Conservatives 💗 'progressive' prosecutors, risk-assessment deep dive, on the limits of a punitive approach on fines, and other stories

As Grits prepares for a brief hiatus, let's clear some browser tabs and perform a quick roundup of items that merit readers' attention (or which I'd like to look at more closely once I get back):

TDCJ heat deaths magically stopped when litigation started
TDCJ says that only ten people in the prison system were diagnosed with heat stroke or heat exhaustion, or given intravenous fluids for a heat-related illness, during the recent high-temperature spate, and that no one has died of heat-related illnesses since 2012. Both those numbers seem unlikely to me. Rather, it's more probable that TDCJ just stopped labeling deaths as heat-related after litigation began in 2012. Plus, given what they're counting, when heat-related illnesses arise, TDCJ can keep inmates from being counted simply by NOT treating them with IV fluids. These low numbers don't seem credible; another reason we need independent oversight so that causes of death aren't being spun to avoid accountability.

TPPF's lingering hunger for grand-jury reform
The Texas Public Policy Foundation is ramping up to support grand-jury reform in the 86th Legislature, and published this item arguing for allowing grand-jury witnesses to be represented by counsel.

Poll: Public warming to justice reform
A new national poll demonstrates widespread support for the FIRST-STEP prison reform act, which Grits endorsed here, as well as criminal-justice reform, generally. See coverage from The Hill.

Conservatives 💗 'progressive' prosecutors
We've discussed on this blog the memo from Philadelphia DA Larry Krasner detailing what prosecutors can do to scale back mass incarceration. IMO it's one of the most important justice-reform documents in the last decade - as important for operationalizing the critique of mass incarceration as Michelle Alexander's New Jim Crow book was to popularizing it. But we haven't yet discussed the bipartisan appeal of Krasner's message. The American Conservative published an article arguing that Krasner's "objectives dovetail closely with those of conservative and libertarian justice reformers. All share a broader vision of radically reshaping a criminal justice system that is deeply unjust and out of line with American constitutional and moral values."

Deep dive into risk assessment debate in PA
Grits has expressed disagreement with liberal reformers over sweeping criticisms of risk assessment instruments based on alleged racial disparities in some models promoted by private vendors. Based on analyses I've seen, Grits argued that "the maximal harm hypothesized from risk assessments simply doesn't outweigh harms from the status quo of requiring money bail for everyone." So I was interested to see that many of those same national critics got a new risk-assessment regimen in Pennsylvania put off for six months for evaluation based on allegations of racial bias. In particular, links to all the written testimony submitted to their sentencing commission were published online, and I wanted to post the link so I can go through them later.

It's not that I couldn't be convinced that liberal opposition to risk-assessment-based bail reform isn't throwing the baby out with the bathwater. I'm just unconvinced by the arguments I've heard thus far. Too often, such critics fail to acknowledge that the alternative isn't some un-biased utopia but the even-more-biased status quo where judges sentence less harshly after lunch and harbor myriad biases that may just as harmfully infect the system, but with far less transparency than risk assessments. At least risk assessments can (and should) be adjusted and re-validated over time. Perhaps the extensive testimony out of Pennsylvania will cast more light on this emerging debate.

On the limits of a punitive approach on fines
Some of what's happening across many vectors in the justice system today is that we've reached the limits of the tools traditionally used to fight crime that now result in diminishing returns. When penalties were low, raising them perhaps created more deterrent. But once they're high, raising them more can be counter-productive. That's what you're seeing in Chicago, where a move to raise ticket amounts for vehicle-sticker violations backfired. Rather than raise millions in revenue, as projected by the city, it drove thousands of predominantly black Chicagoans into "substantial debt," and caused many "to lose their licenses, lose their cars and even declare bankruptcy," according to an investigation by ProPublica. One can't squeeze blood from a stone.

Two persistent myths that hinder #cjreform

After talking to hundreds of GOP delegates at Just Liberty's table at their state convention in San Antonio last month, Grits noticed two incredibly common misconceptions demonstrating the public is unaware of some very basic facts about the justice system.

1. People think crime rates are high and increasing when in fact they're low and getting lower.
2. People do not know and in some cases refuse to believe that most inmates in county jails are pretrial defendants who've not yet been convicted, as the Texas Oberver recently reported. Rather, most people imagine jails are used to punish people after they're convicted.

The Observer headline said 3 out of 4 county-jail inmates is being held pretrial. As of July 1, the percentage of pretrial defendants out of local jail populations was actually 71.4 percent, according to the Commission on Jail Standards, so that's in the ballpark.

The same data show that, contrary to popular belief, county jails aren't really used much at all for formal punishment: Only about six percent of county jail inmates on July 1st were serving out punishments for crimes in the jail (i.e., people convicted of misdemeanors and/or felonies and sentenced to county jail time). Another 10 percent or so were convicted felons waiting for transfer to the state prison system.

Grits has theories about why the public has failed to understand the amazing crime decline witnessed over the last quarter century. I believe the media barrage about violent crimes from all over the country in the modern social-media era gives an impression that terrible murders and rapes are becoming more common, when in fact, for any given person, they're less likely than ever to be victimized by crime. They're just more likely to read about crimes from somewhere else. (MORE: A commenter pointed to this story about problems with and limits of MSM crime reporting.)

I'm not sure what explains the misunderstanding about what jails are used for - maybe it's a function of how the justice system is taught in school, or of law-enforcement rhetoric (and/or lazy reporting) that conflates arrest with punishment and accusations with guilt. Or maybe it's just that facts on the ground changed. A quarter century ago, pretrial defendants made up just a third of county jail populations.

Regardless, what we found tabling at the GOP convention was that, when people understood who is actually in county jails - people accused but not convicted who are still "presumed innocent" in the eyes of the law - they were more likely to support bail reform and a host of other decarceration measures. But these persistent myths are serious obstacles to reform; people who believe them are a lot less sympathetic.

Poll: GOP primary voters support #cjreform

The Texas Smart on Crime Coalition released a new poll today, let's review the highlights.

The most impressive finding in their survey of GOP primary voters? A whopping 76 percent supported reducing small-time drug possession penalties to a misdemeanor, following the lead of Oklahoma voters in 2016.

Legislation to that effect has been filed each of the last two sessions, but probation directors killed the plan. With polling numbers like these filling out it sails, however, some version of the Phil King/Senfronia Thompson legislation will certainly be back. Such a bill is also the shortest distance to closing more prison units and reducing long-term costs at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

In a related finding, 72 percent of Republican primary voters agreed that, "Changing certain crimes from felonies to misdemeanors will make our communities safer by allowing law enforcement to spend less time arresting people due to drug addiction and more time fighting more serious and violent crime."

The people remain way ahead of the politicians on these topics.

Finally, apropos of Grits' last post, "71% of GOP primary voters favor changing the way technical probation violations (such as missing a meeting with a probation officer, not committing a new crime) are handled, so those who have a minor infraction are not incarcerated but instead held accountable through enhanced curfews, electronic monitoring, or increased check-ins."

See the memo from Baselice and Associates for more details from the poll. MORE: see coverage from USA Today's John Moritz..

