respect to mental-health calls.

After two, full years of discussion and debate, advocates came to the city council this budget cycle with a well-developed proposal, passionate testimony from people harmed by the city's 911 system, and support from a wide range of groups. That convinced the Mayor to promise earlier this summer that needed funding would be included in the budget. Yesterday, the Council voted to include all the requested funds.

Protocols have yet to be developed, much less implemented, so it's too early to say for sure, but advocates and the City Council believe this measure should result in police responding to thousands fewer calls. When Dallas initiated reforms to its system for responding to mental health calls, the city saw, in first seven months, teams "addressed 709 mental health calls with only 21 cases (3%) ending in an arrest." If Austin can achieve such rates in a citywide program, that would amount to a sea change.

The city council included a list of performance measures and reporting requirements along with the funding, so we should have data coming out beginning next year to tell us whether we are meeting a health care emergency with a health care response.

License center lines to get lenghier, the case for medical-led mental-health first response, and other stories

Here are a few odds and ends that merit Grits readers' attention:

License renewals from abolished driver surcharges may exacerbate lines at DPS license centers

Line outside DPS license center on North Lamar
in Austin ~7:30 a.m. Friday morning

It's going to be a rough fall at the DPS license centers. The Texas Legislature gave them $200 million to staff up at some of its biggest facilities, but those new workers won't come online for several months. In the meantime, about one million people with suspended licenses on Monday will have had all their Driver Responsibility surcharges wiped clean and can finally renew their driver's licenses, likely significantly adding to lines.

Sheriff shot up wrong vehicle
Somebody took a shot at a state trooper in Kimble County, and he called it in. The sheriff heard the call, set up on the side of the highway with an assault rifle, and shot up a passing pickup in response, wounding the driver. It was the wrong vehicle; the trooper had called in a "gray" truck and the pickup the sheriff shot up was white. Good piece from Eric Dexheimer with the details.

The case for medical-led mental-health first response
Here's an excellent case study out of Austin showing why cops shouldn't spearhead first response to most mental health calls. The Austin City Council is presently considering whether to shift to a medical-led response in most instances, following the lead of a Dallas PD pilot program.

'Cooking them to death'
The Marshall Project and the Weather Channel teamed up to report on the effects of excessive heat in Texas prisons.

Coming soon: New Travis County public defender office
Great news: The Texas Indigent Defense Commission approved grant funding for a new public-defender office in Travis County.

'Arrest, release, repeat'
The Prison Policy Institute came out with a new analysis discussing "How police and jails are misused to respond to social problems."

Feds failing at collecting police use-of-force data
Since 1994, the Bureau of Justice Statistics has been charged with gathering data on police use of force. But most agencies' data is garbage and most of the information is suspect or unusable, reported Kenny Jacoby of Gatehouse News.

Podcast excerpt: TX Court of Criminal Appeals hears arguments about when it's okay to electrocute pro se defendants

James Calvert is a mentally ill capital murder defendant who allegedly murdered his ex-wife on Halloween night in 2012. He represented himself at trial in Smith County, Texas and was sentenced to the death penalty. Among other remarkable elements of the case, Mr. Calvert was shocked with a 50,000 volt stun belt during the trial for refusing to obey the court's demands. In addition, Judge Jack Skeen, who presided over the trial, repeatedly made negative comments about Mr. Calvert and the evidence he presented. Many observers believed Calvert should never have been allowed to represent himself in the first place.

In September, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals heard oral arguments in Calvert's case, delivering perhaps the clearest window yet into the issues that may decide his fate. On the December 2018 episode of the Reasonably Suspicious podcast, my co-host, Texas Defender Service Executive Director Mandy Marzullo, and I reviewed highlights from oral arguments and discussed key issues in the case. Because of high levels of interest in the case, particularly in Grits' hometown, I've excerpted the podcast segment dealing with the case; listen to it here:


For a transcript of of the segment, go here.

And by the way, if, like me, the story about shocking a defendant with a 50,000 volt stun belt left you wondering, "What kind of company manufactures such a torture device, and how is there a market for such a thing?," here's a two-decade old Washington Post story offering some background, using a Texas case study, of course.

Podcast: Adversaries over Austin police-union contract sit down; when is it okay for courts to electrocute mentally ill defendants?; pythons as stocking stuffers?; and other stories

When is it okay for a judge to electrocute a mentally ill defendant?

What leverage did a Texas civil rights activist say enabled Austin advocates to force reforms into the city's police-union contract?

How many pet pythons are too many, and are they appropriate to give at Christmas as stocking stuffers?

These and other questions are answered on this month's episode of the Reasonably Suspicious podcast. As always, you can subscribe on iTunes, Google Play, or SoundCloud, or listen to it here:


Here's what's in this month's episode:

Opening: Pythons as stocking stuffers?

Top Story

• Principles for progressive prosecutors

Interview
Police-union negotiators Ron DeLord and Chris Perkins sit down with a now-familiar adversary, Chas Moore of the Austin Justice Coalition, to discuss the aftermath of the year-long fight over the capital city's police-union contract.

