Forgotten by the system: State has no idea how many Texas youth have incarcerated parents

I just ran across this presentation from the Texas Legislative Budget Board to the Texas House Corrections Committee from May regarding children of women incarcerated in Texas state prisons.

The main thing Grits took away from the presentation was that Texas doesn't appear to keep track of this issue very closely. They provided national estimates I'd seen before on how many incarcerated women have kids, but TDCJ doesn't know how many prisoners are mothers (or fathers) or how many children each has, much less where those kids are. Nor does Child Protective Services keep track of how many removals involve children with incarcerated parents. The schools, certainly, aren't keeping track.

What little Texas does know about these kids is unimpressive. For example, they know how many women gave birth after entering TDCJ: 561 over the period 2015-17, with 9.3 percent ending up with CPS and 71 percent with the fathers.

A mentoring program aimed at children of incarcerated parents, Amachi Texas, had a two-year budget of $1.3 million for FY 2018-19, said LBB. But that's not much annually for a statewide program with tens of thousands of kids potentially eligible. Anyway, since no one has bothered to identify children with incarcerated parents, clearly the Amachi program couldn't locate most of them to mentor, regardless, and isn't funded to meet such a gaping need. 

Though it's not an original line, I've repeated many times on this blog that you cannot manage what you can't measure.

Given the extent to which having an incarcerated parent is a significant risk factor for children to later engage in crime, providing support for them while their parent is away conceivably could have significant crime-deterring effects. But Texas can't even define the scope of that problem, much less measure inputs and outcomes to see what works best to prevent crime among these youth. They have been forgotten by the system.

With just a bit of ramp-up time, it wouldn't cost TDCJ or CPS much to identify youth with incarcerated parents. As soon as they began, we'd understand a lot more about the scope of the problem and the state could begin planning to address the needs identified. In addition to mentoring, some kids may need tutoring, transportation assistance, clothing vouchers, access to summer programs, jobs and internships; there is all sorts of stuff youth in that situation might need. And anyone interested in promoting long-term public safety should be anxious for the state to help. Without better information about them, though, it's a pretty safe bet nothing will happen.

When Mom is arrested, assault by Tazer, and other stories

Having just returned from a brief if much-needed vacation, let's round up a few items that popped up in the last week while Grits was gone:

What happens to kids when Mom is arrested?
The Dallas Morning News published an excellent feature on what happens to kids when Mom gets arrested. Nobody tracks them in the system and neither police or jails ask arrestees about dependent children upon intake. The article included this short video:


Litigation over weather-related deaths at TDCJ heats up
After years of anticipation, TDCJ finds itself in trial this week to determine whether their un-air conditioned prisons which have caused numerous heat-related deaths constitute unconstitutionally cruel and unusual punishment.

Straight ticket voting ends for Texas judges in 2020
The Legislature this year eliminated straight ticket voting for judicial elections beginning in 2020. This should help, but the SA Express News is right it would be better if they were entirely non-partisan. There aren't Democratic or Republican positions on most questions judges must answer and forcing them to pander to their parties primary voters leads to some strange outcomes, like the guy in 2016 who made it into a runoff for the Court of Criminal Appeals running on an anti-abortion, pro-Second Amendment platform unrelated to the duties of the court.

Good legislation still didn't 'end' debtors prison practices
Grits remains exceedingly pleased that Texas' debtors-prison reform legislation (HB 351/SB 1913) passed this year, but to my friends in the MSM: Let's please stop claiming that this will "end" debtors prison practices. It will at best ameliorate them. Texas has improved the situation. It has not solved the problem. People will still be jailed because they can't afford to pay traffic tickets, we just don't know yet what the reduction in jail sentences will be. For that matter, barring intervention by the federal courts, Texas will continue its pay-or-stay bail practices, which in Grits' view also constitute "debtors prison" policies.