Related: See coverage of a national, Vera Institute poll on related topics.

Poll: GOP primary voters support raise-the-age, decarceration bills

Republican pollster Mike Baselice has released a memo with opinion poll results on several important criminal justice topics (poll here, coverage here), focusing especially on the views of Republican primary voters. For example, a whopping 86 percent of GOP primary voters reacted positively to this position on "raise the age" legislation approved on second reading yesterday by the Texas House:

Currently, 17-year-olds in Texas who are convicted of a crime are automatically placed in the adult justice system. Texas is one of only seven states to do this, even though 95% of 17 year-olds are arrested for nonviolent offenses. Hearing this, do you favor or oppose starting 17-year-olds in the juvenile justice system while giving a judge the discretion to move them to an adult system on a case-by-case basis?

On drug penalties, wrote Baselice, "Large majorities of respondents from the all voter (82%) and Republican primary voter (75%) samples favor making possession of a small amount of drugs among nonviolent people a misdemeanor instead of a felony."

See the complete polling memo for more details.

Asset forfeiture trumping political opposition

Remarkably, President Trump's critical comments last week about Texas senators supporting asset-forfeiture reform legislation appear to have re-energized the push rather than harmed it. At a capitol press conference yesterday, the Texas Public Policy Foundation released a poll showing that 88 percent of Texans favor requiring a criminal conviction before the government can forfeit personal property.

Several different approaches have been suggested and prospects for reform are brighter than at any time in recent memory. Cops are becoming defensive and a police chief interrupted the press conference to complain about the use of the phrase "policing for profit." Of course, they could prove they're not policing for profit by supporting Sen. Don Huffines' bill to divert all forfeiture proceeds to crime victims. Or, they could follow this suggestion to spend forfeiture money on public defenders instead of letting cops and prosecutors eat what they kill. Until then, "policing for profit" isn't an allegation about what's going on, it's simply a description.

See past Grits coverage here, here, here, and here.

Reality Check: In a fact-free era, what can we agree on?

As the whole world ponders the outcome of national elections (a subject which Grits has for the most part dutifully avoided, focusing on my own Texas criminal-justice turf), the big-picture question which disturbs me far more than the temporary resident of the White House is, "How did political discussions in America become so divorced from reality?"

I don't mean reality as in, "the way I see things." I mean reality as in a baseline respect for facts and math. The Pew Charitable Trusts recently published a remarkable poll describing whether or not Americans think progress has been made on different topics during Barack Obama's presidency. Here are the topline results:

I find most of these numbers unfathomable. To take the topic most closely associated with this blog, Crime: By any mathematical measure the nation is better off than in 2008. But only 15 percent think that's true while 57 percent think crime has gotten worse. This is delusional thinking that flies in the face of reality.

Certainly that impression has been exacerbated by the president-elect's stump speech in which he's been going around the country claiming crime is the highest it's been in 45 years, when in fact the exact opposite is true. But that's relatively recent. Long before that, the public believed crime was rising when it was actually falling. I've speculated before on the reasons, but it's a persistent, frustrating phenomenon.

Similarly, 55 percent think the immigration situation is worse than in 2008. But under President Obama, the feds ramped up deportation to highest-ever levels and illegal Latin American immigration precipitously declined.

On the Economy and Jobs, the idea that things are worse now, with unemployment below 5 percent, compared to 2008 at the apex of the Great Recession when the entire global financial system was threatened, beggars belief. Where could such a perception come from? It's utterly divorced from reality.

Of the others, US "standing in the world" and "security from terrorism" are subjective assessments and so those aren't opinions which can be refuted or supported. They're just a function of people's impressions. To me, the metrics say our standing hasn't declined - our military and economic might stand unparalleled and American-generated tech is transforming the globe. And I don't feel less safe from terrorism than when President Bush was prosecuting the Iraq War, which to me was a generator of those problems more than a solution. But because there's no hard metric on which to base an opinion, Grits will let those disagreements pass on the reality-check front.

Race relations is the only area where I can understand the public's view that things have gotten worse. For those judging purely from what one sees in the media from the comfort of one's living room, I'm not surprised most white Americans might think race relations have gotten worse. My own personal view is that recent debates over race and policing merely exposed longstanding problems rather than created them. But there's no doubt race relations remain strained, and those strains are hungrily aired in the media using click-maximizing strategies that gravitate toward the nastiest, most entrenched Culture War debates.

Regardless, that's four of the seven major areas identified by Pew where, objectively, the public's views directly contradict the facts. It's not just that there's countervailing evidence, the public objectively, demonstrably thinks things are true which are false.

I'm not saying this to defend Barack Obama's record. The election is what it is and I don't care a whit about protecting (or harming) the Dems' brand. But how did we get to this place where the majority of the public simply believes big, important things which are not true? And far more important than who is in the White House, how can we change THAT? That's the part of the last year which for me has been unbelievably dispiriting.

Survey: What do crime victims want?

A new survey of crime victims published by the Alliance for Safety and Justice included findings that run counter to purported victims-rights positions of the past (which in turn, one realizes in retrospect, have been more frequently articulated by cops and prosecutors than actual victims themselves). For example, reported the Washington Post:

In the survey, 52 percent of victims said that prison makes people more likely to commit crimes again. Only 19 percent said that prison helps rehabilitate people into better citizens. This skepticism of prisons is in line with most social science research, which has generally shown that mass incarceration causes more crime than it prevents, that institutionalizing young offenders makes them more likely to commit crime as adults, and that spending time in prison teaches people how to be better criminals.

According to the survey, one in four people have been victims of crime in the last ten years, with half of those having been victim of violent crime. Crime victims are more likely to be young, poor, and minorities, and once victimized, a person is four times as likely to be victimized again. 

Further, "Six in 10 victims prefer shorter prison sentences and more spending on prevention and rehabilitation to prison sentences that keep people in prison for as long as possible." Notably, "For every victim who prefers the criminal justice system focus on punishment there are two victims who prefer it focus on rehabilitation."

Grits wanted to flag this work for future reference. It contains lots of useful corrections to common misrepresentations by the tuff-on-crime crowd about what's best for victims, their views on punishment, and what they need to be made whole.

Black Lives Matter well-positioned to win concessions on police, if ...

Black Lives Matter is formally an organization and has a chapter here in Austin, but really #Blacklivesmatter is an amorphous, broad-based movement with decentralized leadership and an enormous opportunity to accomplish concrete goals to improve American policing. Grits supports that effort. However, having worked on these and related issues for more than two decades in a red state, I'm fearful BLM may blow this rare and precious opportunity.

Grits has little patience for demagogues blaming Black Lives Matter for criticizing videos of police abuse or the media for showing them. The behavior depicted on the video is the source of people's anger, not the (admittedly enhanced) smart-phone era information delivery system. People didn't need the internet to riot after Rodney King's attackers were acquitted. The Watts neighborhood in Los Angeles didn't even need video in 1965 to riot for six days in response to the roadside beating of a black DWI suspect and his mother. Anger at images of police mistreating civilians is legitimate and understandable; indeed, at this point, from a certain perspective, it's unavoidable.

