Confronting racism at Austin PD, ↓ TX solitary numbers may be an illusion, driver license suspensions not enhancing collections, Big-D bail reform collapses into confusion, and other stories

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

Racial bias and disparities at Austin PD
A new report from the Austin Police Monitor's office demonstrated that black Austinites are disproportionately affected by police stops, searches, and arrests. The disparities are quite large, but Austin PD doesn't provide the data needed to drill down and discover particular officers engaging in discriminatory practices. The report comes in the wake of an assistant chief stepping down in December after a whistleblower revealed racist texts and emails sent to other departmental brass over many years. The city council ordered a review of internal officer communications in response that may reveal more racist officer communication, which has the police union mad as a wet hen. The Police Monitor's report provides a less personal, more systemic assessment of racism in the department, looking beyond individuals' points of view to the impact of departmental practices. Good for the Austin city council for taking this on.

Austin police chief orders arrests for crimes cops can't prove
In other Austin PD news, Grits finds bizarre Chief Bryan Manley's position that the department will continue to arrest and cite people for marijuana possession after the City Council forbade them from doing the lab testing to prove THC levels were above .3% and the substance could be distinguished from hemp. Isn't this the police chief openly saying he has ordered his officers to arrest people when they cannot prove the elements of the crime? To my attorney readers: What legal mechanisms exist to restrain police who openly choose to make wrongful arrests that prosecutors universally dismiss? IANAL, but it seems to me police don't have authority to arrest when there's no probable cause to believe a crime was committed. And since marijuana and hemp come from the same plant, they're indistinguishable without the test.

It's also worth mentioning, bringing the subject back around to the prior item, that marijuana enforcement generates even higher racial disparities than other Austin PD activities, reported the Austin Chronicle:

Data from APD shows that in 2019, a total of 432 citations were issued for marijuana offenses. Of those, 364 went to Black or Latinx Austinites, while just 64 went to white residents – despite similar levels of marijuana use among all three populations. So stopping enforcement of low-level cannabis offenses (see "Council Unani­mous­ly Votes to End Low-Level Pot Enforcement," Jan. 24) could reduce the disproportionate impact arrests and citations have on Austin's Black and brown residents. 

"It's outrageous for APD to be pointlessly writing these worthless pieces of paper," Emily Gerrick, an attorney with the Texas Fair Defense Project and an architect of the POM resolution, told us on Monday, Jan. 27. "Resources could be much better spent trying to address those types of racial disparities in the first place, such as with anti-implicit-bias training."

Competitive DA primaries in Texas
The Appeal compiled a list of competitive DA primaries in Texas. Harris, Travis, and El Paso counties are the big prizes. See a related spreadsheet.

Revenue collection not enhanced through driver license suspensions
The suspension of drivers licenses for nonpayment of traffic fines through the OmniBase program does not correlate with higher payment rates, found an analysis by Texas Appleseed and the Texas Fair Defense Project. The program "has a profound negative impact on people already struggling financially, driving them into a cycle of debt and poverty by taking away their ability to legally drive." The groups encouraged cities and counties to stop using OmniBase altogether, suggesting payment rates may be unaffected.

↓ Texas ad seg numbers may be an illusion
The Texas Observer's Michael Barajas took a deep dive into solitary confinement issues. Texas' numbers of prisoners in solitary, dubbed "ad seg" in TDCJ parlance, has declined by more than half, according to official figures. But Barajas' reporting raises the possibility that some of that reduction stems from reclassifying prisoners, not changing the conditions they live under:

as the Texas Tribune reported last year, some of TDCJ’s new programs may actually mask the extent to which the state has reformed its solitary confinement practices. Inmates moved out of solitary and into a mental health diversion program still live in conditions that seem indistinguishable from solitary; prisoners continue to be confined in small spaces and have limited time outside their cells. Regardless of these similarities, Texas doesn’t count its participants as being in isolated housing.

Dallas bail reform collapses into confusion
In Dallas, D Magazine has the story of how bail-reform their has collapsed into confusion. Was glad to see the article critique the same, ill-conceived op eds from the Dallas News at which Grits lashed out in this post. Here's  how the author, Shawn Shinneman, summarized the flaws in the DMN editorial board's analysis:

That editorial is inaccurate. It suggests we have true bail reform in Dallas County. We don’t. It insinuates Creuzot’s wish-list reforms are in place. For the most part, they aren’t. It also conflates a violent offender with the type of defendant bail reform is targeted at: poor people who are accused of a nonviolent offense, whose lives are upended because they don’t have money to post bond.

Long-time ex-San-Angelo police chief indicted for bribery

Timothy Ray Vasquez, who was police chief in San Angelo from 2004-2016, has been indicted in federal court for allegedly taking bribes related to the purchase of an $11 million radio system. Most of the alleged bribes were funneled through a wedding band called "Funky Munky" the chief played in on the side.

Reentry travails in Tyler
In The Tyler Loop, Jennifer Toon has an excellent essay on the travails of reentry given limited treatment resources and lack of halfway houses outside of the big population centers.

Economists economisting on crime
See the lineup for the Texas Economics of Crime Workship at Texas A&M, organized by Prof. Jennifer Doleac. As regular readers know, I consider economists' analyses of crime generally flawed and harmful. But thankfully, as in this workshop, most economists analyzing criminal-justice issues aren't utilizing economic principles, they're just doing applied math.

Flawed forensics chronicled
Recent coverage of flawed forensics deserves readers' attention:

• New York Review of Books: Jailed by Bad Science
• GQ: Evidence on Trial: Why the forensic evidence is less reliable than we think
• The Outline: The dangerous shortcomings of forensic science
• Science and Justice (academic): Cognitive Biases in the Peer Review of Bullet and Cartridge Case Comparison Casework: A Field Study

1994 Crime Bill revisionism

Doug Berman says the 1994 Crime Bill wasn't as bad as you think and maybe even did some good, from the vantage point of 20/20 hindsight. But it still "fostered and reinforced tough-on-crime attitudes in Washington and among state and local criminal justice officials that contributed to historic growth in national prison populations." That's the most important takeaway, IMO. These revisionist analyses are fine, but here's the thing: Federal crimes are a small part of the system, so the biggest impact of the 1994 Crime Bill was political: It galvanized bipartisan support for mass incarceration that led to so-called liberal Democrats running political ads like this one:

Previewing interim charges at House Corrections Committee

The Texas House Corrections Committee will meet Tuesday and Wednesday to discuss an array of interim charges, so lets preview each of them ahead of time. First up on Tuesday:

• Study incarceration rates for non-violent drug offenses and the cost to the state associated with those offenses. Identify alternatives to incarceration, including community supervision, that could be used to reduce incarceration rates of non-violent drug offenders.
• Study inmate release policies of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, including the release of inmates directly from administrative segregation.  Identify best practices and policies for the transitioning of these various inmate populations from the prison to appropriate supervision in the community. Identify any needed legislative changes necessary to accomplish these goals.

