Deep in the Weeds: Sandra-Bland data provides first-ever detail on scope of arrests, searches at Texas traffic stops

For reasons Grits fails to understand, neither reporters, academics, nor independent researchers have mined Texas' extensive "racial profiling" dataset extensively, though it's one of the most robust quantitative treasure troves of data on police-traffic stops of which I'm aware, anywhere. To a large extent, new data reported after 2017's Sandra Bland Act (we were given data collection in lieu of a policy ban on Class C arrests) gave us a big-picture overview of what goes on at Texas traffic stops for the first time at a level of detail even experts hadn't seen before.

Your correspondent needed to pull some data this morning for other purposes, so let's dump some interesting, previously un-reported tidbits here.

The Scope of Texas Traffic Enforcement

In 2019, Texas law enforcement officers reported making 9.7 million traffic stops in racial profiling reports submitted to the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement.

About 3.9 million of those stops, roughly 40%, resulted in citations. (For reasons no one fully understands, citation totals have been falling for more than a decade.)

Agencies reported someone was arrested at 306,962 stops, or at 3.2% of all traffic stops in 2019.*

A majority of those arrests (168,951) related to penal-code violations. In many cases, officers discovered contraband that triggered these arrests. Seventy percent of all contraband found was drugs or drug paraphernalia.

Avoidable Arrests

Roughly a quarter of arrests at traffic stops (73,911) were for outstanding warrants. These are folks truly suffering from the Debtors Prison Blues:

In addition, 21% of arrests at traffic stops were for Class C misdemeanors (64,100), mostly moving violations and a few arrests for breaking municipal ordinances. These are the arrests that would be eliminated under the George Floyd Act (and should have already been eliminated: similar language was pulled out of the Sandra Bland Act before it passed in 2017). Here's a breakdown of arrests by type:

Police reported using force at .6% of stops, or 60,034 total times in 2019, but use-of-force rates by department varied widely.

Why Do We Search?

In aggregate, Texas cops conducted searches at about one in 20 traffic stops statewide (5.1%), discovering contraband a bit more than a third of the time (34.5% of searches resulted in contraband "hits."). Roughly a quarter of all traffic-stop searches in 2019 (26%) were conducted based on "consent searches" in which the driver gave the officer consent to search. Another 35.8% happened because the officer observed probable cause; and about a third were "inventory searches" or "searches incident to arrest."

This data from the Sandra Bland Act casts new light on what previously was a largely opaque process illuminated only occasionally and momentarily by the release of bodycam video or civil litigation. But the plural of anecdote isn't "data" and until recently, we didn't have department-level numbers to provide insight into local, much less statewide traffic-enforcement practices.

Opportunities

As I look at this heretofore-unreported data, it reinforces the key opportunities for decarceral legislation aimed at traffic stops: The Sandra Bland/George Floyd Act language would eliminate 21% of traffic-stop arrests. Reducing the number of warrants under the Omnibase program would shrink another sizable chunk.

Finally, if drugs make up 70% of contraband found, Grits would expect most of that to be marijuana. So drug-related penal-code arrests could also go down when we see 2020 data because of the Great Texas Hemp Hiatus. (Grits would prefer to see marijuana straight-up legalized, but even tamping down arrests via the new hemp law is an improvement over prior practices.)

Traffic stops are a major, front-end driver of county jail admissions. So anything that reduces how often they result in incarceration also reduces pressure on local taxpayers and avoids adding people to the jailhouse petri dish who might be exposed to COVID.

The newest round of "Sandra Bland" data comes out March 1st, and this time, problems with racial categorizations are supposed to have been fixed. So reporters and researchers should mark that date on their calendar (some agencies have already begun to submit) and set aside time for a deeper dive when that information becomes available. There's a lot of good stuff there.

*A handful of small agencies reported that they arrested someone at every traffic stop. This was clearly an error and those agencies' arrest totals were excluded from this calculation.

House committee considering Class C misdemeanor debt, arrests

In lieu of a public hearing (with the capitol still closed off from COVID), the Texas House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee announced it would accept written testimony regarding its Interim Charge #2 regarding Class C misdemeanor arrests, debt, and the use of citations in lieu of arrest for certain low-level Class Bs. I prepared testimony for the committee on behalf Just Liberty, check it out here. Here's a notable excerpt framing the situation through data (endnotes in original):

Class C misdemeanors as a whole have declined significantly in recent years, according to the Office of Court Administration’s Annual Statistical Report. Traffic and parking violations declined from 9.1 million in calendar-year 2006 to 5.3 million in 2019 – a 42% reduction. Another 1.1 million people received Class C citations last year. 