OTOH, I'm also frustrated that BLM's policy goals, which are extensive and pretty darn good, won't be achieved if they can't convince white folks, who like it or not still constitute a majority nationally, to support them. BLM has plenty of white allies, but to win legislative and congressional votes they need legislative allies from white, mostly Republican districts, which is a slightly different breed of cat. Reaching those voters is possible, but will require adjustments to messaging and perhaps different messengers to deliver them.

Too often, the BLM rhetoric I hear locally and nationally sounds like black folks talking exclusively to black folks. That's certainly their prerogative, but it won't change how police use force in America and it contributes to a false sense that the movement is exclusionary. Meanwhile, if you don't engage white folks on terms they can understand, the authoritarian side has a massive, government-funded PR machine to promote messages favorable to law enforcement and the white establishment. Big-city PR divisions of police departments and DA offices these days are well-staffed with professional level skills and frequently are quite proactive. In fact, police PR departments are best at appealing to precisely the constituency - older, conservative white people - with whom Black Lives Matter has the most difficulty. When you look at the success of Right on Crime and the libertarian streak which cuts a large swath among anti-establishment conservatives, Black Lives Matter should have more allies among Republicans than have evinced themselves so far.

Perhaps because of Grits' political consulting background, I take polling pretty seriously. Pew came out with a good one recently, though the survey was taken before the Dallas-Baton Rouge shootings.

The good news: Of those with an opinion, 43 percent of Americans support Black Lives Matter and only 22 percent oppose it. So the movement is far more popular and has many fewer critics than either presidential candidate, for example (even if those critics are loud and have disproportionate access to soapboxes). Notably, though, "a sizable share (30%) said they have not heard anything about the Black Lives Matter movement or did not offer an opinion."

White folks overall support Black Lives matter by a 40-28 margin. But in this country, political parties are largely divided by race, with Republicans having morphed into the party of (increasingly old, conservative) white people. And Republicans oppose BLM by a 53-20 margin. (Dems and Independents were supportive.) So when you're talking about white districts, those are the voters who must be moved. Legislators in those seats must either be convinced or replaced for BLM to prevail. And if you're going to convince them, most Rs are moved more by arguments about rights than race. Luckily, those rights arguments are right there to be made.

There's plenty of margin within these numbers to chart out a path to victory. Of the thirty percent of the public who offered no opinion of Black Lives Matter, the movement has an opportunity (arguably even an obligation) to identify and educate those folks and make their case. If that work is done, they'll earn their share of those people. Still, it's remarkable that number is so high. Think how far outside the world of American public, civic life one would have to be to have no opinion on BLM in 2016!

My main concerns for the Black Lives Matter movement are two-fold. From an organizational standpoint, I fear that social-media-based organizing may not be sustainable nor sufficiently focus the movement's power if not eventually supplemented by traditional, professional listbuilding and political targeting work and more disciplined communications strategies. Even if they began now, they've missed some tremendous organizing and list building opportunities. The movement needs a less diffuse, more driven voice of the sort that a strong national organization with lists and money could provide, one capable of educating and activating its base in support of a declared agenda the way the NRA does, for example, on the Second Amendment.

Second, I don't think the movement is communicating its best messages well to white folks. Indeed, it's nearly a certainty no movement group has done polling to even determine what the best messages are! Remarkably, despite a well-developed policy agenda, a large number of white folks who support BLM can't articulate the movement's goals. According to Pew:

about a third (36%) of those who have heard about Black Lives Matter say they don’t understand its goals too well – or at all. Blacks who have heard at least a little about Black Lives Matter are far more likely than whites who have some general awareness of the movement to say they understand its goals very well (42% vs. 16%). About four-in-ten whites who have heard of Black Lives Matter (38%) say they don’t understand the movement’s goals particularly well.

That's a problem! Despite far less robust communications methods, you can pretty safely bet nobody in MLK's civil rights movement was unclear about their goals.

If the movement doesn't better define its own goals, others are chomping at the bit to define them preemptively as anti-cop, anti-white, pro-violence, etc.. Once the conversation shifts to policy goals, white folks will see things in them that would help them, too: Funding and incentives for deescalation training, demilitarization of equipment and training, reduced police union power over discipline and budgets, greater transparency about officer misconduct - these are the sorts of goals articulated in Campaign Zero with broad appeal to white folks and the power to convince a big chunk of that undecided 30 percent. OTOH, when the conversation is driven entirely by nationally publicized videos and calls for punishment of rogue officers, much less retaliatory attacks on cops, white folks may see the movement's goal as retribution instead of redemption and its motivating impulse as anger rather than love.

It's also important to be clear on one's goals so that you don't miss opportunities to promote them. The New York Times reported this week on a four-hour meeting between Barack Obama and BLM movement leaders, after which they expressed frustration that he'd not acceded to their demands. The primary demand was that he visit Baton Rouge and the site of other police shootings. They also asked him to "appoint special prosecutors to investigate the deaths and use his executive power to force changes in police departments across the country."

That sounds to me like a missed opportunity. The Baton Rouge visit is pure symbolism and wouldn't have been my top priority in a sit-down at that level. And there are understandable reasons not to federalize prosecution of every shooting death at the hands of a police officer. Certainly, if done en masse, there would be push back from states and the courts alleging overreach. One might come to regret such a policy under a future, less sympathetic president and Attorney General. Plus it would require agreement from Congress to fund 1,000 special prosecutors per year, and that money will not be forthcoming during this administration. Aside, perhaps, from attempting to federalize a uniform, national use-of-force standard, for which quite frankly the intellectual and political groundwork probably has not sufficiently been laid, it's hard to see how much effect federal executive orders could have on the behavior of local police officers in the street.

With all that said, it's not too late to build the movement into a perennial powerhouse for the foreseeable future. There's no question we're going to see more and more cases with compelling video and stories of black folks being shot or mistreated by police. It's nearly as inevitable as the sunrise.

Por ejemplo, this week comes another pair of disturbing videos. Out of Florida in this astonishing video, a black behavioral therapist was trying to coax an autistic man who'd run away from a facility out of the middle of the street, where he was playing with a toy truck. Laying on the ground, hands up, speaking calmly to the officers, it's clear the therapist worried more that they were going to shoot his cluelessly content client. Until they shot him.

Here in Austin, new video shows a local schoolteacher being pulled out of her car (reminiscent of Sandra Bland), manhandled, and violently flung to the ground by a muscled-up APD officer twice her size, coupled with video shot from a side angle in the back seat of the police car in which she questions the officer why that happened and he declares flatly that blacks are more prone to violence and most white people are afraid of them. (Chief Art Acevedo said he was "sickened and saddened" by the episode.)

These sorts of videos will only keep coming, and they won't only depict black folks. (See here, here, and here, e.g., for recent TX examples of police violence vs. white folks, the last of which was shared by 980+ people and viewed 100K+ times on Facebook.) So there will be many opportunities for reframing these questions, to the extent that movement leaders can pivot the conversation onto more favorable terrain.