And on Wednesday they'll hear testimony related to their charge to:

Study recidivism, its major causes, and existing programs designed to reduce recidivism, including a review of current programs utilized by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) and the Windham School District for incarcerated persons.  Examine re-entry programs and opportunities for offenders upon release.  Identify successful programs in other jurisdictions and consider how they might be implemented in Texas.

Let's walk through be basics on these.

Reducing drug offenders in prison
On incarceration rates for nonviolent drug offenders in Texas state prisons, the go-to source is the TDCJ Annual Statistical report; here's the FY 2014 version. According to that source, about 16 percent of TDCJ offenders on hand as of Aug. 31, 2014 were incarcerated for a drug offense as the primary charge, or 24,005 inmates out of roughly 150,000 incarcerated in TDCJ that day. Of those, 14,256 were incarcerated for possession only and 9,699 for drug delivery. Of the subset of those locked up in state jails (essentially fourth-degree felons), the same report found 37 percent were incarcerated for a drug offense, almost all of them (90 percent) for possession.

Notably, there were 1,998 inmates with a drug offense as their primary charge who are categorized by TDCJ as 3g offenders, a category largely reserved for violent crimes. The reference is to Sec. 42.12(3)(g) of the Code of Criminal Procedure. Drug offenses become 3g offenses if a child was present or involved or if the offense were committed in a drug free zone. While we may not like these drug offenders, its probably unhelpful to group them with murderers. This might be an example of people serving unnecessary extra time because we're "mad at" them, not afraid of them, as Sen. John Whitmire is fond of saying.

As far as the costs of housing drug offenders, the uniform cost report document prepared biennially by the Legislative Budget Board is the go-to source. They put the average FY 2014 cost at $54.89 per day.

OTOH, in truth, how much it costs to house a prisoner varies widely based on what unit they're housed in, whether they receive drug treatment, education, or other services, and whether they get sick, among other things. Recently Grits requested breakdown of the cost per prisoner at all TDCJ units as of 2014. (Thanks to TDCJ Public Information Officer Jason Clark for fulfilling that request.)

Looking at that level of detail, we can see, for example, that SAFP services delivered at the Jester I unit (built in 1885) cost $90.85 compared to an average of $58.72 at the four other units delivering SAFP services. These unit-by-unit data give a clearer sense of how widely costs can vary per prisoner depending on where they're housed. The $55 average LBB uses masks a wide range of differences and could be lowered by closing some of those higher-cost facilities.

As for alternatives to incarceration, my hope would be that debates could move beyond drug courts to the need to adjust drug sentences for low-level possession downward. Texas has invested a great deal in drug courts and proven conclusively that strong probation works. But the resource-intensive tactic cannot scale up to handle the volume of drug offenders cycling in and out of the system at all levels.

Thus, as the committee contemplates alternatives to incarceration, it's worth considering whether offenders caught with four grams or less of a controlled substances should be treated as felons at all, considering all the job and housing implications and other the collateral consequences a felony label entails. Shifting penalties to a Class A misdemeanor for up to four grams of a controlled substance would save the state big money and dramatically reduce collateral consequences for those low-level offenders.

How much money could be saved from reduced penalties? Last session, Rep. Senfronia Thompson proposed HB 254, which would have reduced the sentencing category for people possession less than a gram of a controlled substance, so a subset of the up-to-four-grams category. The Legislative Budget Board estimated that the state would save more than $105 million in the first biennium and upwards of $139 million in the second. If sentences for up to four grams were reduced to a Class A misdemeanor, the reduction in the incarceration budget would be even greater.

Those levels of savings could finance an impressive amount of treatment and diversion programming for these new Class A drug offenders, nearly all of whom would inevitably receive probation (just like most Class A drug offenders do now). Once the Comptroller certifies the savings, some or all of it could be diverted to probation departments to pay for additional treatment services and possibly reduce the portion of probation budgets paid for by probationer fees, an issue getting increasing levels of attention lately.

Last session the Legislature boosted TDCJ's budget by more than $400 million, which seemed like a remarkable amount for a bunch of self-styled fiscal conservatives to spend on a Big Government program with no clear extra benefit in public safety effectiveness. (Of course, the same can be said of the border surge.) And that doesn't include the portion of corrections spending outside of TDCJ's budget. In a fiscal environment where oil revenues are down and legislators will be looking for cuts, not increases, the best way to pay for alternatives to incarceration would be sentence reductions, which themselves constitute an "alternative" to sending low-level drug addicts to state prison.

Inmate release policies and ad seg
Regarding releasing inmates directly from ad seg, Grits has addressed this question previously and refer readers to those related posts. Texas recently had its first prisoner pass the 30 year mark in solitary confinement, which seems outlandish except that he won't be the last. As of 2014, Texas had more prisoners in solitary confinement than the entire prison populations in 12 states. The union for correctional officers has claimed excessive use of solitary is responsible for higher assault rates on prison staff.

Staffers preparing their legislators on these issues may want to check out a new report on solitary confinement titled "Time in Cell" and a series of essays published recently in the Yale Law Journal reacting to its findings. Also, Texas figured prominently in a Marshall Project story from last year related to inmates released directly from solitary.

Also relevant: Last year the United Nations issued the Mandela Rules related to the use of solitary confinement which include some relevant suggestions. Those rules emphasize that the period of imprisonment should be "used to ensure, so far as possible, the reintegration of such persons into society upon release so that they can lead a law-abiding and self-supporting life." When prisoners who've been in solitary are released, "the prison administration shall take the necessary measures to alleviate the potential detrimental effects of their confinement on them and on their community following their release from prison."

The Mandela Rules suggest a step-down pre-release strategy which at present is foreign to TDCJ's programs and culture.

Before the completion of the sentence, it is desirable that the necessary steps be taken to ensure for the prisoner a gradual return to life in society. This aim may be achieved, depending on the case, by a pre-release regime organized in the same prison or in another appropriate institution, or by release on trial under some kind of supervision which must not be entrusted to the police but should be combined with effective social aid.

Whether or not Texas fully adopts the Mandela Rules, that particular suggestion makes a lot of sense.

Understanding recidivism, planning for reentry
The interim "charge" up on Wednesday really addresses two separate but related issues: recidivism and reentry. This LBB report is the go-to document for recidivism data. For the cohort of prisoners released in 2011, the proportion rearrested within three years was:

• Prison: 46.5%
• State Jail: 62.0%
• Intermediate Sanction Facility: 57.5%

While the proportion re-incarcerated in TDCJ in three years was much lower:

• Prison: 21.4%
• State Jail: 30.7%
• Intermediate Sanction Facility: 36.5%

Among states, Texas' recidivism rates - especially the 3-year incarceration rate - are remarkably low. But that's no cause for celebration! In reality, Texas' recidivism rate is so low because our incarceration rate is too high. Texas incarcerates an excessive number of low-risk offenders who would be unlikely to re-offend even if they had never been sent to prison. So the low recidivism number is really, in many ways, a mark of shame. It's low because we're overusing incarceration as a punishment beyond what's necessary for maximizing public safety.