Are bodycams effective even with terrible public policies?
A big debate over bodycams is coming and it's going to be a mess. The rollout in Texas came with terrible legislation by Democratic state Sen. Royce West making it secret in many instances and difficult to get in all others, even though dashcam video from police cars has been effectively governed by the Public Information Act with no negative consequences. In practice, bodycams are used far more often to accuse defendants than to hold officers accountable. Indeed, Texas law says officers can view the video with their lawyers before talking to their supervisors about what happened when they're accused of misconduct so that they can craft their story to fit the facts. Criminal defendants, of course, would never be afforded such a privilege. And yet, police officers knowing their actions are being recorded still appears to be having an effect. A new study from the Urban Institute found that people expressed greater satisfaction in encounters with officers who wore body cameras, even when they were unaware of the cameras! So is it worth it despite the one-sided secrecy? Maybe, with caveats. But the secrecy still sucks.

When does Tazing become assault?
An Austin police officer was given a 20-day suspension for Tazing a suspect after the man was handcuffed and not resisting. The officer will undergo a psychological assessment and be placed on probation for a year. A question for the peanut gallery: Is there any good reason why the officer should not have been charged with assault in addition to the department's administrative punishment?

Will more training get Houston lawyers to take indigent criminal cases?
The South Texas College of Law in Houston received a fat $1.27 million grant to train local criminal defense lawyers. From Texas Lawyer:

The school said that in 2016, 451 attorneys accepted about 70,000 indigent appointments of counsel in the district and county courts in Harris County. The top 10 percent of these attorneys accepted indigent court appointments for more than 375 cases each over the course of the year. A report issued by the Texas Indigent Defense Commission in January 2015, "Guidelines for Indigent Defense Caseloads," suggests an indigent defender's annual caseload should be closer to between 77 and 236 cases, depending on the level of offenses handled. 

To join Harris County's list for indigent appointments in criminal court, an attorney must have at least four years of practice experience in criminal law, with at least four felony jury trials acting as lead attorney, that are tried all the way to verdict, the school said. The experience requirements have led to the creation of an exclusive list of older attorneys, with younger one disillusioned with the process, the school said. "Clearly, the system is broken," said [Catherine Greene Burnett, vice president, associate dean and professor of law at the school], noting that the Harris County Public Defender's Office can only reasonably handle about 9 percent of indigent cases.

Roundup: Jean Valjean at Christmastime and other stories

Here are a few odds and ends which haven't made it into individual Grits posts during a busy week but which merit readers' attention:

Draconian enhancements based on decades-old offenses
Thanks to "enhancements" based on felonies committed two decades ago, a Hays County man received a six-year sentence for stealing $45 worth of ground beef and toys for his children from a Walmart just before Christmas last year. The kicker: Texas Supreme Court Justice Jeff Brown was foreman of the jury who convicted this latter-day Jean Valjean. Les Miserables similes aside, there needs to be some statute of limitations on how long old convictions can be used to enhance new misdemeanors into lengthy prison sentences. Nothing about what this guy did 20 years ago predicts that he's a danger today; in fact, the nature of this latest trumped-up "felony" indicates his priorities have shifted. The fellow committed what otherwise would have been a Class C misdemeanor theft so he could give his kids a modest Christmas, and "To love another person is to see the face of God."

Judges call for independent crime lab
Travis County judges are calling on the city to separate its crime lab from the Austin Police Department, a move presaged by recommendations from the National Academy of Sciences in its landmark 2009 report. Grits agrees with that assessment, with one caveat: They should make the lab truly independent, as was done in Houston. What they shouldn't do is shift those functions to the county medical examiner, as some have suggested. Let's please do this right the first time. In related news, Sen. Cornyn is pushing legislation to reauthorize federal funding for crime labs and reducing rape kit backlogs.

Contempt of cop: A case study
This article from Meagan Flynn at the Houston Press depicts a class example of an arrest for "contempt of cop" by a Harris County Sheriff's deputy.