Poll: Public opinion supports criminal justice reform

Excellent news from a new poll of a thousand Texas voters sponsored by the Texas Public Policy Foundation. Among the highlights:

Texans prefer drug treatment over prison by a 61 percent to 26 percent margin. The number bumps up to 73 percent when you limit the question to drug possession cases.

Some 71 percent of Texans believe the justice system should only be involved in extreme cases of chronic truancy, not workaday cases, while just 24 percent of respondents disagreed.

A solid 57 percent of Texans support adjusting property theft thresholds upward to account for inflation, with 37 percent opposed.

A similar number - 57 percent - supported reducing the time inmates spend in prison so they can be monitored on community supervision.

Clearly the public is ahead of their elected officials on these topics, though they have an opportunity to catch up to them over the next few months.

Poll: Texans support rehab over prison for low-level offenders

The Texas Public Policy Foundation released the results of a poll yesterday gauging public opinion re: rehab vs. prison for low-level drug and property offenders. Here's how the Statesman's Mike Ward summarized the results:

Texans by a wide margin support more treatment and rehabilitation programs for non-violent lawbreakers instead of prison time, a new poll showed Monday, the latest indication of a significant about-face by voters on the issue in recent years.

The poll commissioned by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank that supports prison reforms, showed 84 percent of all likely voters contacted favor alternative-to-prison programs for non-violent drug offenders — including 81 percent who identified themselves as Republican, 89 percent as Democrat and 86 percent as independent.

Support was nearly as high among likely voters for putting more low-level offenders on strict probation programs, for allowing them the “opportunity to rehabilitate their behavior,” even for letting them pay restitution to their victims for non-violent offenses — all before they are sent to prison.

Twelve percent of all likely voters who were polled said they opposed sending more offenders to drug-treatment programs instead of prison, a much lower number than similar previous polls.

The group surveyed 1,001 likely voters in Texas and said the findings had a 3.1 percent margin of error.

In a column at the Statesman, TPPF's Sarah Rumpf elaborated on the findings:

For example, 79 percent of Texans favor sending nonviolent drug offenders to treatment instead of prison, and analyzing the responses by party affiliation, 81 percent of Republicans, 89 percent of Democrats and 86 percent of independents are in support. Looking at ideological and demographic classifications, 80 percent of conservatives, 90 percent of moderates and 89 percent of liberals support the reforms, as do 84 percent of white voters, 80 percent of Hispanics and 90 percent of African-Americans.

The poll also illustrated strong backing for other criminal justice reforms we support. By more than a 2 to 1 margin (62 percent to 27 percent), Texans believe spending money on education and treatment programs is more effective than building more prisons. Likewise, 77 percent agree that before nonviolent offenders are sent to prison, they should have the opportunity to rehabilitate their behavior, and 82 percent believe they should have the opportunity to repay their victims for any damages caused by their crimes.

Go here to see the complete poll and all the crosstabs. Perhaps most remarkable is the sea change in the public's values and priorities as it relates to criminal punishments. Asked what should be the most important factor for the criminal justice system to focus on when dealing with nonviolent criminals, respondents answered:

• Rehabilitate the criminal: 35%
• Punish the criminal: 30%
• Make payments to victims for damages caused by their crimes: 23%
• Send a message to would-be criminals: 8%
• Unsure/Don't know/Refused: 4%

Even a decade ago, punishment would have overwhelmingly been the highest priority. Back when I worked with ACLUTX, we commissioned a strategic, internal poll on similar topics to help develop messages promoting legislation - which passed in 2003 (HB 2668 by Ray Allen) - to mandate probation on the first offense for less-than-a-gram drug offenders. At the time, the results weren't nearly as favorable for reform (though we were able to identify messages that helped change people's views). Public opinion has shifted significantly since then.

To me, the results are even more startling because of persistent misperceptions by the public about crime trends in Texas. Reported crime has consistently fallen statewide in recent years, but when asked if they thought crime had gone up, down, or stayed the same in their community, 30% thought it had gone up, 45% thought it had stayed the same, and only 18% correctly believed it had declined. IMO that's a function of failures by the MSM, which have come to sensationalize crime for its entertainment value instead of reporting it accurately and honestly, in context. Local TV news is the worst, but it's really true across the board. It's particularly remarkable that the public has moved away from a punishment-first mentality to more of a rehab focus when they remain consistently misinformed about the nature and frequency of crime in their communities.

It remains to be seen whether the Legislature will act on these issues. Texas has the largest state prison population in the country - larger even than California, though we have less than two-thirds of their population. After taking a first cut at de-incarceration reforms in 2007 aimed at strengthening probation and funding alternatives to incarceration, the Lege for the most part failed over the next three sessions to continue down the path implied by these shifts in public opinion. As Bill Hammond of the Texas Association of Business told the Statesman, “The people are ahead of the politicians on this.”

Telling stories vs. telling the truth: A critique of American crime coverage

Grits has increasingly grown to despise the media trend of treating crime coverage as entertainment. This misbegotten tactic arguably dates back to the era of Bonnie and Clyde, John Dillinger, or perhaps even in some respects to the Hatfields and McCoys. But what in past eras was an occasional dalliance by the media in spectacle-driven reporting has in recent years become the primary focus of crime coverage that now follows an ugly, predictable pattern, hyping dangers beyond reality and in some cases arguably promoting crime more than documenting it.

An excellent Wall Street Journal column last week by Ari Schulman ("What mass killers want - and how to stop them," Nov. 8) honed in on how hype-driven media coverage of mass shootings likely encourages more angry young men to engage in them. He argued that, "There is a growing consensus among researchers that, whether or not the perpetrators are fully aware of it, they are following what has become a ready-made, free-floating template for young men to resolve their rage and express their sense of personal grandiosity." To reduce their number, he asked, "How might journalists and police change their practices to discourage mass shootings? First, they need to do more to deprive the killer of an audience." Among his advice to that end:

• Never publish a shooter's propaganda
• Hide their names and faces
• Don't report on biography or speculate on motive
• Minimize specific and gory details
• No photos or videos of the event
• Talk about the victims but minimize images of grieving families
• Decrease the saturation
• Tell a different story

The truth is, American journalism would greatly improve by applying the same advice to crime reporting generally, perhaps limiting pre-adjudication coverage along the lines of U.K. reportage. Failures of journalism along just these lines help explain why the public thinks crime has increased in recent years even though all available data shows it's at its lowest rates since the 1950s in most parts of the country. The reason: Media today tend to glorify and hype crime for its entertainment value instead of placing it in context and providing useful information. The goal of American crime coverage has become manipulating readers' and viewers' emotions as opposed to increasing their understanding.

Back in June, your correspondent was invited to speak at a national Investigative Reporters and Editors conference at which I addressed this subject, offering similar observations: Back when I was coming up in the journalism field a quarter-century ago, I told them, reporters were taught to write articles along what was described as a reverse pyramid model, with the lede expressing the most important take-away from the story and anecdotes and personal details of individuals involved buried deeper down in the article.