Home Court Advantage

• When is it okay to electrocute a mentally ill defendant in court? Discussion of James Calvert oral arguments
• Ken-Paxton prosecutors de-funded, but at what cost to indigent defense?

The Last Hurrah

• Dallas PD officer indicted for murder
• Lawsuit challenges driver surcharges
• Ray Hill, R.I.P.

Find a transcript of the show below the jump.

Taking cops off point on mental-health cases, commissary questions, a $7 million-plus AC bill, and more

Let's clear some browser tabs with a roundup of items which merit Grits readers' attention even if I don't have time to construct a full blog post around each of them:

Blood will tell you more
Following Pam Colloff's masterful two-part story on faulty blood-spatter evidence, ProPublica has launched a special newsletter in which she's following up on the articles and providing more context. You can sign up here. Teaser: In the upcoming, August episode of the Reasonably Suspicious podcast, we'll air an interview with Colloff about her story and the state of forensic science in Texas and beyond. Look for that in about three weeks. (You can subscribe to the podcast on iTunes, GooglePlay or SoundCloud so you don't miss it, and until then check out the July episode.)

Cornyn praises promising pilot on mental-health diversion
Grits is excited about the pilot program at Dallas PD praised by US Sen. John Cornyn in this Dallas News article. They're sending out interdisciplinary teams led by mental health workers to respond to 911 calls related to mental health crises, with cops participating as backup and support as opposed to shot callers. Not only are there better outcomes for mentally ill folks, it saved money and resources: Under the program, "of the 709 mental health emergency calls fielded since January, just 3 percent ended in arrest." In fact, "In the first three months of the program, the clinician's diversion of calls saved the police force about two weeks of salaried work."

Police are asked to handle too many social problems and mental health is one of the biggest. For the most part, the issue needs to be taken out of the hands of law enforcement and jailers and re-center the response around healthcare needs and social services, instead.

Commissary Questions
Earlier this year, the Prison Policy Institute (shoutout to their new employee, Texan Jorge Renaud) published a report titled, "The Company Store" about prison commissary economics. Now, they have some specific, commissary-related questions for the Texas prison system, including why Citibank would receive more than $6 million in commissary funds in a year and pertaining to the wisdom of collaborating with certain vendors using dubious financing methods that arguably short-change inmates. Legislators on committees overseeing the prison system may want to dig into this.

A $7 million AC bill and climbing
After spending $7 million on legal fees fighting against providing air conditioning to at-risk prison inmates during the summer, TDCJ is now beginning to do so, reported the Texas Tribune. This raises the questions: How much will TDCJ ask the Lege for air conditioning? How much will the Legislature give them? And will that be enough, or will more litigation ensue? Tune into the 86th Texas Legislature in 2019 to find out!

Marijuana not only issue where TX political parties agree
We've seen media coverage of the fact that both Texas political parties included some form of marijuana reform in their state party platforms last month, with pundits opining that the development makes passage of reform legislation more likely. But nobody in the MSM has discussed other points of agreement in the platforms on either criminal justice or other issues facing the state. On all those issues, the same analysis applies: Bills where both party platforms agree arguably begin the process with a leg up. It doesn't guarantee they'll pass, but it's a potent expression of an issue's potential.

Framing of inmates spurs renewed calls for TDCJ overight
Recent indictments of TDCJ staff who set up inmates in a fake discipline scam have renewed calls for independent oversight at Texas' prison agency, reported the Texas Tribune. Whatever form oversight takes, it's inarguable that having all your watchdogs report to the same board - as TDCJ does - gives an appearance of conflict and almost certainly creates actual ones. The system isn't adequately policing itself.

Four years waiting on trial from no-knock raid shooting
A Killeen man, who thought he was responding to a burglary, shot and killed a police officer when they executed a no-knock raid on his home four years ago and is still awaiting trial, with no denouement in sight. His attorneys have been ready for trial for some time, but the state has yet to press forward, leaving him sitting in jail while he waits. RawStory has a report.

DWI drylabbing allegations
A DPS lab analyst in El Paso, who in the past was caught allegedly falsifying drug weights, cutting and pasting data from other samples, has again been accused of dry labbing, this time failing to conduct tests on 22 DWI samples and cutting and pasting results from other cases. DPS said the error was unintentional, but its quality control reviewer saw the problem and didn't catch it. When samples were retested, the analyst combined good data with bad. She and the technical reviewer who approved her work are no longer with the agency.

Documenting the 'trial penalty'
The National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers has a new report out on the extent of the "trial penalty" in federal court when defendants refuse to accept a plea deal. In related news, the Washington Post has an item on a juror speaking out against harsh, mandatory federal sentences, and conservative columnist George Will authored a piece on the topic.

'Misdemeanorland'
A new book addresses "Criminal Courts and Social Control in the Age of Broken Windows Policing." Check out a review.

Danny Ray Thomas shooting cast harsh spotlight on Harris County police shootings

The shooting of Danny Ray Thomas, a mentally ill man with his pants around his ankles who was shot to death by a Harris County Sheriff's deputy, has made national headlines and led to a greater-than-ever light cast on shootings by law enforcement in Texas' largest county.