Cities vary widely in their reliance on traffic fines for revenue. An item in Forbes a few years ago calculated 2013 per-capita ticket revenue for US cities with more than 250,000 population: In El Paso, the city received $6.16 per capita from these sources; in Houston the per-capita figure was $17.89; Dallas, $32.58; Plano, by contrast, received $43.36 per capita. 

To what extent are Class C misdemeanors driving debtors-prison practices? In 2018, according to an Office of Court Administration data query, 524,628 people satisfied Class C misdemeanor fines and fees through jail credit.

By contrast, despite legislation passed in 2017 to make it easier for judges to waive fines and provide community service options, only 53,773 people had their fines waived for indigency in 2018, and 97,260 avoided fines with partial or full credit for community service.

So more than three times as many people in 2018 sat out their fines in jail compared to those who received indigency-based relief. Not all jail credit is problematic. Many defendants have traffic tickets cleared when they’re jailed for other charges, and this practice should continue.

But annual “warrant roundups” and the practice of arresting drivers with warrants at traffic stops can also snatch people out of their daily lives and incarcerate them until they are able to pay, or accumulate enough jail credit to be released. These practices are abusive toward the poor and should immediately cease.

Among the recommendations:

• Eliminate or reform the Omnibase program suspending driver's licenses for nonpayment of fines and fees.
• Increase the amount of jail credit received to pay off Class C fines from $100 per day to $500 per day.
• Finally pass Sandra Bland legislation limiting arrests for Class C misdemeanors.
• Require citations in lieu of arrests for the seven categories of Class B misdemeanors (including marijuana possession and driving with an invalid license) for which arrests were made optional in 2007.

Texas 'poor farm' history

Just compiling this in one place so I can find it all again. 

The Portal to Texas History has a copy of records from a "Poor Farm" in Travis County from 1890-1900; see 2015 Statesman coverage here. Also, this index of early Travis County Commissioner Court records includes numerous references to the county poor farm. The commissioners court records indexed are here.

See this prior Grits post for more background on Texas poor farms, and this longer, academic analysis from Southwestern Historical Quarterly. 

Here's a 2011 account of poor farms in Anderson County.  In Denton County, the poor farm didn't close until after World War II. Weatherford College leases the old Parker County poor farm for agricultural purposes. Collin County had one in McKinney. Hunt County had one as well. A poor farm operated in Erath County until a tornado destroyed it in 1935. In Grayson County, the poor-farm population was dominated by the mentally infirm.

In Kaufman County, the poor farm "also provided barracks for jail inmates" and once housed an "epidemic camp." It was the last of its kind. The final residents didn't leave that facility until the 1970s.

Anachronistic constitutional language authorizing Texas poor farms was removed from the state constitution in 2017.

What do Greg Abbott, Croatia, the Roman Emperor Hadrian, ancient Hebrews, 6th century Greeks, Hammurabi, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie Sanders all have in common?

"Forgive us our debts, as we forgive our debtors."

- Jesus Christ, The Lord's Prayer

What do Governor Greg Abbott and the GOP-controlled Texas Legislature have in common with Croatia, Rome's openly gay emperor Hadrian, an ancient Hebrew religious celebration, 6th century BC Athenian Greeks, Hammurabi, as well as Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders?

They all implemented (or in the case of the Democratic presidential candidates, want to implement) large debt forgiveness programs that boosted their popularity and helped resolve problems deriving from intractable income inequality.

Starting in Texas, last year the Governor signed legislation to abolish Texas' Driver Responsibility surcharge, eliminating a whopping $2.5 billion in debt for around 1.4 million people, overriding past concerns that doing so would be unfair to those who'd already paid. Governor Abbott has also signed legislation to ban red-light cameras that eliminated penalties for nonpayment of old tickets, not to mention bills to eliminate $1.3 billion in outstanding toll road fines and fees and to pay student loans of peace officers.