That all changed, though, when the Wall Street Journal famously began publishing stories on their front page, left-hand column that all followed the same format: They began by telling the story of a single individual in a compelling, dramatic fashion that had more in common with fiction writing than how journalism schools taught their students. Then the articles would draw broader conclusions from the anecdote, with contextualizing information buried deeper in the article, often after the jump to an interior page. These articles were powerful for the same reason fiction writing can sometimes tell more truth than non-fiction - we all identify with personal stories and the format encouraged readers to put themselves in the shoes of the person in the featured anecdote.

Today, though, that method has become ubiquitous and virtually every story about crime follows that format, with institutional, cultural and other big-picture analyses relegated to the back end of stories if they're emphasized at all. Start looking for the phenomenon and you'll notice it everywhere. This practice, I told the conference-goers, has limits that most news outlets have come to ignore. Telling stories of individuals may promote a truth but seldom the truth. There are too many other people out there whose truths are ignored by the model and too many institutional dynamics that just don't fit into the framework. The approach encourages the media to pick and choose which stories to tell based on which ones are most likely to push their readers' buttons. The tragic deaths of black girls in Chicago or Houston may not merit a blip on the media radar screen, while the death of a cute white girl from Florida can dominate national media coverage for months.

The rise of this brand of coverage also changed how lawmakers govern in relation to crime and punishment, spurring the creation of countless laws named after dead children or high-profile victims ("Jessica's Law," etc.) that boosted punishments or minimized civil liberties. After this went on for many years, reformers got into the act, too, which is why it took the "Tim Cole Act" to compensate Texas' DNA exonerees or the "Michael Morton Act" to require Texas prosecutors to open up their files. If the media insists on covering crime this way, I told the conferees, then reform advocates can and will manipulate their coverage just like the tuff-on-crime crowd. But really, the journalistic approach does everyone a disservice and distorts the process, no matter which "side" benefits in any given instance.

Mr. Schulman's right that media coverage of mass shootings has become counterproductive and harmful. I just wish more journalists could see that the same is true even of workaday crime reporting. In its rush to tell us compelling stories, journalism is losing its ability to tell us the truth.

Trib poll reveals opinions about frequency of wrongful convictions, privacy

The Texas Tribune has been publishing a series based on a recent, statewide poll of 1,200 Texans, with a margin of error of +/- 3.3%, and today Ross Ramsey has a writeup that includes a discussion of findings related to privacy and the death penalty. Unsurprisingly, Texans still strongly support the death penalty (by a 74-20 margin), but more remarkable was data on how often people think wrongful convictions occur in capital cases:

I'm not too surprised by that result. Grits has long held that death-penalty abolitionists who believe finding an innocent person has been executed - whether it's Carlos de Luna, Todd Willingham, or somebody else - will change public attitudes are deluding themselves. Texans recognize that extensive use of the death penalty risks executing an innocent person. For the most part their attitude seems to be, "shit happens." One might lament it, but that doesn't change the facts.

The poll also asked Texans' opinions on which institutions they thought likely to invade their privacy, and remarkably local police came in at about the same rates as President Obama and were less trusted than bankers, of all people:

See the full story for more details and links to crosstabs, for those interested.

Just don't call it a "jail"

Harris County and City of Houston officials learned in 2007 that voters don't want an expanded jail, so this year they're calling it something else. According to coverage from The Bond Buyer (Sept. 30):

Houston Mayor Annise Parker said the ballot proposal is “fundamentally different than what was asked a few years ago, which was about adding onto the county jail. This is a joint city-county project, and the public really appreciates the fact that the city and county are working together closely.”

At this point, likely voters appear to favor the inmate processing center, according to recent polls.

“Maybe it’s because we called it a joint inmate processing center as opposed to a jail, but that’s what’s on the ballot,” said Rice University Political Science professor Bob Stein.  “And more importantly, voters support this regardless of their perception of crime.”

Stein conducted polling for Houston stations KHOU and KHUF that showed 58% of respondents in favor of building the processing center, with 21% opposed.

The 2007 proposal for the jail and processing center was defeated, largely because African-Americans voted overwhelmingly against the measure, according to analysis of those results.

“In 2013, although 58% and by margins of 64 and 61 (percent) Anglos and Hispanics support this proposed initiative, African Americans oppose it slightly, 51-49,” Stein said.  “But I think a 58% margin is good; more importantly, there are no organized groups against this. So I think, the stars are aligned for this to pass and pass by a good margin.”

Harris County Sheriff Adrian Garcia told KHOU the center would “take the City of Houston out of the jail business, quit the duplication of operations, save the taxpayers money and get cops back out on the street faster.”

The inmate processing center is one of the lower profile issues on the Nov. 5 ballot that will include the election of the Houston mayor and city council. The Houston city elections are likely to bring out more voters from within the city limits than will vote in the suburbs, officials said.

Grits has fewer reservations about the Harris County Jail expansion bonds on the November ballot than I did the 2007 bonds that Houston voters rejected. The Harris jail's overcrowding problem stems from poor decision making by judges more than a lack of capacity, but the jail's booking center does need revamping and I don't mind combining the city and county jail facilities, so long as the city cells actually close.

Still, avoiding the term "jail" on the ballot for jail bonds speaks volumes. Likely somebody polled the terms and figured out the public didn't support expanding the jail but does support processing inmates quicker, as do I. Grits just believes that goal would be better served by reducing pretrial detention, and the only option voters have for achieving that goal at the ballot box would be electing different judges.

MORE: See a Houston Chronicle editorial supporting the bonds.

Poll: Majority of Texans, half of Republicans favor marijuana legalization

Here's a fascinating public opinion poll regarding Texans' views on marijuana policy (pdf). And here's an excerpt from an email from the Marijuana Policy Project announcing the survey results:

In a poll released today, 58% of Texas voters support making marijuana legal for adults and regulating it like alcohol. Opponents were a distinct minority, with only 38% opposed. If you believe Texas would benefit from a taxed and regulated approach to marijuana — similar to Colorado and Washington’s — tell your legislators today!

Compared with a poll conducted by the Pew Research Center in April of this year, Texans are even more supportive of regulating marijuana like alcohol than Americans as a whole.

According to the most recent statistics provided by state law enforcement to the FBI, an amazing 98% of all marijuana-related arrests in Texas were for possession. During the same period in 2011, over 88% of all motor vehicle thefts and 71% of burglaries, including home invasions, went unsolved by police.

As marijuana cases have distracted law enforcement from serious crime, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s most recent report indicates that more teens consume marijuana than cigarettes – a taxed and regulated product. Marijuana prohibition has been a failure by practically every measure. Let your legislators know that it’s time for a new approach.

Republicans were split more or less equally on the subject of marijuana legalization, with 48 percent supporting the idea and 49 percent opposing. Among Dems, support was stronger at 67-25 percent. Solid majorities of both parties favored making pot possession a civil instead of a criminal offense (though I must say Grits is unsure precisely what that would look like).

At the Texas Lege, I can't tell you how many times over the years legislators from both parties have expressed to me their personal support for pot legalization but apologetically declared they feared political backlash if they publicly supported the idea. If this poll is accurate, those fears were unwarranted. At a minimum, these numbers make me think legislation to reduce criminal penalties would be favorably received by the public.

There will surely be critics who think MPP's  polling is biased, so one hopes other pollsters will check to see if these results are replicable. If so, these data could lead to a potentially constructive, bipartisan drug policy push on the subject when the 84th Texas Legislature convenes in 2015.