Grits wanted to round up a few of the more notable stories, as this episode appears as though it will frame debates over police accountability in Texas for the foreseeable future:

• The Intercept (Shaun King): Danny Ray Thomas was a broken man who needed help. Instead he was gunned down by a cop in broad daylight
• BBC: Houston officer shoots unarmed man with trousers down
• Texas Monthly: Fatal shooting of Danny Ray Thomas tests Houston's progressive law enforcement leaders
• Houston Chronicle: Deputy's shooting of Danny Ray Thomas reignites debate over use of force, police accountability
• Houston Chronicle: Deputy's bodycam was charging when unarmed man was fatally shot
• Houston Chronicle: Congresswoman Sheila Jackson Lee calls for federal probe of Houston police shooting
• Houston Chronicle (op-ed, Amanda Woog and Paul Heaton): Here's how Houston can prevent police shootings

Austin press coverage of police contract still sucks, and other stories

Here are a few odds and ends that deserve readers' attention even if I haven't had time to turn them into full, independent blog posts:

Austin press coverage of police contract still sucks
The Austin press continues its one-sided coverage of the City Council's rejection of the police-union contract, larding their articles with quotes from contract supporters and minimizing the views of critics without fully explaining them. In an Austin Chronicle story published yesterday, for example, contract supporters were given a platform for predicting doom while contract critics were dismissed as know-nothings (e.g., my wife was dubbed a "gadfly"). According to reporter Nina Hernandez, council members who voted against the contract (all of them) "hadn't exactly considered the consequences of their decision," though there's no sourcing, much less factual basis offered for that opinion. Later, appearing to contradict herself, she complained that the council was "suffering information overload," which hardly jibes with her earlier calumny that they hadn't sufficiently studied the topic.

The truth is, MSM reporters in Austin appear as a class to have misunderstood and misreported this entire debate from the get go. Ms. Hernandez now says she recognizes that, as one council member instructed her, "the Council's vote was more about the money" than the oversight piece (which means the press were the only ones in the room that night who didn't understand what they were watching). But no one in the local media is yet reporting on the most important implications of the scuttled contract: Freeing up around $10 million that the city council can spend in the current fiscal year over and above their current budget. How and when to spend that money is where the actual debate has moved at city hall, as well as among the activist players involved. But the press continues to flail, having missed the story and spun false narratives for so long that they don't now know how to begin to catch up. It's as though there's an almost willful decision by the local Austin press corps not to publicly report on what these debates are actually about.

Texas law mandates bad bodycam policies
Note to reporters who want to localize a story about police bodycams based on the Leadership Conference/Upturn recommendations, like this recent SA Express News story: Texas' law is the source of the most important bad practices, like letting officers accused of misconduct review video before they're questioned, or erecting barriers to accessing video under open records. Increasingly more departments, most recently Arlington and Plano, are purchasing body cameras for their officers. MORE: Here's a new academic piece on body cameras from Seth Stoughton for the to-read pile.

Private prison company gets rep on Windham task force
One of the governor's new appointees to Texas' task force on "Academic Credit and Industry Recognition" at the Windham School District (which operates educational programming at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice) works for a private prison company, reported the Longview News Journal.

Maybe time to tone down the 'war on cops' meme
The number of police officers killed in the line of duty in 2017 was the second lowest total in 50 years. While every death of an officer is a tragedy, this low total doesn't comport with the "war on cops" meme that's been prevalent for the last couple of years. Suicides and traffic deaths remain the more significant killers of sworn police officers.

Analyzing 2017 shootings by police
The new report from Mapping Police Violence is a must-read. By their count, 1,129 people were killed by police in America in 2017. MPV researchers "were able to identify officers in 534 cases. At least 43 had shot or killed someone before. 12 had multiple prior shootings." Also, "Most killings began with police responding to suspected non-violent offenses or cases where no crime was reported. 87 people were killed after police stopped them for a traffic violation." The number of those killed who were unarmed was 147. Notably, "Police recruits spend 7x as many hours training to shoot than they do training to de-escalate situations." FWIW, the Washington Post came up with a slightly lower number for Americans killed by police; Grits doesn't yet understand why the difference. It's remarkable that the number of people shot and killed by the government isn't tracked more closely than this in an official capacity. This should be a number we know.

Why long sentences matter
Too much of 2016 and 2017 was spent debating Prof. John Pfaff's position that long sentences weren't a significant driver of mass incarceration. He was wrong. This 17-minute podcast from the Urban Institute lays out the problem of too-long sentences and shows why reducing them is key to ending mass incarceration.

Healthcare spending reduces crime, violence
In the big picture, the observation from the Brookings Institute that health care spending prevents crime makes loads of sense. That's particularly true where health and crime specifically intersect - like drug abuse and mental illness, where treatment and related social-service supports can prevent crime both directly and indirectly. One study they cited "found that an increase in the number of treatment facilities causes a reduction in both violent and financially-motivated crime. This is likely due to a combination of forces: reducing drug abuse can reduce violent behavior that is caused by particular drugs, as well as property crimes like theft committed to fund an addiction. Reducing demand for illegal drugs might also reduce violence associated with the illegal drug trade."