Can bureaucracy prevent jail suicides?
Despite this Texas Tribune story, Grits suspects that far too much credit is being given to a new intake form when it comes to reducing jail suicides. We'll have to see if reductions hold long-term. But it's just as likely that jails stepped up prevention efforts because the Commission on Jail Standards began making suicides a greater point of emphasis and Sheriffs didn't want to end up in the paper with the next Sandra-Blandesque death occurring in their facility. If that's the case, suicides will continue to fluctuate and may go back up as new incidents arise. I hope I'm wrong, but it seems hard to believe such a small bureaucratic change could make a huge dent in a problem rooted deep in the human psyche. My instincts say to look for a) alternative explanations and b) future increases.

Veterans courts are cool, but don't scale up
This Houston Chronicle article touts veterans courts as an intervention that works, and they do, but it's also true that they're resource intensive and don't scale up well given the volume and gaping needs of the target population. Reported the Chron, quoting the judge in charge of the project: "The common denominator of the veterans in his court is a 'very low sense of self-esteem and self-purpose,' along with self-hate." But couldn't you say that about defendants in every criminal courtroom in America? Strong probation methods work, but they require more resources than most county governments are willing to provide, and you can't place it all on the backs of defendants through expensive court fees. These courts are important experiments, but they are not yet scale-able solutions and are unavailable to most veterans who commit crimes.

Asset seizures skyrocketed since turn of century
Total assets seized by Texas law enforcement increased more than 150 percent from 2001 to 2013, according to Right on Crime. At this point, agencies have become reliant on the income in unhealthy and problematic ways. If the interdiction strategy were working, one wonders, wouldn't authorities seize LESS illicit assets over time?

LWOP for illegal immigrants makes no cost-benefit sense
Here's a legislative proposal that would cost a small fortune with little public safety benefit to show for it: Authorizing life without parole for first-degree felonies committed by illegal immigrants. Life without parole didn't exist in Texas until 2005, when death penalty abolitionists made a deal with the devil, creating the new punishment as the sole alternative available to their clients in death-penalty cases. IMO that legislation threw their clients under the bus. Since then, we've seen hundreds of people sentenced to LWOP while death sentnences dropped. But LWOP is also a death sentence, just in slow motion. Next we had people wanting LWOP for sex offenders, then for sex traffickers, and not for illegal immigrants. There's no public safety argument for this policy and the cost-benefit analysis cannot stand up to scrutiny. This is just pandering to nativist sentiments in a crass and ham-handed way. One hopes cooler, wiser, and more cost-conscious heads will prevail as the bill is considered at the Lege.

1033 program: Not as free as 'free' sounds
Lots of Texas agencies got "free" personnel carriers through the Pentagon's 1033 program, but the Texas Public Policy Foundation points out that that statement masks significant costs to locals from operating the vehicles.

CAN-DO Clemency
Grits was interested to learn of the CAN-DO Foundation, which stands for Clemency for All Nonviolent Drug Offenders. As folks push Obama to maximize his use of clemency on his way out the door,  it's worth mentioning there's still time for him to posthumously pardon the writer O. Henry, as this blog along with Pete Ruckman has long advocated.

Locked up for the holidays
In an item titled, "Locked up for the holidays," the Pew Charitable Trusts' Stateline site examined the impact of the holiday season on inmates and their families and charity work aimed at supporting both.

Texas Voices v. small towns; CLEAT v. Governor, Lawyers v. client, and other stories

Here are a few short tidbits while your correspondent's attention is focused elsewhere:

Texas Voices may litigate to overturn illegal small-town sex-offender residency restrictions
See bloggerly coverage of possible litigation by Texas Voices for Reason and Justice to repeal municipal sex offender residency restrictions in 46 small municipalities which are not legally authorized to impose them. See an announcement from Texas Voices leader Mary Sue Molnar, who's done a great job with her team building the group from scratch and giving it a credible presence at the Legislature. Legal action would kick their work up a few notches. Good for them. I'm proud of you, Mary Sue, keep up the great work!