In a poll released today, 58% of Texas voters support making marijuana legal for adults and regulating it like alcohol. Opponents were a distinct minority, with only 38% opposed. If you believe Texas would benefit from a taxed and regulated approach to marijuana — similar to Colorado and Washington’s — tell your legislators today!
Compared with a poll conducted by the Pew Research Center in April of this year, Texans are even more supportive of regulating marijuana like alcohol than Americans as a whole. 
According to the most recent statistics provided by state law enforcement to the FBI, an amazing 98% of all marijuana-related arrests in Texas were for possession. During the same period in 2011, over 88% of all motor vehicle thefts and 71% of burglaries, including home invasions, went unsolved by police.
As marijuana cases have distracted law enforcement from serious crime, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s most recent report indicates that more teens consume marijuana than cigarettes – a taxed and regulated product. Marijuana prohibition has been a failure by practically every measure. Let your legislators know that it’s time for a new approach.
- See more at: http://control.mpp.org/site/MessageViewer?em_id=69441.0&dlv_id=63841#sthash.s8urRc27.dpuf

In a poll released today, 58% of Texas voters support making marijuana legal for adults and regulating it like alcohol. Opponents were a distinct minority, with only 38% opposed. If you believe Texas would benefit from a taxed and regulated approach to marijuana — similar to Colorado and Washington’s — tell your legislators today!
Compared with a poll conducted by the Pew Research Center in April of this year, Texans are even more supportive of regulating marijuana like alcohol than Americans as a whole. 
According to the most recent statistics provided by state law enforcement to the FBI, an amazing 98% of all marijuana-related arrests in Texas were for possession. During the same period in 2011, over 88% of all motor vehicle thefts and 71% of burglaries, including home invasions, went unsolved by police.
As marijuana cases have distracted law enforcement from serious crime, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s most recent report indicates that more teens consume marijuana than cigarettes – a taxed and regulated product. Marijuana prohibition has been a failure by practically every measure. Let your legislators know that it’s time for a new approach.
- See more at: http://control.mpp.org/site/MessageViewer?em_id=69441.0&dlv_id=63841#sthash.s8urRc27.dpuf

In a poll released today, 58% of Texas voters support making marijuana legal for adults and regulating it like alcohol. Opponents were a distinct minority, with only 38% opposed. If you believe Texas would benefit from a taxed and regulated approach to marijuana — similar to Colorado and Washington’s — tell your legislators today!
Compared with a poll conducted by the Pew Research Center in April of this year, Texans are even more supportive of regulating marijuana like alcohol than Americans as a whole. 
According to the most recent statistics provided by state law enforcement to the FBI, an amazing 98% of all marijuana-related arrests in Texas were for possession. During the same period in 2011, over 88% of all motor vehicle thefts and 71% of burglaries, including home invasions, went unsolved by police.
As marijuana cases have distracted law enforcement from serious crime, the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s most recent report indicates that more teens consume marijuana than cigarettes – a taxed and regulated product. Marijuana prohibition has been a failure by practically every measure. Let your legislators know that it’s time for a new approach.
- See more at: http://control.mpp.org/site/MessageViewer?em_id=69441.0&dlv_id=63841#sthash.s8urRc27.dpuf

Jail politics and the purported decline of 'apostrophe laws'

Here are a few tidbits which haven't made it into individual posts but may interest Grits readers:

Fort Worth jail costs skyrocket from incarcerating Class C misdemeanants
Here's an absolutely superb story from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram on a dispute between Fort Worth and Tarrant County over housing Class C traffic ticket violators. Tarrant won't do it so Fort Worth entered into a rather squirrelly contract with Mansfield for which they're massively overpaying to house Class C offenders. Unlike most jurisdictions, Fort Worth does not cut deals to reduce fines and sends people to jail until either they can pay or their jail credits cover the debt. Critics including the Tarrant County Sheriff say that amounts to operating a "debtor's prison."  Give it a read, there aren't too many reporters in the state with enough understanding of the system to pull off this story. Yamil Berard is one of them.

Jail health privatization
Navarro County is considering privatizing health care services at its county jail.

New jail suggestion rejected
Commissioners in Rockwall County rejected a study designed to prepare them for jail expansion.

Welcome to SA, prepare to be blamed
The Bexar County Jail just got a new jail administrator. That's a more political job these days in San Antonio than in most counties because of disputes between the Sheriff and Commissioners Court over staffing. He's got his work cut out for him.

Cite-and-summons process needs mechanism to improve court-appearance rate
Travis County's cite-and-summons program for low-level misdemeanors (authorized by the Lege in 2007 to ease jail overcrowding) has a high no-show rate, the Austin Statesman reported. IMO this is in part because no infrastructure is in place to remind people of court dates, etc., the way pretrial services does with defendants given personal bonds. The rate will never get to zero but with a little forethought and effort it could be dramatically lowered from where it is now. By contrast, Sheriff Gary Painter in Midland effusively praised the program and said they haven't seen similar problems.

Governor signs TX warrants for email bill
After Gov. Perry signed Texas' warrants for email bill it received some nice coverage from Ars Technica and Law360.com. I had breakfast this morning with Greg Nojeim from the Center for Democracy and Technology who said he expects similar federal legislation to pass the US Senate but fears for its prospects in the House of Representatives.

Montana requires warrants for cell-phone location data
Montana's governor has signed legislation requiring warrants for law enforcement to acquire cell-phone location data. Readers will recall the legislatures in Missouri and Maine passed similar legislation, but Montana's governor beat them to the punch in signing it, making them the first state to finally pass such a law. Go here for detailed information about the MT bill.

Public doesn't trust fed snooping
A new poll found that 57% of the public fears the NSA uber-database on phone records will be used for political purposes unrelated to national security. That's an unsurprising and perhaps even a realistic assessment. After all, the database isn't assisting terrorism investigations, which makes one wonder if it exists for some different, perhaps less noble purpose. Polling on the NSA phone spying scandal has been all over the map but given the Obama Administration's recent record regarding journalists' privileges and the use of the IRS to target political opponents, I can't say I blame the public for being skeptical.

Are 'apostrophe laws' really on the decline?
I'm not sure I believe this but USA Today reported that so-called "apostrophe laws" - typically enhancements named after dead children, driven by grieving parents - are receiving a cooler reception among state-level lawmakers this year. That may be because many are bad public policy or, as the article suggests, they may have just run out of low-hanging fruit. We still see a lot of this in Texas, though, I'm not sure the trend described has yet migrated across the Red River. And though the article focuses on penalty enhancements, in Texas the concept cuts both ways - the "Michael Morton Act," the creation of the "Timothy Cole Advisory Panel," and the Tulia legislation were all good examples of reform legislation passed in response to a particular injustice. Ideally government shouldn't make public policy based on individual anecdote, but that's the political reality we live in for good or ill.