Trump DOJ rescinds anti-debtors prison guidelines
The decision by the Trump DOJ to rescind guidance on minimizing debtors-prison practices was ill-conceived and a disappointment. But it was only ever guidance, and rescinding it in and of itself changes nothing. What has always mattered more is what state and particularly local actors choose to do on the ground, and that remains an open question. Texas legislators in 2017 took long-awaited first steps toward confronting the problem of arresting poor people over fines, but there's much more to be done. It remains to be seen whether - much like the push to reform asset forfeiture laws - movement conservatives continue to push for reform in spite of the Trump Administration staking out a more regressive agenda.

Reduce public-safety costs by diverting non-emergency 911 calls

CityLab has a story about a topic that's been on my mind lately, though I hadn't written anything yet: How to reduce 911 volume by weeding out non-emergency calls. Mostly on Grits we've discussed this in terms of time wasted on false alarms from private burglar alarm companies, which make up 10-12% of 911 calls and almost never result in arrests, even in the less than 1% of cases in which a burglary actually occurred. But there are other means, like diverting non-emergency medical situations from the emergency room, as discussed in the CityLab article. One might also suggest diversion programs for calls related to the mentally ill - right now we use the same tactics and personnel to respond whether the emergency involves a criminal or a patient.

911 is treated by the public as a one-size-fits-all solution to a multi-variate array of life problems. Whittling back its use would decrease demand for patrol services without harming public safety and relieve pressure on local budgets to constantly increase police staffing. Instead, departments could more thoughtfully deploy their officers and be less reactive, spending more money on detectives, crime labs, crime-scene techs, and other necessary functions that make it more likely crimes will be solved.

A #SandraBlandAct that omits the #SandraBland story?

Our pal Fatima Mann has an essay at Tribtalk on the Sandra Bland Act (SB 1849), coming to grips with the reality that the bill "does not speak to the case of Sandra Bland" after the Texas Senate defenestrated provisions restricting arrests for non-jailable offenses. Give it a read.

Despite the notable omission of ignoring the key issues in the Sandra Bland tragedy, the bill has some good stuff in it. Indeed, if not for the heightened expectations created by attaching Bland's name to it, it would be hailed as more significant than it seems now in the context of her terrible case. Among the bill's remaining provisions:

• Law enforcement "shall" make a "good faith effort to divert" suspects in mental health crisis or suffering from the effects of substance abuse to a treatment center.
• Authorizes "community collaboratives" to seek grant-funded opportunities to provide services to homeless people, substance abusers, and the mentally ill.
• Requires the Commission on Jail Standards to create rules on medication continuity requiring jail inmates' prescriptions to be reviewed by a qualified medical professional upon intake.
• Requires TCJS to order an independent investigation by an outside law enforcement agency whenever someone dies in a Texas jail. (Between 2005 and 2015, Texas averaged 101 jail deaths per year, with a low of 83 and a high of 126, according to the Texas Justice Initiative.)
• Orders TCJS to create a new examination for jail administrators.
• Requires law enforcement officers to receive 40 hours of de-escalation training (some of which is great and some of which is apologia - will require oversight) and jailers must receive eight hours of mental health training.
• Updates racial profiling data collection to include "warnings," whether physical force was used, and report whether contraband was discovered during roadside searches. (New data collection begins in 2018.)

One quibble: Grits would rather TCJS be given investigators to review the ~101 jail deaths per year themselves instead of appointing another law enforcement agency. Other local agencies won't typically have experience performing investigations in a correctional institution, which is a different kettle of fish from investigations in the free world. The reason they did it this way is to avoid a "fiscal note," but this may be something to revisit down the line when there's more black ink in the budget.

But in all, these are significant changes. Some of them, like the improvements to racial profiling data collection, have been sought unsuccessfully by advocates for many years. This explains why Ms. Mann adopted a glass-half-full attitude in assessing why this eponymic bill is worthy of support, even without addressing the issues which caused the death of its namesake:

Although the final version of the legislation, Senate Bill 1849, may not speak to Sandra’s death, it embodies her life of wanting to make a difference for people of African ancestry. She posted videos of herself speaking on issues people of the African diaspora faced in the United States. She recorded and posted herself speaking on the need for implementing policies that protect people in the community. Sandy used her voice to speak on the need for systemic change. ... 

The final version of this legislation embodies the spirit of Sandy’s life and the work she did to improve the community. Even though the bill does not address how she died, it does embody how she lived. She did not die because she had a mental health issue, she died because she should have never been detained for committing a non-jailable offense. 

Sandy spoke into her life that she would change the world. Her words inspired a bill that will create sustainable change.

Police accountability bills bottled up by House leadership, and other stories

Here are a few odds and ends that merit Grits readers attention while mine is focused elsewhere:

Tragic shooting colors legislative debates
A Balch Springs cop who shot a fleeing 15-year old with a rifle has been fired from his job and faces murder charges. See the Dallas Morning News coverage. This news spurred the black caucus in the Texas Legislature to issue a stern complaint that none of the important police accountability legislation proposed this session has received a vote on the House floor. Their frustration surely contributed in part to the death of HB 2050, which expanded secrecy provisions related to police misconduct cases.