If Texas commits to a strategy of de-incarceration, in all likelihood recidivism rates will rise. But that's a sign of normalization, not of failure. The day we're really limiting incarceration to those we're "afraid of" as opposed to people we're mad at, those we're "afraid of" who're released will, as a class, recidivate more. But that's not an argument for locking up low-risk offenders!

As to reentry questions - which are related to but separate from the recidivism debate - legislators could do worse than to look again to the Mandela Rules, cited above, which advise that, "The duty of society does not end with a prisoner’s release. There should, therefore, be governmental or private agencies capable of lending the released prisoner efficient aftercare directed towards the lessening of prejudice against him or her and towards his or her social rehabilitation." In Texas by contrast, released prisoners are given $100 in "gate money" and a bus ticket.

The committee should look at some of the barriers to successful reentry, like restriction on TANF benefits and food stamps for certain drug offenders discussed in a Grits post earlier today.  I'd also like to see the committee look for policies to reduce the accumulation of fines, fees, and debts facing ex-prisoners upon reentry. And there should be more focus on reducing the burden on families when their loved ones come home from prison.

The two biggest barriers to reentry, though, remain housing and jobs. These are difficult problems which don't lend themselves to simple solutions. In fact, it's hard to imagine making a dent in either without some state investment, which as mentioned runs counter to an oil-starved budget environment. And yet, if the Legislature doesn't address these questions then we're not being honest about the often state-created barriers to reentry facing ex-offenders.

The Lege eliminated job assistance for ex-prisoners during the 2011 budget crunch and has declined to limit the extent landlords can discriminate against ex-offenders regarding housing, even though one in five Americans has some sort of criminal record. In the past, efforts to expand reentry housing opportunities have been too quickly scuttled in response to NIMBY backlash. Legislators will need to pony up money for jobs programs and other reentry services and stand up to NIMBY opposition over housing to make much more headway on reentry questions. These problems are fairly well understood, but they'll require unusual political courage and money to honestly address them.

MORE: Grits contributing writer Michele Deitch emailed to say:

I wanted to flag for you that the Lege doesn't even have to reach to an international source like the Mandela Rules for guidance on this issue.  The ABA's Standards on the Treatment of Prisoners provide similar guidance as to the need for step-down type approaches.  Here is a link to the ABA Standards.

You would want to look at Standards 23-2.6, 2.7, 2.8, 2.9, and 3.8, all of which deal with seg issues.   Pay particular attention to 2.9, which addresses procedures for placement and retention in long-term segregated housing, and especially subsection (f), which addresses the need for a less-restrictive setting in the months before release to the community.  The drafters definitely had in mind a step-down type approach to segregated housing.  (As the original drafter, I can say that with some authority! :) )

Texas wouldn't comply with the 'Mandela Rules' on solitary - should it?

Grits this morning learned that last month new United Nations standards on solitary confinement and treatment of prisoners dubbed "the Mandela Rules" were adopted by the General Assembly. See here, here, here, and here.

Here are the rules themselves. Though non-binding (and a lucky thing, since Texas doesn't come close to complying), they prohibit indefinite solitary confinement, like Texas uses for gang members, as well as "prolonged" solitary confinement, defined as more than 15 days. (Texas has been known to utilize solitary for a bit longer than that.) The new standards insist that solitary "shall be used only in exceptional cases as a last resort for as short a time as possible and subject to independent review."

Readers may recall that the Texas Senate Criminal Justice Committee has an interim charge related to reentry following solitary confinement (which in Texas is called administrative segregation). They're supposed to study the issue and make recommendations to the 85th Legislature in 2017. While the UN's imprimatur may be decidedly unhelpful in Texas (think Jade Helm), the Mandela Rules show these issues are being reconsidered in many different quarters at this particular moment in history. Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick assigned an interim charge on ad seg in Texas not because he's following the UN's lead; it's that the situation has become so critical it can no longer be ignored either by state leaders or at the global level.

Related Grits posts:

• First TDCJ prisoners pass 30-year mark in solitary confinement
• More inmates in solitary in Texas than entire prison systems in 12 other states combined 
• On the perils of reentry following solitary confinement and possible solutions 
• Does excessive use of solitary confinement harm public safety? 
• Don't release inmates directly from solitary into the free world
• Push to reform ad seg lacks organic constituency 

On the folly of releasing prisoners directly from solitary to the free world

Texas features prominently in the Marshall Project's Christie Thompson's investigative feature on state prisoners released directly from solitary confinement into the free world. Good stuff; give it a read. See also 2014 Texas data on length of stay in ad seg and the number of inmates released directly to the street (1,445), including those released with no parole supervision whatsoever (832).

Speaking of ad seg, this reminds me of another report, this one from ACLUTX on solitary confinement, that Grits never read because it came out after the 84th legislative session began. Here's the pdf version. Add it to the summer reading list.

Related Grits posts:

• On the perils of reentry following solitary confinement and possible solutions 
• Does excessive use of solitary confinement harm public safety? 
• Don't release inmates directly from solitary into the free world 

First TDCJ prisoners pass 30-year mark in solitary confinement

TDCJ ad-seg cell interior. Statesman/TDCJ.

Ugh. Eric Dexheimer at the Austin Statesman reports (April 25) that, on April 10, Texas witnessed the first of a wave of prisoners in solitary confinement who have passed the thirty-consecutive year mark.

A second Texas prisoner passed the 30-years-in-solitary mark last Monday. A third will reach it June 15, a fourth on Aug. 3. By the end of November, there will be 10 inmates with the distinction of having spent one score and 10 years in one room, with others not far behind; the state has more than 100 prisoners with at least 20 years in solitary confinement under their belts. ...

State records show Texas’ first 30-year solitary prisoner was 58 years old as of March 1. That means he has spent more than half his middle-aged life in one 60-square-foot room.

And while it would be correct to assume that many of those who have served the longest in the system’s most restrictive setting are also some of the state’s worst criminals, that’s not always the case. Two of the inmates who will reach the 30-year solitary mark this year are serving time for burglary.

Since 2006, the number of Texas prisoners kept in solitary (known within the bureaucracy as "ad seg" or "administrative segregation") declined 37 percent, from nearly 10,000 to around 6,000, or from 6 percent to 4 percent of the inmate population. By contrast, in Mississippi 1.4 percent of inmates are kept in solitary, Dexheimer reported.