Public opinion and privacy: Weird contradictory polling on NSA phone spying scandal

Hard to know what to make of this. To my knowledge, there have been two national polls thus far regarding US public opinion on privacy issues related to revelations that the National Security Agency keeps metadata from domestic US phone calls in a massive database. A Pew-Washington Post poll found that 56% of American adults support the phone-spying program and 41% oppose it, a result I found surprising and a tad depressing. Then almost immediately thereafter a Gallup poll came out reaching virtually the opposite conclusion, finding that Americans disapprove of the program by a margin of 53%-37%.

Both, obviously, cannot be accurate. Maybe neither are. The Gallup poll conforms more to my own predilections, a fact which makes me hesitant to instantly embrace it given the risk of confirmation bias. But I'll admit I was relieved to see evidence contradicting that Pew-WP poll, whose results seemed fantastically out of kilter with my own experience and expectations. Basically, this means we'll have to wait for multiple additional polls on the topic and average them before it's possible to guess what the public really thinks. These two polls don't jibe with one another even at the extreme ends of their confidence intervals. There's no way to accept them both.

One element that did stand out in both surveys: Support for the NSA phone-spying program would be much lower were it not for Democrats who appear so intent on Obama apologia that they're willing (IMO hypocritically) to back him on policies they criticized George W. Bush over just a few years ago. (See the fourth table here titled "Partisan shifts in views of NSA surveillance programs.") That's an embarrassment.

The truth is, whether or not there's majority support for privacy reform, and there might be, there's no doubt a vocal, bipartisan minority ardently supports it and the pro-life folks have shown that's more than enough to organize an effective political movement. These are issues that cut across party lines. The trick is going to be to convince partisans not to be fair-weather privacy advocates, criticizing Big Brother abuses only when they're undertaken by a member of the opposite political party. If that hump can be overcome, IMO the public would heartily welcome pretty sweeping privacy reforms at both the state and federal levels.

Bigger safety threat: Guns or violent video games?

A recent opinion poll (pdf) of Republican primary voters posed the question, "What do you think is a bigger safety threat in America: guns or violent video games?" Among respondents, an amazing 67% said video games, 14% said guns, 19% said not sure. The sample size was rather small (just over 500), but still, that's an enormous difference.

My personal belief is that, in fact, the opposite is true: IMO video games likely reduce crime because of the incapacitation effect of young males spending large amounts of time playing them. As a 2011 study on the subject put it, "Even if a gamer is predisposed to being more aggressive due to gaming, he can express this aggression only over a shorter time non-gaming period." Or in layman's terms, the kid who spends hours perfecting his skills at Grand Theft Auto has less time to spend stealing my car.

At the macro-level, too, the threat from violent video games falls flat. Max Fisher at The Washington Post reported in December that, "the United States has the highest firearm murder rate in the developed world. But other countries where video games are popular have much lower firearm-related murder rates."

Texas justice initiatives presaged changing public opinion on reform

Could Texas' closed Central Unit in Sugar Land "symbolize a new approach to justice in America?"

PBS' Need to Know posed that question Friday evening in a 25-minute feature on Texas corrections reforms and the state's closure of its first-ever prison unit in last year, interviewing state Sen. John Whitmire in the bowels of the now-empty Central Unit. "You can't build your way out of the problem," said Whitmire. "If you don't deal with the root causes of crime, you'll never, ever have enough prisons. You'll bankrupt your state." The closed prison unit, said the chairman, is "the evidence we need that we're doing something right, and we're not compromising public safety." At one point, Whitmire said "most" of the 12,000 women locked up in TDCJ probably don't need to be there.

PBS also interviewed outgoing House Corrections Chairman Jerry Madden who recalled how, when he was named Chairman in 2005, House Speaker Tom Craddick called him in and said eight words to him that "changed my life": They were, "Don't build new prisons, they cost too much." Madden estimates that so far Texas' reforms have saved the state around $2 billion.

In a blast from the past, the story quoted Gov. Rick Perry's 2007 State of the State speech, showing a clip where the Governor declared that "There are thousands of non-violent offenders in the system whose future we cannot ignore. Let's focus more resources on rehabilitating those offenders so that we can ultimately spend less locking them up again," he advised to hearty applause. Another nifty quote: "Doing the intelligent thing is not being soft," said District Judge Robert Francis, who runs a reentry court in Dallas.

The reporter marveled that with Texas' reforms diverting thousands from prison, crime rates continued to fall even as incarceration rates declined. And Jeff Greenfield interviewed Adam Gelb from the Pew Center on the States to ask if Texas' "experiment" might become a "national movement." Gelb discussed how conservatives like those who've signed onto the Right on Crime principles are able to get to the same place on the issues as moderates and liberals, often agreeing on outcomes for different ideological reasons.

Relatedly Gelb's colleagues at the Pew Center on the States just released a public opinion poll which affords reason for optimism that the public would support further changes along these lines. Among the top line findings:

• American voters believe too many people are in prison and the nation spends too much on imprisonment.
• Voters overwhelmingly support a variety of policy changes that shift non-violent offenders from prison to more effective, less expensive alternatives.
• Support for sentencing and corrections reforms (including reduced prison terms) is strong across political parties, regions, age, gender, and racial/ethnic groups.

Here's an image providing more detail from the national survey (pdf) of 1,200 likely voters:

Moreover:

For reasons about which we can only speculate, public opinion appears to have shifted on questions of mass incarceration. Asked “Do you think there are too many people in prison in the United States, not enough people in prison, or is the number of people in prison about right?,” The results were:

Too many: 45%:
About right: 28%
Too few: 13%
Don't know: 14%

On average, said Pew, voters think about 20% of US prisoners could be released without harming public safety.

Remarkably, 69% supported the statement, “One out of every 100 American adults is in prison. That’s too many, and it costs too much. There are more effective, less expensive alternatives to prison for non-violent offenders and expanding those alternatives is the best way to reduce the crime rate,” with a whopping 50% saying they "strongly support" it. Among major state budget items, more voters said they were willing to cut prisons (48%) than any other area of government.

Fully 77% of voters agreed that “Our spending on corrections has grown from $10 billion to $50 billion over the last twenty years but we are not getting a clear and convincing return on that investment in terms of public safety,” including 76% of Republicans surveyed.

Equally fascinating is that common tuff-on-crime messages are beginning to lose their appeal. Asked if they agreed with the statement, “People who commit crimes belong behind bars, end of story. It may cost a lot of money to run prisons, but it would cost society more in the long run if more criminals were on the street,” just 25% said they supported it (15% strongly support). The public just isn't buying that common argument anymore, according to these data.

Reports like these give me hope that Texas may continue down a reformist path despite considerable political uncertainty. It's purportedly a Chinese curse to wish on another that they "live in interesting times," but without question we certainly do.

Things to like about Rick Perry for a criminal justice reformer

Since Dave Jennings didn't like my commentary on Rick Perry and the death penalty, let me identify some of the issues covered on this blog where Rick Perry got it right over the years:

2001: Signed bill requiring local law enforcement to gather racial profiling data, including information on stops and searches. Authority was later given to a state agency to gather them all and publish them online.

2001: Signed the Tulia legislation requiring corroboration for informants in undercover drug stings.

2001: Signed legislation creating Chapter 64 of the Code of Criminal Procedure that facilitated post-conviction DNA testing.