Sandra Bland Act gutted in senate
The Senate Criminal Justice Committee this week passed out a radically stripped down version of the Sandra Bland Act, but quite frankly it's hard to get too excited about the minimalist items left in the bill. Wrote the Texas Tribune's Jonathan Silver:

Whitmire's version most notably removes language that would ban arresting people for offenses that generally only have fines as a punishment. Earlier versions of the bill also tried to make it easier for nonviolent people in jail to receive personal bonds. Whitmire said fine-only offenses would be addressed in a separate bill, as the Sandra Bland Act is "primarily a mental health, accountability" bill.

The problem with that bit of reportage is that the "separate bill" was SB 271, which had earlier that day appeared on the same agenda with the Sandra Bland Act. But Chairman Whitmire pulled that bill off the agenda hours before the hearing, much to the consternation of the bill author and supporters who believed they had sufficient bipartisan support to pass it out of committee. So Whitmire was pledging to address a problem in a bill which he had already killed just hours before. SB 271's companion, HB 574, is in the Calendars Committee and has yet to be posted for a floor vote. Unless leadership adds the bill to a Major State calendar, it's probably too late for it to be heard.

Remembering (the real) Sandra Bland
Meanwhile, as Grits has pointed out before, it's a bit anomalous to pass a "mental health accountability" bill in response to the Sandra Bland story because she was not, in fact, mentally ill.

Pensions and bill killing
Governing magazine has a nice feature on Houston billionaire John Arnold's efforts to reform public-employee pension plans. Meanwhile, the House debate over Houston pensions ramps up Monday, and every minute it goes on, legislation on the other side of that bill on the calendar dies. The lower chamber, which yesterday ended their workday at 3 p.m., has mapped out a leisurely, care-free stroll toward the Thursday deadline for the House to consider House Bills, not the frenzied pace of work one would expect as hundreds of bills approach a very final deadline. At this point, the House doesn't seem to have much appetite for passing any more legislation and everybody just seems to want it to be over.

Who can settle Harris County bail litigation?
A newly elected Democratic District Judge in Houston has asked the commissioners court whether he can settle with plaintiffs in civil rights litigation against the county's money-based bail system. The commissioners courrt replied that they don't control whether or not he settles, but his lawyer was appointed from the county attorney's office and told the judge she could not settle without permission from higher ups. It's an interesting question: If individual judges start to settle, how long can the county's oppositional approach remain viable?

Of trees, ropes, race, judges and capital punishment
A decidedly un-woke judge faces retraining for lynching suggestion.

Coda to Willingham saga: Did prosecutor commit misconduct?
Jordan Smith at the Intercept has a story from a trial in Corsicana to determine whether the prosecutor in the Todd Willingham case engaged in misconduct when he concealed a deal with a jailhouse snitch who testified against the defendant.

Dallas County embracing risk assessments for bail, beefing up mental-health response teams

Dallas County is implementing a couple of significant criminal justice reforms, as described in this Morning News article. 

On the mental health front, Dallas Fire and Rescue received a $7 million grant from the Meadows Foundation to "launch Rapid Integrated Group Healthcare Teams, or RIGHT care teams, made up of specially trained police officers, paramedics and a mental health clinician. They will respond to crises and seek to de-escalate situations and determine the most appropriate course of action." Grits believes that armed police officers should serve primarily subordinate backup roles in these situations. The person trying to communicate with a mentally ill person they just met needn't complicate matters by carrying a gun.

Perhaps even bigger news: Dallas will begin using risk assessment to decide who gets released from jail: "Once at jail, anyone who is arrested will be screened for mental illness. The jail will send those results to judges to consider when setting bond. The county will also start using a risk assessment tool to arrive at an estimated level of danger and flight risk posed by each defendant."

According to the News, "Defendants' potential release from jail will hinge on mental health and public safety considerations, not just the criminal charges they face and a financial ability to pay bond." Further, "The county is doubling its pretrial staff from five to 10 in January to handle the expected increase in pretrial defendants they need to supervise in the community." Investing in pretrial service staff shows the county is serious. The open question: Will judges use pretrial services staff and abide by their recommendations?

Such changes should add to momentum for state-level bail reform when the 85th Texas Lege meets in January. Members from counties which have already shifted to a risk-assessment model should be less resistant to proposals that they do so from the Texas Judicial Council, which seems to be the direction they're heading.

Training too late, parsing crime data, and other stories

Here are a few odds and ends which merit Grits readers attention but may not make it into independent posts:

Trooper who shot unarmed schizophrenic man should have already taken remedial training on 'Effective Decision Making'
Eva Ruth Moravec's Point of Impact series on unarmed people shot by Texas law enforcement last year has its latest installment out: the story of state trooper Timothy Keele who killed Garrett Steven McKinney, a schizophrenic man who'd been waving his arms at passing traffic by the highway. Unbeknownst to the trooper, McKinney's father had earlier dropped him off at a nearby hospital for treatment, but he never went inside. After a cordial initial encounter, McKinney allegedly sucker punched the trooper. They struggled, the trooper's arm was dislocated, and he shot the man four times.