There's not much moving legislatively on solitary issues during Texas' 84th session. Rep. Marisa Marquez, who's been a quiet, consistent champion on this topic, passed a bill out of committee which would require mental health assessments before TDCJ commits an inmate to ad seg, but it has yet to be scheduled for a floor vote. And the inestimable Sylvester Turner tacked on a rider to the House budget providing funds for mental health treatment for inmates leaving ad seg. Otherwise, most of what's been filed of significance hasn't left committee.

And so we wait, and they wait, and in the meantime the number of prisoners in ad seg more than 30 years and counting will continue to grow, with hundreds more released directly to the streets each year. If change occurs in the next biennium, it'll have to come from the agency or possibly litigation.

BTW, for those interested in the issue, the blog Solitary Watch should be required reading. See also prior, related Grits posts:

• Overuse of solitary confinement endangers public safety
• Don't release inmates directly from solitary into the free world 
• More inmates in solitary in Texas than entire prison systems in 12 other states combined
• Solitary confinement down 34% in Texas prisons
• Does excessive use of solitary confinement harm public safety? 
• On the relationship between solitary confinement and assaults on prison guards 
• Other states reduce solitary use; Texas study authorized but remains unfunded
• Studying how to whittle away at solitary, prison suicides
• Isolation, mental illness and a call for legislative oversight of ad seg
• Solitary confinement closely examined
• 'Solitary confinement reform needed'
• On the perils of reentry following solitary confinement and possible solutions
• Anthony Graves: Solitary confinement 'dehumanizes us all,' creates a 'culture of madness'
• Push to reform ad seg lacks organic constituency

Overuse of solitary confinement endangers public safety

Dianna Muldrow of the Texas Public Policy Foundation has an op ed in the Austin Statesman (March 10) calling on Texas to reduce its use of solitary confinement. The column concluded:

The current practices surrounding solitary confinement are failing everyone. Inmates are made more dangerous and then often released right back into the communities. Security in prisons is lowered at an increased cost to taxpayers. Policies in correctional facilities need to be significantly altered.

Cages come with a cost, and this cage costs everyone.

And here are a few notable data points with which she backed up the argument:

solitary has become drastically overused by the Texas system. In other states, inmates in solitary confinement account for 1 or 2 percent of the incarcerated population. In Texas they account for 4.4 percent, many of them with mental disorders.

This number raises serious safety concerns. In 2013, more than 1,000 inmates in Texas were released back into the community directly from solitary confinement. Research has proven that inmates who are released directly from solitary confinement are 35 percent more likely to reoffend. This significantly increases their danger to communities.

Even if an inmate in solitary is not violent or threatening to begin with, time spent in solitary, which involves 23 hours in a cell with no stimulation, can increase that danger. Thousands of inmates sent to solitary confinement in Texas are already suffering from mental disorders. Research demonstrates the dangers of solitary on the mentally ill, but it only requires common sense to realize that restricting someone who is already disturbed to what is essentially a box for months will exacerbate their condition.

Additionally, the argument that solitary is only being used to increase institutional and public safety does not hold up. Mississippi has managed to substantially lower their solitary population, while seeing a decrease in prison violence and the rate of recidivism upon release. Additionally it is estimated that if Texas lowered their solitary incarceration rate to Mississippi’s 1.4 percent, they would save taxpayers $31 million a year.

Don't release inmates directly from solitary to free world

On UT-Austin's website today, a short essay on solitary confinement by Octavio Martinez Jr., executive director of the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health, opened thusly:

Of all the statistics that point to an urgent need to reform the use of solitary confinement in Texas prisons, there’s one that is most striking: The Texas Department of Criminal Justice released more than 1,200 people directly from solitary confinement back into Texas communities in 2013.

Imagine for a moment languishing alone in a 60-square-foot cell for 22 hours a day, for months or even years. Then one day, suddenly you’re left to successfully re-enter society.

This practice needs to stop. 

The article concluded:

For too long solitary confinement has been deployed as a routine disciplinary measure, rather than as an extreme practice reserved for rare circumstances. This needs to change.

Among other reforms, we should better train our correctional officers to work with people with mental health issues. We should have an incentive program that allows prisoners in solitary to earn their way, with good behavior, back into the general population. And we should ban releasing people directly from solitary confinement back into the community.

In recent years, the Texas criminal justice system has begun to tilt the balance back toward rehabilitation for all but the most violent offenders. In the same spirit, we are overdue for a far-reaching, but entirely common sense, rethinking of the way that solitary confinement is used in our prisons.

More inmates in solitary confinement in Texas than prison systems in 12 states

Check out a new report from ACLU of Texas and the Texas Civil Rights Project assessing the state's use of solitary confinement. Chuck Lindell at the Austin Statesman has an item up (Feb. 5) adumbrating their findings, which opens:

Texas prisons keep too many inmates in solitary confinement for too long — sometimes years — damaging their mental health and placing communities at risk when the prisoners are eventually released, a study by civil rights groups concluded.

Released Thursday, the report criticized Texas for keeping 4.4 percent of its inmates in solitary confinement — 6,564 in September 2014, or more than the combined prison population of 12 states.

“On average, prisoners remain in solitary confinement for almost four years; over 100 Texas prisoners have spent more than 20 years in solitary confinement,” said the report by the ACLU of Texas and the Texas Civil Rights Project.

And although the practice can lead to mental damage, in 2013 the Texas Department of Criminal Justice released 1,243 inmates “directly from solitary confinement cells into Texas communities,” said the report, titled A Solitary Failure.

Solitary confinement down 34% in Texas prisons since 2006; elderly, Hep C driving inmate health costs

The number of Texas prisoners in solitary confinement (known in bureaucratic lingo as "administrative segregation," or "ad seg") has declined by 34 percent since 2006, from 9,600 to about 6,300 today, TDCJ chief Brad Livingston told a Texas Senate Criminal Justice Committee meeting on October 28 (see video). New programs created in the last few months aim to begin transitioning prisoners out of ad seg before they're released, he said, so fewer will be released directly from ad seg to the streets, he said.

Roughly 4,500 offenders have completed TDCJ gang renunciation program and been transitioned to the general population, said Livingston. Chairman John Whitmire cautioned Livingston to continue in that direction or else federal litigation could force them to take even stronger steps.

The hearing focused particularly on cost drivers in the prison health care system.

Sen. Charles Schwertner, who is a medical doctor, took umbrage at UTMB receiving fee for service reimbursement while private providers must (mostly) accept Medicare reimbursement rates. TDCJ contracts with 140 hospitals besides UTMB, the committee was told. About 25 hospitals have received a waiver from LBB based on a TDCJ request to go above Medicare rates. Schwertner said he'd been chewing on this issue for four years since hearing a sharp exchange with a private provider about disparate rates in a Senate Finance Committee hearing.

Source

Dr. Owen Murray told Sen. Schwertner the reimbursement was different because UTMB is a teaching hospital and is a "mixed mission facility, both a prison and a hospital." So, for example, they can't make discharge decisions based purely on medical judgments but also consider when TDCJ can pick someone up, whether beds with the appropriate classification are available, etc.. That explanation seemed to modestly placate the senator, but I won't be surprised if the committee revisits the question.