Wrong question about lawyers refusing to help death-row client
At the American Constitution Society blog, Brandon Garrett poses the question, "Can a Lawyer Oppose His Client's Plea to Live?" In Texas, we know the answer to that question is clearly, obviously, and incontrovertibly, "Yes." The real questions are, "Does that make said lawyer an asshole?," and "Will the lawyers' peers at the state bar tolerate such behavior as acceptable?" Grits believes the answers to those questions are also "Yes," and "Yes." I'm kind of pissed at the defense bar right now. They're not very good at policing their own, Mark Bennett's on-point blog screeds notwithstanding. See the latest on the case from the Texas Tribune and coverage from The New Yorker.

CLEAT adopting Alinskyite attack tactics vs. governor
Fascinating. Our Alinskyite friends at the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas (CLEAT) are mad at Governor Greg Abbott, reported the Dallas News' Brandi Grissom, because he "appointed Josh McGee, a vice president at the Houston-based Laura and John Arnold Foundation, to the State Pension Review Board this week.The review board, created by the state legislature, is charged with overseeing state and local government retirement systems. McGee has penned articles warning of financial ruin cities could face because of mismanaged pensions." CLEAT, naturally, has adopted a Chicken Little stance, pronouncing that the end of the world is nigh and the Governor has sold them out. That didn't take long!

Anthony Graves hagiography
Check out a sweet little profile of exoneree and Houston crime-lab board member Anthony Graves at Houstonia. I'd vote for him. What's he running for, again?

Well, probably not the only one
"The Real Problem With Police Video" Should police control the footage?

Apologia obscures accountability on Sandra Bland death
Read the Austin Statesman's Ken Herman on "What white people think about Sandra Bland" "Cops hands not bloodless but Sandra Bland not murdered." For the record, Grits never thought she was murdered. But I do think, as Herman finally acknowledged near the end of his column, that "Law enforcement’s mishandling of this case led directly to Bland’s death." And I wish law enforcement and their apologists spent as much time focusing on that fact as they do debunking an emotional statement to the media by Bland's family in the immediate aftermath of her passing. Sandra Bland wasn't murdered. So what? If "Law enforcement’s mishandling of this case led directly to Bland’s death," what will be done to impose accountability and ensure similar "mishandling" won't recur in the future? Why isn't that the focus of MSM opiners?

On the consequences of locking up Mom
Researchers at Sam Houston State are studying whether having an incarcerated mother contributes to criminality among adult offspring. The not-shocking answer from a longitudinal study is "yes."

Obligatory feel-good seasonal story: TDCJ inmates fixing up bikes for kids

See the Houston Chronicle's coverage.

MORE: And the obligatory holiday-themed crime, via the Bryan-College Station Eagle.

Inmates reading to kids long distance

I noticed a story the other day from another state about inmates recording books for their children and grandchildren. Reported AP:

A new program at the Dodge County Jail gives inmates who are parents a chance to stay connected with their children.

Much like a recordable greeting card, the inmates can purchase a recordable book, read it to their children, then ship it off to them. Jail programs director Aaron Ellis came up with the idea. Ellis says the inmates are incarcerated because of something they've done wrong, not their children. So, it's important they stay connected.

Inmate Dan Wiard recorded a book for his 13-month-old daughter. Wiard says that when his daughter visits the jail, his voice is known to her and she recognizes him.

Ellis tells the Beaver Dam Daily Citizen that feedback has been positive and that inmates are already asking about books for the holiday season.

It turns out there's a similar program at some Texas women's units. A young child I know whose grandmother is in a Texas prison recently received such a book, in which the grandmother's voice reads the words as the kid turns the pages. I thought that was a cool idea.

For more detail check out the Women's Storybook Project. Go here to see at which TX units the program is offered.

Are handcuffs included in shackling ban for pregnant jail inmates?