Eva Ruth's story includes a good discussion of the training requirements at DPS related to dealing with mentally ill suspects compared to other law enforcement agencies. She also points out that new state-mandated reporting on police shootings doesn't include information on the mental health status of the victim. Speaking of training, the trooper had been "suspended without pay for one day in February 2015 and told to attend an 'Effective Decision Making' course after tracking down and scolding a 17-year-old driver who had cut him off in traffic the previous day." Trooper Keele did not take the "Effective Decision Making" course, however, until after Moravec began to inquire with the agency, with the shooting occurring during the intervening period. Could what he learned in that course have saved McKinney's life? We'll never know.

Pointing fingers over rampant use of junk science in courtroom
Judges are becoming defensive at charges they aren't performing an adequate gatekeeper function when it comes to junk forensic science. This short Pass-the-Buck essay from Kerrville District Judge Robert Barton typifies this sort of self justifying reasoning. Everyone is to blame but him for junk science in the system, even though he's the only one in the courtroom with authority to exclude it. As the Republican presidential nominee might say ... "Sad."

Surveillance matters
Grits doesn't consider racial profiling the biggest problem with widespread use of facial recognition technology by law enforcement, but you can add that to the list. One wonders if federal surveillance in Texas is increasing at the rates documented in these jurisdictions?

A call for new agency to handle capital appeals
Grits contributing writer Jennifer Laurin argued in an op ed for creating a designated appellate defender for capital cases in Texas comparable to the Office of Capital and Forensic Writs on the habeas side. Good idea. But creating a new government agency during a budget-starved session with a 2-1 Republican  majority at the Legislature seems like a heavy lift. There will be lots of other demands on the state's limited resources.

Parsing conflicting crime metrics
Soon I may have a separate post about crime rate data and its shortcomings. The two most important national sources are the Uniform Crime Reports which document "index crimes" (including most serious crimes with victims) reported to law enforcement at all levels, and the national crime victimization survey which performs in-depth public surveys with huge sample sizes and many cross-referenced questions to estimate crime victimization trends. They tend to sync up over time, but not always year to year. In September, UCR numbers came out showing murder rates are up, especially in a handful of large cities, after decades of reductions. Then this month, the new crime victimization survey shows violent crime as "flat," with all other types of crime down. "From 2014 to 2015, there was no statistically significant change in the overall violent crime rate. From 1993 to 2015, the rate of violent crime declined from 79.8 to 18.6 victimizations per 1,000 persons age 12 or older." Whichever metric you prioritize (and both have strengths and shortcomings relative to the other), crime, including violent crimes, remains at historic lows.

Forensic snafus, depressed DAs and judges, and the risks of risk assessments

In a few weeks, this accursed presidential election will be over and, the following week in Texas, state legislators will begin prefiling bills. Until then, there's little for the policy-minded to do but hunker down until the circus leaves town and plan ahead for what's next. To that end, here are a variety of recent stories which merit Grits readers attention more, IMHO, than the latest bloviations on the presidential campaign trail.*

Ask CCA candidate why she won't use public defenders
Texas Court of Criminal Appeals candidate Mary Lou Keel stopped using the Harris County Public Defender Office because of a dispute with some of their attorneys, and the HCPD won't say what it involved, the Houston Chronicle reported. Journalists should inquire and she should say. After this most wretched primary season which saw ignorance rewarded and qualified candidates punished, Grits harbors few illusions that people cast informed votes in these races. But in theory, at least, it'd be useful for voters to know the likely next CCA judge's views on public-defender systems and indigent defense, to the extent the conflict sheds any light on them. News of the conflict emerged in light of a new state audit of Harris County indigent defense systems, a document which Grit may delve into in more detail in a future post.

Another forensics SNAFU could affect thousands of DWI cases
In Dallas, "Thousands of DWI convictions in North Texas could be jeopardized after the testimony of a state forensic scientist recently came under scrutiny." Get used to these sort of headlines. In the coming years, many forensics historically admitted into evidence by courts will either be invalidated or, even where the science is valid, found to be performed by incompetent analysts using unjustifiable methods. The temptation to treat them each as isolated incidents should be ignored. In many cases, folks are looking skeptically at long-used forensics for the first time to assess their validity, and more often than not, what they discover isn't up to snuff.

What to do with a depressed judge or DA?
Resignations from Dallas County District Attorney Susan Hawk and 5th Court of Appeals Justice David Lewis raise questions about what should happen when public officials suffer from severe depression or other serious mental illness while in office. The office-holder leaving voluntarily solves the instant problem from the perspective of formally staffing the slot, often after months or longer of putting off the inevitable. But it's a near certainty the situation will recur. There was apparently a move underway to remove Justice Lewis (whom Grits first met when he was one of the attorneys in the Dallas sheetrock/fake-drug scandal, an outrageous frame-up job around the turn of the century in which informants and DPD narcotics detectives intentionally framed illegal immigrants). I feel bad for him and Judge Hawk, but I'm glad they're stepping down. It's extraordinarily difficult to oust someone from public office in Texas for a medical condition, as it should be; even writing the words seems wrong. Some will argue that behavioral health problems are different from cancer or a heart condition because they specifically impact cognition. OTOH, plenty of Texas prosecutors and judges without diagnosed mental illnesses have suffered from poor judgment and impaired cognition - sometimes to much more deleterious effects than in either of these two instances - and nobody but voters can take them out.