Sen. Whitmire suggested TDCJ needs an additional hospital to UTMB Galveston, maybe in Marlin.

Dr. Lanette Linthicum, the medical director in charge of correctional managed care, told the committee about 30% of incoming offenders have Hep C, the main cause being IV drug use. Only 188 are currently receiving active treatment with Sovaldi, a new drug that costs in the neighborhood of $80K per patient. A virologist at UTMB decides who gets therapy. They're presently waiting for new policy to be developed, perhaps before the end of the year, for Hep C treatment protocols. Linthicum added tha end-stage liver disease from Hep C is an emerging problem among geriatric inmates.

Dr. Linthicum said that, out of TDCJ's network of 600 infirmary beds, three quarters are assigned to permanent residents who will parole from there or die there. Ninety percent of those, she estimated, are sex offenders and thus not eligible for medical parole. And even if they were released, there's little support for them when they get out. Linthicum believes there are quite a few geriatric inmates with serious medical needs who could be released without compromising public safety. But to make medical parole work, TDCJ needs "community partners" for elderly offenders, particularly sex offenders.

On mental health, about one in six inmates has a serious mental health diagnosis, which contributes significantly to the agency's pharmacy bill. According to Brad Livingston, 74 of Texas' 109 facilities have some level of mental health presence. Four units holding 2,000 inmates provide inpatient mental health care for the sickest; 23,000 more are treated on an outpatient basis in general population or ad seg in other units.

Whitmire said that, sometime at beginning of session (assuming he's still chair), the committee will have a hearing on successes of Texas' treatment and diversion programs with an aim toward doubling down on those investments to further reduce incarceration levels.

MORE: Here's TDCJ's full budget request (large pdf) for FY 2016-17, for those interested.

RELATED: From Governing magazine: Aging prisoners shackle state budgets.

Does excessive use of solitary confinement harm public safety?

There was a hearing yesterday of a US Senate Judiciary Committee subcommittee titled "Reassessing Solitary Confinement II: The Human Rights, Fiscal, and Public Safety Consequences." Among those giving testimony was Marc Levin of the Texas Public Policy Foundation. See his testimony (pdf), which framed the issue in terms of conservative values:

As conservatives, we are appropriately skeptical of government that is too large, too intrusive, and too costly, and we insist on accountability and transparency. Government is at its most restrictive when it imposes solitary confinement so it is only appropriate that we bring a critical focus to this issue rather than succumb to an out of sight, out of mind mentality. While we recognize solitary confinement is needed in some instances, policies and practices must be implemented to ensure it is not unnecessarily used to the detriment of public safety, taxpayers, and justice.

Levin also honed in on a public safety issue frequently raised on Grits: The direct release of prisoners from solitary confinement onto the street.

While often viewed primarily as a moral issue, solitary confinement has significant implications for public safety. First and foremost, prisons must discontinue the practice of releasing inmates directly from solitary confinement to the public.

A study in Washington state found that inmates released directly from the Supermax prison, which consists entirely of solitary confinement, committed new felonies at a rate 35 percent greater than that for inmates of the same risk profile released from the general population.

Additionally, a greater percentage of the new crimes committed by those released from solitary confinement were among the most serious violent felonies. Despite this finding, many states continue to release inmates directly from solitary confinement, with more than 1,300 such releases in 2011 in Texas alone. In 2013, a Colorado inmate released directly from solitary confinement murdered the state’s director of corrections, Tom Clements. Alarmingly, dating back to 2002, half of those released from Colorado prisons who subsequently committed murder served time in solitary confinement, with some discharged directly to the street. However, as documented below, major changes are underway that are significantly reducing overall solitary confinement in Colorado and those discharged directly from this custody level, with the latter figure falling from 221 in 2004 to 70 in 2013.

The average American may understandably wonder, if an inmate is too dangerous for the general population of a prison, how can they live next to me the next day? While inmates who have served their entire sentence must by law be released , this date is not a mystery to corrections officials. Stepping them down to a lower level of custody at least several months prior to release is not too much to ask.

You can see all the written testimony and view the hearing here. At the Austin Statesman, Mike Ward has a related story ("Will Texas prisons dial back solitary confinement," Feb. 25). Here's a notable excerpt:

Now, at a time when other states are reducing the number of prisoners they keep in solitary confinement, a new move is underway in Texas that could reduce the numbers even more.

Brad Livingston, executive director of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice that operates the 109-prison state corrections system, told the American-Statesman that he expects an ongoing review of solitary confinement policies — known as administrative segregation, or ad seg, in prison lingo — could drop the numbers further. ...

With likely the largest number of convicts in solitary confinement, Texas faces increasing questions over its policies.

Livingston and other prison officials note that more than half of the 7,200 convicts in solitary confinement are housed there because of violent behavior against staff and other prisoners or because they are escape risks. The rest are members of violent crime gangs.

The average stay in solitary confinement in Texas is just under two years, prison statistics show, longer than those in other states.

“The intended use of administrative segregation was to reduce violence on staff and inmates. Unfortunately a reduction in violence on staff has not been the case in Texas since the state greatly increased the use of administrative segregation in the 1990s,” Lance Lowry, a correctional officer who is president of a Huntsville union local for guards, said in testimony submitted to the Senate committee.

“The overreliance on solitary confinement in Texas may be a direct result of lack of trained and experienced staff. … A better-trained and experienced workforce could better manage an increasing mental health population, reducing the overuse of solitary confinement,” he said.

In addition, Lowry and prisoner-rights advocates agree that Texas’ practice of releasing convicts from administrative segregation directly to the streets isn’t a good idea. Advocates have complained that is a sure recipe for new crimes to be committed.

Jason Clark, a spokesman for Texas’ prison system, said that in 2013, 1,243 felons were released directly from solitary confinement to the streets — including 500 who served their entire sentence and 743 who were released on various forms of parole supervision. Statistics weren’t immediately available on how many of those convicts had come back to prison for new crimes.

See more from Lowry on the subject at The Back Gate blog. Also, the state of New York announced an agreement last week limiting the use of solitary confinement, particularly for juveniles, as discussed in detail on the blog Solitary Watch.

The Texas Legislature authorized a study of solitary confinement last session but failed to fund it. One hopes this new round of attention will spur the state to move forward with the study so the Legislature can more substantively address the question in 2015.

MORE: SL&P rounds up more links related to solitary confinement issues. AND MORE: From The Back Gate.

On the relationship between solitary confinement and assaults on prison guards

Might excessive reliance on solitary confinement contribute to serious assaults on prison staff? That's the thesis of union rep Lance Lowry in this item posted yesterday at The Back Gate. Here's a notable excerpt.

