Grits for Breakfast

While I've been away from the blog recently, much of my time has been spent on a side project researching negro-league baseball in Texas...

From the earliest days your correspondent first showed up at the Texas Legislature, I've been grumpy about how they score "fiscal ...

Texas ended "convict leasing" - essentially hiring out prisoners as slave labor - just more than a century ago, but the prison sys...

The Reasonably Suspicious podcast is back after a largely health-driven hiatus. Mandy and I are diving back in with Part One of a special, t...

If your annual food budget was $800 per person and that money had to last all year, how would you spend it? I'll give you a moment: Try ...

The Texas Legislative Budge Board has "Recommended funding maintains correctional security operations, with a decrease totaling $148 m...

Whether due to COVID or some other reason(s), vacancies among prison staff at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice have reached disturbi...

Recent incarceration reductions  are saving the Texas Department of Criminal Justice $1 million per day, according to the Texas Criminal Jus...

Grits mentioned before that Texas' prison population in the last few months plummeted to 21st century lows - a little more than 120K, d...

Keri Blakinger brings word that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice a) has shuttered three additional prison units and b) has witnesse...

Texas state agencies have been asked to prepare budgets that include 5% cuts in light of reduced tax revenues thanks to the coronavirus and ...

Thanks to the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's cessation of intake from Texas county jails, the state's prison population has ...

The US Supreme Court has declined to vacate a stay by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals of an injunction granted to Texas prison inmates fro...

Grits had earlier discussed how COVID lockdowns at TDCJ were keeping inmates from communicating with their families. Apparently phone acces...

The Texas prison system has placed about 1/3 of the inmate population on lockdown status , including denying them access to visitation and p...

Several, notable headlines drew Grits' attention related to the coronavirus and Texas prisons and jails. Let's round them up. Texa...

Our pal Keri Blakinger offered up another excellent and much-appreciated email update while Grits' blog content ramps back up. I couldn...