Documenting a dystopian, modern-day witch hunt
The documentary "Southwest of Salem" about the San Antonio Four aired on the Discovery ID network over the weekend. See Rolling Stone's writeup, which observed that transcripts from the trial "read like a dystopian nightmare."

Debating the risks of risk assessments
This assessment at the Washington Post of the debate surrounding whether "risk assessments" generate racially discriminatory outcomes more or less sums up my view: 1) There are no perfect risk assessments because some of the risk factors reflect societal disparities and interpreting their meaning involves value judgments and tradeoffs, not static, objective analyses. However, 2) risk assessment instruments overall pretty clearly generate more consistent justice for more people and discriminate less than judges and prosecutors.  So for now - depending on the instrument - Grits generally favors them, though I'd like to see not-for-profit models used which don't involve black-box analyses which defense lawyers can't refute nor cross-examine.

Conflict of interest and prosecutorial discretion
A new article for Grits' reading list: "Rethinking prosecutors' conflicts of interest." The authors urge in particular reconsideringprosecutorial discretion, opining that "Conflicts of interest are endemic to almost all prosecutors’ discretionary decisions, and are the source of many instances of misconduct and abuse."

* It's hard to imagine that, at this late date, anyone politics-and-policy-focused enough to read this blog is still an "undecided" presidential voter. And if you've already decided, reading the latest back-and-forth provides no new or useful information. If one can muster the mental discipline to ignore it, doing so frees up a lot of brain space.

Local #BlackLivesMatter police policy agenda pragmatic, achievable

The missus has been volunteering this year with the Austin Justice Coalition, and I really liked their recently announced agenda on police accountability, which included proposals to:

• Improve Austin PD's use of force policy (or in APD's Orwellian parlance, their "Response to Resistance" policy) by implementing recommendations from the Police Executive Research Forum and prioritizing deescalation during critical situations. There are quite a few specific proposals under that heading.
• Create avenues for the public to have meaningful input in the meet and confer process, which in Austin governs not just pay and benefits but all aspects of police discipline.
• Stop arresting people for Class C misdemeanors for which the penalty is only a fine and incarceration-upon-arrest would be a greater punishment than the maximum sentence. (The Texas Legislature will almost certainly see similar, conservative-backed legislation on this front next year, in response to the Sandra Bland episode and other cases.)
• Stop using police as primary responders on mental health calls.

Grits thought that last item was particularly interesting. AJC recommended moving "mental health first response out of APD. People who call 911 in mental health crisis should be met by mental health professionals, because when the first response is a law enforcement response, too often someone is injured and the next step is jail. Since people in crisis may not behave as expected when issued an officer’s order, nearly a quarter of 'use of force' incidents arise from these calls." The Meadows Foundation out of Dallas has been promoting a similar suggestion, so while that's an extremely substantive reform, it's not really that far outside the mainstream.

All of these are realistic, pragmatic, and achievable suggestions.

AJC is one of the constellation of local groups which have arisen in and around the #BlackLivesMatter movement. Both locally and nationally, the movement has spawned promising policy-focused efforts, like AJC's and Campaign Zero, which hone in on the specific reform questions arising from questionable police shootings and misconduct. Meanwhile, other BLM groups have adopted much more sweeping agendas, some of which stray from the core concerns drawing  crowds in the past couple years.

While the broader agenda may be cathartic to articulate, the narrower, focused ones are more likely to be achieved.  Campaign Zero was a major milestone for the #BlackLivesMatter movement and seeing local groups like AJC embrace and extend that work strikes Grits as particularly heartening. It has been a long time since this writer held out hope for real change at Austin's police department.

Ideas for diverting people with mental illness from the criminal justice system

With the 85th Texas legislative session fast approaching, the House Select Committee on Mental Health continues to discuss the challenges of meeting growing demand for mental health services in the state.  But any effort to improve Texas's mental health infrastructure means we need to address the problems of people with mental health issues who are incarcerated.

Last year alone, over 55,000 people incarcerated in Texas received treatment in the public mental health system prior to their imprisonment.  Many others entered county jails without ever receiving a diagnosis, let alone treatment, for their persistent mental health issues.

But Texas's jails and prisons are no place for people with mental illness.  These institutions are designed to prioritize security, not treatment.  As a result, justice-involved Texans with mental illness may experience a decline in their mental health status while they are incarcerated -- a decline that can lead to dangerous outcomes, including increased recidivism, self-harm, and even suicide.

The over-incarceration of Texans with mental illness not only needlessly harms individuals' mental health, it also decreases public safety, drains county and state coffers, and strains the resources of jails and law enforcement agencies.  Fortunately, there is a better way forward.