The intended use of administrative segregation was to reduce violence on staff and inmates. Unfortunately reductions in violence on staff has not been the case in Texas. Serious staff assaults in Texas has risen with the increased use of administrative segregation. Serious assaults on Texas correctional staff has gradually risen over 104% during the last 7 years. In 2013 over 79% of the 499 reported intentional exposures to bodily fluids occurred in segregated housing areas of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice. None of the exposure assaults involved regular general population offenders.

Most inmates in administrative segregation are often confined to small cells without windows, and little audio/visual stimulation. Such extreme isolation can have serious psychological effects on inmates and can lead to increased aggression towards staff, mental illness, self-mutilation and suicide. Inmates in administrative segregation have little social contact aside from abnormal communications involving yelling at offenders in other cells. Lack of normal social contact breeds increased aggression which increases aggression towards staff who may be the only normal social contact this segment of the offender population has.

Film: On the long-term effects of solitary confinement

If you're in Austin, you may want to check out a documentary film on Wednesday at UT's LBJ School about the long-term effects of solitary confinement. Here's a description of the event:

On October 1, 2013, Herman Wallace's 1974 murder conviction was overturned, and he was released from prison after four decades in solitary confinement. Just three days later, Herman Wallace died of cancer, a free man.

Join the LBJ School's Center for Health and Social Policy for a public screening of HERMAN'S HOUSE, the award-winning PBS documentary that shines a spotlight on the injustice of solitary confinement and helped free Herman Wallace. 

After the film, LBJ School Professor Michele Deitch, a national expert on criminal justice policy, juvenile justice policy, and the school-to-prison pipeline, will moderate a discussion on policy implications and questions raised by the film.

The event is free and open to the public, but seating is limited and registration at http://HermansHouseLBJ.eventbrite.com is required for communication purposes. Light snacks will be provided.

Other states reduce solitary use, Texas study authorized but languishes, unfunded

Grits wanted to alert readers to several interesting, recent items related to solitary confinement, which in Texas is called "administrative segregation," or "ad seg."

Brandi Grissom at the Texas Tribune reports that an unfunded study of solitary confinement authorized by the Texas Legislature likely won't come off because nobody in state government is seeking "gifts, grants and donations" to make it happen, though one suspects grant funding would be available if they sought it. Said an advocate quoted in the story, “Texas has the second-largest administrative segregation population in the country, with over a quarter of the people in there with mental illness.”

Meanwhile, the Wall Street Journal reported (Jan. 5) that:

The New York City Department of Correction has stopped its controversial use of solitary confinement for mentally ill inmates who break the rules, a shift that jail officials are hailing as groundbreaking.

The last of the prisoners being held in the Mental Health Assessment Unit for Infracted Inmates at Rikers Island jail were reassigned Dec. 31, and what is known as the punitive segregation program has been permanently closed, said Correction Commissioner Dora Schriro, an appointee of former Mayor Michael Bloomberg. ...

The changes follow a September report commissioned by the City of New York Board of Correction, a watchdog agency with powers to order changes in the city's jail system. The report was critical of the practice of solitary confinement for mentally ill inmates. 

The report found that over the past six years the number of beds designated for punitive segregation in city jail increased by nearly 62% to 998 and that about 41% of those in segregation units were mentally ill. With the policy changes that number has dropped to 782 beds, and it is expected to decrease to about 650 by the end of June, said Ms. Schriro. 

Punitive segregation is still used for prisoners other than those with mental illness diagnoses, though Ms. Schriro said other recent changes have dropped the average confinement there by more than a third.

Finally, the Albuquerque Journal published a column this week on solitary confinement which reported that "New Mexico officials have the goal of cutting their segregation statistics from near 10 percent of inmates to 5 percent. Why? Because they have found that it doesn’t really work." The article concluded:

Even if we think prison should be a place where lawbreakers suffer for their misdeeds, why should we care [about solitary confinement]?

From a bottom-line perspective, because solitary is expensive.

From a practical perspective, because, as [Deputy Corrections Secretary Joe] Booker points out, nearly everyone gets out of prison. They come back to our towns and neighborhoods, and if they come back less socialized, their mental illness worse and their anger deepened, then we’ve only made one of our problems worse.

MORE (Jan. 9): A judge in South Carolina has ordered the Department of Corrections in that state to take remedial action to protect mentally ill inmates in solitary confinement:

Circuit Judge Michael Baxley said in his ruling that the five-week trial of T.R., P.R., K.W., et al. v. South Carolina Department of Corrections, et al. was the most troubling of the 70,000 cases to come before him in the past 14 years.  

Click here for a copy of the ruling (PDF)

"The evidence in this case has proved that inmates have died in the South Carolina Department of Corrections for lack of basic mental health care, and hundreds more remain substantially at risk for serious physical injury, mental decompensation, and profound, permanent mental illness. As a society, and as citizen jurors and judges make decisions that send people to prison, we have the reasonable expectation that those in prison – even though it is prison – will have their basic health needs met by the state that imprisons them. And this includes mental health. The evidence in this case has shown that expectation to be misplaced in many instances," Baxley wrote.

Studying how to whittle away at solitary, prison suicides

Eric Dexheimer at the Austin Statesman has a pair of stories related to solitary confinement, one of which ("Do prisons need so many inmates in maximum custody," May 25) begins,

While all prison systems typically have some form of administrative segregation, Texas relies on its maximum custody status more than others. Direct comparisons are difficult; however, the most recent national count, in 2005, showed 2.7 percent of state inmates were on administrative segregation. Although the number in Texas prisons has been dropping slowly since 2006, the percentage here has been about 5.5 percent.

Last week, largely in response to concerns raised by mental health advocates, legislators ordered a detailed analysis of Texas’s use of administrative segregation, including recommendations on reducing its use and the amount of time offenders stay. “Very little is known about conditions in administrative segregation and how these conditions affect its population,” said state Sen. John Carona, R-Dallas, the bill’s author.

Several state prison systems recently have begun dramatically reducing their use of isolation. In some cases, the reforms were compelled by court order; in others, they were self-initiated.

Economics is one reason. As state prison systems struggle to meet budgets, they are taking a harder look at expensive programs such as administrative segregation, which can be double the cost of regular prison units. (A Texas corrections spokesman said the state doesn’t break out costs by custody level.)

Public safety is another. Many maximum security residents — about 900 in Texas last year — complete their sentences in isolation and are released directly back into civilian life without re-acclimation or supervision. A 2007 study of similar inmates in Washington state found they had “significantly higher felony recidivism rates” and committed new crimes sooner than other offenders.

Depending on the study's results, perhaps Texas in 2015 can follow the lead of other states described in the story: "In recent years, Ohio has dropped its administrative segregation population from 800 to 90. Mississippi reduced its from 1,300 to about 300, whittling the percentage of total inmates held in maximum custody from more than 5 percent to 1.4 percent."