Last month the ACLU of Texas and the Texas Jail Project published a joint report titled "Implementation of Laws Regarding Treatment of Pregnant Women in Texas County Jails: A Review of the Shackling Ban and Pregnant Inmate Care Standards" (pdf). Says the introduction, "According to numbers reported by county jails to the Texas Commission on Jail Standards (TCJS), 554 pregnant inmates were held in jails on June 1, 2010, when this research was conducted. Of these, 175, or slightly over 30 percent, were housed in the six largest jails. Our report therefore gives a clear picture of treatment received by nearly a third of the pregnant jail inmates in Texas and identifies problems that may be present in the other 239 facilities under the purview of TCJS."

Says the report, some jails, including Dallas, don't interpret the shackling ban to include handcuffs. Most others do, as do the groups authoring the report. (The relevant portion of the statute declares that “a municipal or county jail may not use restraints to control the movement of a pregnant woman in the custody of the jail at any time during which the woman is in labor or delivery or recovery from delivery.”)

In addition, the authors found "widely varying standards for prenatal nutrition among jails," with Harris County, for example, allotting pregnant inmates 40% fewer calories than in El Paso. An appendix to the report (pdf) includes petitions for TCJS rulemaking to establish more rigorous standards of care for pregnant Texas jail inmates.

As of July 1, according to another appendix, there were 509 pregnant women in Texas jails.

Pew: Incarceration reduces employment, long-term economic growth

A new study from the Pew Charitable Trusts quantifies a lamentable trend that's retarding the economy and employment for millions of Americans: Incarceration strongly correlates to reduced employment and long-term earnings. What's more, the economic harms from imprisonment extend to inmates' children. Here's a remarkable excerpt from Pew's press release:

Incarceration reduces former inmates’ earnings by 40 percent and limits their future economic mobility, according to a new Pew report, Collateral Costs: Incarceration’s Effect on Economic Mobility. This is a growing challenge now that 1 in every 28 children in America has a parent behind bars, up from 1 in 125 just 25 years ago.

“People who break the law need to be held accountable and pay their debt to society,” said Adam Gelb, director of the Public Safety Performance Project of the Pew Center on the States. “At the same time, the collateral costs of locking up 2.3 million people are piling higher and higher. Corrections is the second fastest growing state budget category, and state leaders from both parties are now finding that there are research-based strategies for low-risk offenders that can reduce crime at far less cost than prison.”

The report authored by Pew’s Economic Policy Group and the Pew Center on the States shows that:

• Before being incarcerated, two-thirds of male inmates were employed and more than half were the primary source of financial support for their children. 
• After release, former male inmates work nine fewer weeks annually and take home 40 percent less in annual earnings, making $23,500 instead of $39,100. That amounts to an expected earnings loss of nearly $179,000 through age 48 for men who have been incarcerated.
• Of former inmates who were in the bottom of the earnings distribution in 1986, two-thirds remained there in 2006, twice the number of non-incarcerated men.

“Pew’s past research shows a variety of factors influence economic mobility both within a person’s lifetime and across generations. This report finds that incarceration is a powerful determinant of mobility for both former inmates and their children,” said Scott Winship, research manager of the Economic Mobility Project of Pew’s Economic Policy Group.

Incarceration’s long-term economic repercussions are felt by increasing numbers of families and communities now that 2.3 million Americans are behind bars, equaling 1 in 100 adults. Up from 500,000 in 1980, this marks more than a 300 percent increase in the United States’ incarcerated population.

Collateral Costs details the concentration of incarceration among men, the young, the uneducated and African Americans. One in 87 working-aged white men is in prison or jail compared with 1 in 36 Hispanic men and 1 in 12 African American men. Today, more African American men aged 20 to 34 without a high school diploma or GED are behind bars (37 percent) than are employed (26 percent).

The report also shows more than 2.7 million minor children now have a parent behind bars, or 1 in every 28.  For African American children the number is 1 in 9, a rate that has more than quadrupled in the past 25 years.