This week, the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas released Prioritizing Treatment Over Punishment, a white paper on Texas's current efforts to divert people with mental illness away from the justice system.  This is the second in a series of policy briefs arising from the University of Houston's January symposium on "Police, Jails, and Vulnerable People," and intended to provide guidance to legislators and others looking for recommendations to improve the pretrial process.  (The first brief, released earlier this week, was focused on bail reform and pretrial release.)

This white paper explains the troubling link between our mental health and criminal justice systems.  It also discusses the sequential intercept model that is a best practice framework for thinking about the five different stages at which a person with mental illness can be diverted from the criminal justice system and be directed instead toward more clinically-appropriate services in their communities.  There are some widely praised examples in Texas of counties where these diversion strategies are being employed with great success, and the paper highlights those examples.

Prioritizing Treatment Over Punishment was written by LBJ graduate students Rachel Gandy and Erin Smith, under the supervision of Prof. Michele Deitch (yours truly) and Dr. Lynda Frost from the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health.   The paper is a great place for legislators and local officials to look for tried and tested ways to make better use of diversion strategies to keep people with mental illness out of the criminal justice system.

Shortage of competency restoration beds a sudden, longstanding crisis

Texas' failure to finance mental-health services to sufficiently supply the vast volumes demanded by the justice system - in particular "forensic" beds for competency restoration at state mental hospitals - belatedly is receiving attention. Edgar Walters at the Texas Tribune has a fine story detailing the quandary state officials find themselves in regarding funding for criminal defendants' competency restoration at state mental hospitals. Here's an excerpt, which will ring familiar to long-time Grits readers:

State public health officials say there were 388 people on waiting lists for state hospitals as of April 1.

“Almost all of our state hospitals are currently at capacity, and we are admitting patients as soon as other patients are discharged,” said Christine Mann, a spokeswoman for the Department of State Health Services.

Meanwhile, more than half of state hospital beds go to people who have been ordered there under a “forensic” commitment through the criminal justice system. Texans who were found by a court to be not guilty of a crime by reason of insanity or who were considered incompetent to stand trial currently fill about 1,200 state hospital beds.

That leaves only about 1,100 beds available at any given time for people, like Contreras’ son, who seek treatment outside of the criminal justice system.

At the Houston Press Meagan Flynn had another recent story on the topic.

Grits is pleased the issue is receiving attention and that legislators have pledged to address the problem (though in the coming budget environment, one wonders whether that's possible). I'm puzzled, however, at commentary portraying this as some new problem that legislators just discovered. My theory is that Sen. Robert Duncan attempted to manage the situation for years and, when he left, the Lege lost important institutional memory on the topic.

Regardless, long waiting lists for forensic commitments to state mental hospitals have been a problem for years, as highlighted in this 2012 story from Eric Dexheimer at the Austin Statesman. And though I know that meager blogs seem to be falling out of fashion in the era of social media, this humble opuscule has been beating the drums on the topic nearly since its inception. For those interested, here's a sampling of Grits' writing on competency restoration topics over the last decade:

• Lege focused on least-bad band aids on mental health, competency and jails
• Band-aid bills no substitute for competency restoration funding
• Incompetent Waco defendants in legal limbo
• Incompetent defendants may wait decades pretrial with no rights, options
• State sending some defendants big bills for competency restoration costs 
• Man deemed incompetent held 20 years without trial for attempted murder, may be released
• Showdown brewing between Travis judge, state health agency on competency restoration
• BSG (Broke State Government) seeking forensic mental health beds
• Grits commenter played role initiating lawsuit over timely competency restoration
• Judge: State mental hospitals must take incompetent inmates within 21 days
• 'Neither punished nor treated, just jailed'
• Growth in forensic commitments exacerbates shortage of state mental hospital beds
• Judge orders state hospital to take more competency restoration patients
• Competency restoration process sounds crazy to columnist
• Few bills proposed at Lege to remedy statewide crisis in competency restoration
• Harris County pleads case for mental health, probation/diversion funds in state budget
• Jail deaths implicate state oversight, competency restoration funding
• Mental health cuts by state would shift costs to local jails, emergency rooms
• 'Harris County jail not the place to treat mental illness'
• The making of an unfunded mandate: Cuts to mental health would dump costs on county jails
• Cuts to state mental hospitals would be massive unfunded mandate for county jails
• Mentally ill languish in Bexar jail awaiting assessment, competency restoration
• Cuts to state mental health treatment would shift costs to local jails
• Cutting state psych hospital budgets could backfire
• Legislature's underspending on competency restoration beds creates havoc
• Priorities: Mentally incompetent inmates languishing in Texas county jails
• 75-year old mentally incompetent grandmother stranded in Lufkin jail most of 2006
• Legislature should prioritize mental health funding that relieves local jails
• Unfunded mandate: Counties struggle to pay for mentally incompetent defendants' care
• More counties grumbling at backlog of incompetent defendants in county jails
• Chincy state hospital funding leaves mentally incompetent defendants stranded