Another piece, "Texas prison suicide rate high among inmates in isolation" (May 25) revealed the disturbing fact that though just more than 5% of Texas prison inmates are in solitary at any given time, their number make up to 40% of prison suicides. I had no idea it was that disproportionate. Reported Dexheimer:

Most Texans are unlikely to shed many tears over criminals who decide to end their own lives, particularly those convicted of serious offenses. Yet deaths like [Casey] Myers’ raise questions about how well the state is attending to its duty to care for its inmates.

The deaths also add to the debate over confining mentally ill inmates for long periods in relative isolation. About a quarter of Texas inmates held in administrative segregation have a diagnosis of mental illness or mental retardation.

That isn’t dramatically disproportionate from the overall prison population. Yet experts say evidence suggests that, more than in the general population, prolonged periods of isolation can worsen psychiatric symptoms in some and initiate them in others. Of the 56 Texas inmates who killed themselves in administrative segregation cells between 2007 and 2012, 28 — exactly half — had a mental health diagnosis.

With luck, the passage of SB 1003 by Carona will give us a lot more Texas-specific data and detail about these questions. That's the idea, anyway.

Texas House edging toward prison closures but doesn't want data on mentally ill in solitary confinement

The big news out of the vote on yesterday's TDCJ Sunset bill, reported the Texas Observer was an amendment related to prison closures:

on Saturday an amendment by conservative Weatherford Republican Phil King will require the department to prioritize closing the most costly private prisons over less-expensive ones (in a “cost-benefit analysis,” as King put it).

Quite a few Republicans have embraced a smart-on-crime approach and believe that mass incarceration, especially of nonviolent offenders, is not only fiscally irresponsible, but doesn’t reduce crime. Tan Parker (R-Flower Mound), chair of the House Corrections Committee, said, “It is our intention here to be fiscally responsible. … I believe it is very important that we close at least two facilities, if not more.”

“Thankfully, it’s a good situation that we find ourselves in Texas, that crime is on the decline,” he said.

That vote on its face seems to contradict the decision by House budget writers not to close prisons this year and in fact to purchase an extra unit the state doesn't need. Chairman Parker's call for closing "at least two facilities" makes Grits optimistic that the conference committee on the budget will side with the Senate side to close two prisons.

Rep. King's amendment, I suppose, could complicate which units get closed. Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman John Whitmire has argued for closing the Dawson State Jail in Dallas and a pre-parole facility in Mineral Wells. There are several elements to consider when judging which units to close: Not just cost is important but also the ability of the agency to adequately staff the unit (many rural units are chronically understaffed), which units deliver inadequate medical care, which ones have the most heat-related deaths, whether the unit has suffered chronic contraband or corruption problems, and whether there are higher, better uses for the surrounding property, among others. There's nothing wrong with using cost as guidance but it shouldn't be the sole factor. To me, closing Dawson and Mineral Wells should be a foregone conclusion and by now we should be discussing which units to close next.

(MORE: From the Texas Tribune, which reported that the amendment would put off prison closures for two years. That's more consistent with what was in the House budget. AND MORE: From AP.)

Not all went smoothly yesterday, though. The El Paso Times has the story of another amendment that regrettably didn't get on in a blog post titled, "House doesn't want to know about mentally ill in solitary." Here's the gist:

Rep. Marisa Marquez, D-El Paso, proposed an amendment requiring the department to report the cost and other informaion regarding prisoners in solitary. The amendment failed 59-68.

Clearly outraged, Marquez told her colleagues that solitary confinement is one of the most expensive, least effective ways to treat mental illness. Didn't legislators  realize that these same inmates are being released into their constituents' neighborhoods - usually with no assurance that they're getting care they need, she demanded.

After the vote, Marquez fumed that so many of her colleagues claimed to be fiscally conservative, yet they didn't want to know more about a major expenditure by a prison system that is the third-most expensive item in the state budget.

RELATED: A plea to Texas budget conferees: Close two prison units, don't buy empty cells we don't need.

Isolation, mental illness, and a call for legislative oversight of Texas ad seg

Check out a pair of op eds in the Houston Chronicle published today about solitary confinement from a former Texas Department of Justice general counsel Steve Martin and exoneree Anthony Graves, who spent nearly two decades on death row in "administrative segregation," as Texas euphemistically calls it:

• Martin: Long-term segregation fails to solve mental illness issue
• Graves: Solitary confinement brings no benefit to prison inmates

Martin made, essentially, a cost-benefit argument: "Right now Texas, like many other jurisdictions, is wasting money and undermining public safety with its segregation policies and practices. We simply over-use administrative segregation. Given the lack of human contact and very limited access to treatment programs, inmates are functionally programmed to fail when held for months and years in such confinement. Because the conditions are so harsh, it should be used sparingly as the costs are high - for offenders, taxpayers and public safety." Good stuff; read the whole thing.

Like his Congressional testimony on the topic, Graves' column focused on his personal experience in isolation, concluding thusly:

I was proven innocent in 2010, and became Death Row Exonoree No. 138. Some of us on Death Row were innocent. Some were unlawfully sentenced to death and had their sentences thrown out. We all suffered the same.

If you believe in the death penalty, I hope you would at least agree that some of us - the innocent ones and ones unlawfully sentenced to die - did not deserve this torture. Even if you believe in the death penalty, these torturous conditions make no sense. They damaged guys so much they could not repent for their crimes. Guys could not focus on the wrong they had done when they had a legitimate complaint of being tortured in administrative segregation by the state of Texas. And the torture was unnecessary.

Many people housed in solitary confinement in Texas prisons are not in prison for the rest of their lives. These individuals will one day return to our communities with all the mental health issues and physical problems administrative segregation causes. Hundreds of people are released from solitary confinement directly to the street each year with no oversight of any kind. After years in solitary, these individuals will find the outside world very difficult to navigate.

Now the Texas Legislature is considering two bills - House Bill 1266 and Senate Bill 1003 - that will take a hard look at the administrative segregation policies that caused me so much harm and continue to harm so many behind prison walls. These bills call on Texas to find better solutions to solitary.

I lived through solitary and I know there is a better way. These bills should become law because solitary is simply a tool to break a man's spirit - it doesn't make him better or our communities safer.

RELATED: See more on solitary confinement and mental health and if you follow the subject don't forget to check in periodically at the indispensable blog Solitary Watch.

Mental health in solitary

Here's a nice little radio segment from KUT on legislation previewed here to create a task force to study mental health and other issues related to solitary confinement in Texas prisons. Give it a listen. Exoneree Christopher Scott, who spent about a year in solitary during his 13 years in prison for a crime he didn't commit, testified in the Senate committee in favor of the bill.

Roundup: Criminal justice bills to watch

Let's highlight several pieces of Texas legislation filed recently that piqued Grits' interest.