2001: Signed the Texas Fair Defense Act improving county indigent defense systems, establishing minimum qualifications for attorneys.

2001: Became the first governor to sign the DREAM Act allowing children of illegal immigrants to attend college at in-state rates.

2003: Signed legislation mandating probation on the first offense for drug offenders caught with less than a gram of cocaine, heroin or other hard drugs - diverted 3,000 or more offenders from state jails annually.

2003: Issued pardons to 35 people convicted in the notorious "Tulia drug stings" and others from the Dallas fake drug scandal, contributing to a high water mark of 73 grants of clemency from Gov. Perry in 2003.

2005: Signed legislation to bring Tulia-style drug task forces under Department of Public Safety rules.

2005: Signed legislation establishing the Forensic Science Commission, requiring accreditation of state and local crime labs.

2006: De-funded dozens of regional narcotics task forces around the state, shifting federal block grant funds mostly to border security and diversion programming. Of the latter, a special emphasis was placed on drug courts and other specialty courts which grew in number from 7 to more than 70 statewide under Rick Perry, mostly launched with grant money from the governor's Criminal Justice Division.

2007: Signed widely praised, bipartisan probation reform legislation credited with abating the need for 17,000 new prison beds.

2007: Signed legislation allowing police officers to issue citations instead of making arrests for certain Class B and A misdemeanors, including marijuana possession.

2009: Signed the nation's most generous compensation package for exonerees: $80,000 per year incarcerated in a lump sum and a like amount distributed via a lifetime annuity.

2009: Signed into law a requirement for corroboration of jailhouse informants, presaging California's much-more publicized decision to do so this year.

2009: Vetoed legislation allowing seizure of children by CPS without notifying parents, a bill which was an overreaction to the fiasco surrounding the Great Eldorado Polygamist Roundup.

2010: Issued a posthumous pardon for Timothy Cole, who died in prison of an asthma attack after a false conviction later disproven by DNA.

2011: Signed legislation requiring local police departments to develop policies on eyewitness identification based on best practices; mandates promulgation of a (forthcoming) model policy on eyewitness IDs.

2011: Signed legislation limiting objections prosecutors could make to post-conviction DNA testing under Chapter 64.

2011: Signed a budget closing an adult prison unit for the first time in the state's history, as well as three youth prisons in a consolidation of state juvenile justice systems (probation, prison and parole) into a single new department, an effort growing out of bipartisan reforms.

That said, there are many counterexamples, notably on Fourth Amendment topics. Until his endorsement this summer of a bill to limit TSA groping and his veto of a texting-while-driving ban in June, Governor Perry had been notably hostile toward legislation to limit unnecessary searches and seizures - especially at traffic stops. In 2001, just months after Perry's ascension to Governor, the US Supreme Court ruled in Atwater v. Lago Vista that Texas law-enforcement officers could arrest people alleged to have committed only Class C misdemeanors, which are fine-only offenses for which jail time is not even a possible punishment. In response, that spring the Legislature approved legislation banning arrests for most Class C misdemeanors, but Gov. Perry vetoed it. The following session in 2003, a more moderate bill passed requiring police departments to have written policies on when their officers could arrest for Class C misdemeanors. Gov. Perry vetoed that bill, too. (Texas jails would be a lot less overcrowded today if he'd kept his pen in his pocket.)

Then in 2005, stinging from the Atwater vetoes, the legislature approved a bill to require departments to have written policies regarding when and how consent searches at traffic stops would be performed, a bill which the Governor also promptly vetoed. The following session, Perry's renewed veto threat kept a similar bill from even getting a hearing, though several dozen departments statewide enacted policies of their own accord.

There are plenty of other areas where I differ with the Governor: He vetoed an earlier round of probation reform in 2005 before supporting similar legislation in 2007. I consider most of his so-called "border security" pork to have been a big waste. And Perry's clemency record borders on pitiful. (Naturally, President Obama's isn't any better.)

And of course, Perry's appointment of John Bradley to chair the Forensic Science Commission was its own sordid, bizarre episode, and I do personally believe the Governor's intent was to stall and/or kill off the Todd Willingham arson investigation. (Otherwise, it should be mentioned, Perry's other appointments to the FSC have been exemplary.)

So I don't agree with Perry on every subject, by a longshot, and he's probably used the threat of the veto to scuttle as much good legislation as actually passed during his time in office. But Perry's record on criminal justice is more moderate and complex than his fire breathing pronouncements on the death penalty might lead one to expect. If you're reading this from another state, there's a good chance your Governor can't match Perry's record on criminal-justice reform.

UPDATE: Grits should have added at least two more reform bills bearing Perry's signature: Eliminating life sentences for juveniles (maxxing them out at 40 years) in 2009, and creating the option of life without parole in capital murder cases in 2005. There's no denying the latter change has caused the number of new death sentences to plunge to modern lows (eight in FY '10). AND MORE: A right-wing site points out that Perry also signed Texas "hate crimes" law into being in 2001. I'd forgotten about that one. (Note: I personally opposed the hate crimes legislation, just as I personally disliked the bill creating the life without parole option, but most people would put those bills in the "reform" category.)

RELATED: From Brandi Grissom at the Texas Tribune, "Willingham aside, executions under Perry raise questions."

Don't dare him: 'Is Rick Perry Ready to Execute an Innocent Man?'

In the Nation, Jordan Smith (who usually writes for the Austin Chronicle) has an article on the Larry Swearingen case asking "Is Rick Perry Ready to Execute an Innocent Man?" I think the short answer is, "Of course!" And for heaven's sake, don't dare him! (The Court of Criminal Appeals stayed Swearigen's execution in July, it should be said, so there's a chance the case may never reach the Governor's desk.)

Indeed, if Swearingen is executed on Perry's watch, there's no reason to think it would even hurt him politically. Most people who believe the state has already executed an innocent person still support the death penalty. Perry can say he trusts the prosecutor and jury to get it right, and especially in the GOP primary that's enough to give him a free pass. Politico reported recently that "Multiple former [Kay Bailey] Hutchison advisers recalled asking a focus group about the charge that Perry may have presided over the execution of an innocent man — Cameron Todd Willingham — and got this response from a primary voter: 'It takes balls to execute an innocent man.'”

But even in the general, being associated with aggressive use of the death penalty is a stance that attracts independents and is a factor that may offset other positions ("Social Security is a ponzi scheme") that are considered general election liabilities. This is an example of why Perry has a reputation as "teflon": He carefully chooses the terrain on which he engages his critics, and more often than not they oblige by fighting on his turf. Attacking Perry as overzealous on the death penalty plays into the governor's strengths, associating him with an issue that crosses party lines and helps woo swing voters.

The Obama Administration kills people with predator drones without trials so it's not like there's any real difference between the candidates on the subject of "state murder," in the abolitionist lingo. But from the perspective of political strategy, attacking Perry on the death penalty, even on innocence grounds, is a counterproductive task: Even if you could prove to a certainty an innocent man was killed on Perry's watch, most Americans and certainly most GOP primary voters would still agree with his rhetoric favoring aggressive use of the death penalty.