There's HOPE for probation reform
HB 1242 (Geren/Carter): This is permissive legislation modeled on Hawaii's award-winning HOPE Court that would allow judges to utilize short jail stints instead of revocation for technical violations. Really good bill. And with House Criminal Jurisprudence Vice Chair Stefani Carter as a joint author it has a decent chance of moving this session. For more background on the HOPE program see this, this, this, this, this, this, and this.

Sentencing Commission proposed
Rep. Senfronia Thompson has filed  HB 990 to create a sentencing commission, which was a Legislative Budget Board recommendation. The commission would analyze sentences and recommend ways to reduce disparities among jurisdictions, compare Texas practices to other states, and "devise an approach that would allow the state to balance sentencing policies with correctional resources." Grits thinks this is a fine idea as a one-time re-evaluation of state sentencing policies, but would not want to see it become a standing entity.

Reducing barriers to ex-offender employment
HB 1188 is a good piece of bipartisan legislation by Reps Senfronia Thompson and Charles Perry that would limit the liability of businesses who employ people with criminal convictions. It would still allow suits for harms caused by negligent hiring, inadequate supervision, misuse of funds or property or other traditional torts. But under the bill, "A cause of action may not be brought against an employer, general contractor, premises owner, or other third party solely for negligently hiring or failing to adequately supervise an employee, based on evidence that the employee has been convicted of an offense."

Punishing prosecutors for witness tampering
HB 1163 by Moody would alter witness tampering statutes to include soliciting false testimony and encouraging witnesses to withhold information or elude appearing before the court. Punishments under the bill could be pretty harsh: "a felony of the second degree if the actor is a public servant acting or purporting to act in an official capacity or an attorney representing a party to the official proceeding, except that the offense is a felony of the first degree if the official proceeding is part of the prosecution of a criminal case in which the most serious offense charged is punishable as a felony of the first degree or a capital felony." There are exceptions for defense attorneys advising clients to exercise 5th Amendment and other legal rights. The problem is, who would prosecute cases against the prosecutors? Are DA's going to indict their own employees? Somehow I doubt it.

Studying Solitary
HB 1266 by Guillen would create an "Adult and Juvenile Administrative Segregation Task Force," made up of agency folks and various community stakeholders. It would review policies, make recommendations on ways to reduce the number of people in solitary confinement, improve programming and mental health services in ad seg. I actually think there are things they could do now that wouldn't require more study: E.g., requiring ad seg prisoners to be paroled one year before their full sentence is complete so they'll be under supervision during the reentry period. (If they complete their full sentence while in ad seg, they're dumped straight from solitary confinement back onto the streets - something that happened with 1,445 inmates last year.) Still, a task force study could raise the issue's profile and set the stage for changes down the line. Better than a sharp stick in the eye.

Don't lessen medical examiner qualifications
HB 1192 by Moody would lessen qualifications for Texas medical examiners, allowing any physician certified by the Texas Medical Board (or doctors licensed in other states) to do the job instead of requiring licensure through the Board of Medical Examiners. Seems like a bad idea to me. Perhaps I'm missing something, but surely we've had enough trouble with shoddy medical examiners in Texas that it seems foolhardy to reduce their specialty qualifications.

Limiting local limits on weapons
If HB 1299 by Stickland were to pass, "a municipality may not adopt or enforce an ordinance or other regulation relating to the private ownership, keeping, carrying, transportation, licensing, or registration of an electric stun gun, a knife, or a personal defense spray." Under the bill, they could still prevent folks from carrying those items past entrances to government buildings with metal detectors installed.

'Zero tolerance' for retaliation vs. inmate grievances
HB 968 by Sylvester Turner would require the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to "implement and enforce a zero-tolerance policy for failure to protect inmates from retaliation for filing a grievance" and begin annual reporting of grievance data, charging the agency with "identifying patterns of commonly recurring problems and making recommendations in regard to addressing those recurring problems."

Restorative justice pilot
HB 937 by Farias would establish a restorative justice pilot for juvenile offenders in San Antonio.

Innocence bills, redux
Finally, a pair of innocence-related bills that were filed in the Senate have also been filed in the House: Rep. Terry Canales has filed HB 1096 requiring police to record custoidial interrogations related to certain serious offenses. Sen. Rodney Ellis is carrying the bill in the upper chamber. And Rep. Sylvester Turner has filed the habeas corpus reform bill that Criminal Justice Committee Chairman John Whtimire filed in the Senate. The bill number is HB 967. (See Texas Tribune coverage of the recording interrogations and habeas reform bills.)

Solitary confinement closely examined

I wanted to point out a couple of recent resources on issues surrounding solitary confinement.

First, Doug Berman recently pointed out "this new report coming from the New York Civil Liberties Union titled "Boxed In: The True Cost of Extreme Isolation in New York's Prisons." This NYCLU webpage, from which the report can be downloaded, provide a summary of its scope and contents."

Meanwhile, the national ACLU has produced a new report on solitary confinement in the juvenile system titled "Growing up locked down: Youth in solitary confinement in jails and prisons across the United States." See a good write-up from Human Rights Watch and coverage from ABC News titled, "Rights groups: Ban solitary confinement of youths."

As always, James Ridgeway's Solitary Watch is the go-to blog source on these topics, and since his name came up, I'd also recommend Ridgeway's recent essay in Mother Jones, "The other death penalty: Aging and dying in prison.?" You can read the full article here, and view an accompanying photo essay by Tim Gruber, shot inside a Kentucky prison’s nursing unit, here.

'Solitary confinement reform needed'

The title of this post is the headline to an Austin Statesman staff editorial arguing to reform solitary confinement ("ad seg") policies and procedures to reduce recidivism and prepare prisoners kept in isolation for reentry when their prison terms are up. Here's an effective excerpt:

The fact that hundreds of convicts deemed by prison officials to be too dangerous for the general prison population are going from solitary to release, Ward reported, seemed to stun members of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee during a hearing Tuesday at the Capitol.

The state senators called on prison officials to develop programs for inmates in solitary.

"Why not give them some life-skills or some faith-based programs or something that can prepare them for when they get out, rather than just turning them loose," state Sen. John Whitmire, the Houston Democrat who chairs the Criminal Justice Committee, asked prison officials.

Inmates in solitary confinement typically spend 23 hours of each day in their cells. They are let out for an hour to exercise and shower.

A Texas inmate shipped off to solitary can find himself in isolation for an indefinite stay. The average is 3.2 years. Some inmates are locked away alone for a decade or more.
Texas prison officials said that most Texas inmates kept segregated from the general inmate population — about 60 percent — are gang members, Ward reported.

No doubt there is a small group of inmates who truly need to be separated from the general prison population, but the experience elsewhere, according to various reports, is that most inmates in solitary confinement are there for relatively minor reasons. They are not among "the worst of the worst" — the common assumption regarding prisoners in solitary confinement — and do not need to be kept isolated for sustained periods of time.

See Grits coverage of the Senate Criminal Justice Committe hearing on Tuesday discussed in the editorial.