But there are all sorts of historical examples of government-funded debt forgiveness programs dating back to the beginnings of government. Hammurabi canceled public debts four times in response to civil unrest, and when he "died in 1749 BC after a reign of 42 years, his successor, Samsuiluna, cancelled all debts to the State, and decreed that all tablets should be destroyed except those concerning traders’ debts."

Famously, in the Bible, "Jubilee" was the term for an ancient, once-every-50-year Jewish tradition celebrated during the first millennium BC in which public debts were forgiven and prisoners and slaves were freed.

In the 6th century BC in Athens, the lawmaker Solon implemented the "Seisachtheia" laws (try saying that three times fast!) which "cancelled all outstanding debts, retroactively emancipated all previously enslaved debtors, reinstated all confiscated serf property ... and forbade the use of personal freedom as collateral in all future debts."

Here are a couple more I heard recently on The History of Rome podcast that Grits began to plow through during my recent surgery recuperation: After defeating Marc Antony in 27 B.C., Octavian (aka, Augustus) burned all debt records from before the battle of Actium, thus wiping out debts prior to the civil war that ended with his ascension to power.

And upon assuming authority after Trajan's death, the Roman emperor Hadrian earned the goodwill of the people by forgiving all public debts, to the amazement and scorn of a disdainful Senate. Despite these spendthrift policies, which also extended to earning the allegiance of the legions through large pay increases, Gibbon recorded that Hadrian's reign constituted "the period in the history of the world during which the condition of the human race was most happy and prosperous."

And of course, there are modern examples besides in Texas. In 2015, Croatia engineered debt forgiveness including debt to banks, telecom and utility operators for its 60,000 poorest citizens in an effort to give them a fresh start.

Now we can add Sanders and Warren's plans to forgive student-loan debts to the list. Although that was the newshook that made me dig up these historical analogies, Grits doesn't want to get too bogged down in the pros and cons of that proposal. I probably agree with it; maybe you don't; this isn't the place to debate why. Obviously, this blog has been far more concerned with eliminating criminal-justice debt, which is something I think about quite a lot.

These massive debt forgiveness campaigns were all, in a sense, unfair to those whose debts weren't forgiven. Certainly, in the examples from ancient Judea and Athens, slave owners surely were unhappy to watch their property walk free. But in the larger scheme of things, these programs were also a) economic boons and b) incredibly popular, generating excitement and loyalty among their beneficiaries and boosting the images of their proponents. Indeed, a cynic might contend these policies were undertaken by politicians simply aiming to ingratiate themselves with the public. (OTOH, if you're someone whose debt was forgiven, who cares?)

Leaving politics aside, though, one could also argue that all these examples were necessary correctives to oppressive government debt policies which were also unfair and ultimately, untenable.

Perhaps student-loan debts should only be the first step toward a long overdue 21st century Jubilee.

Roundup: Debtors prison practices, a hempsplainer, why the Harris DA opposes bail reform, and other stories

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

Debtors Prison Blues
Texas was one of five over-represented states in this Governing magazine feature story on municipalities that get more than 10% of their budgets from traffic fines. Great piece; reminded me of this Marshall Project story. In Texas, the agencies most reliant on traffic fines are primarily in East Texas, and up and down I-35. Long-time readers may recall Grits wrote a theme song for these agencies:

District Attorney opposing Harris County bail settlement

Harris County DA Kim Ogg issued an amicus brief opposing the new bail-reform settlement agreed to by judges and the county.

On the pitfalls of state police patrolling local police beats

Texas DPS this spring began sending troopers to patrol in the Dallas city limits. But when they shot and killed somebody, it turned out they're not as accountable as local cops.

Hempsplainer

The Texas Forensic Science Commission put out an explainer document (a "hempsplainer"?) related to the new requirement that prosecutors prove the THC levels in marijuana to secure a conviction for possession. In related news: Add Amarillo to the jurisdictions where Class B marijuana cases are being dismissed.

Grappling with excessive police-union power

Check out an essay on "The Unjust Power of Police Unions."

On racial stereotyping

Grits found this interview on racial (and other) stereotyping interesting and useful.

Mitigating harm from if-it-bleeds-it-leads crime coverage

For the journalist crowd: "Doing No Harm: The call for crime reporting that does justice to the beat."

Scaling back justice debt biggest #cjreform accomplishment of 2019 #txlege

Texas justice reformers will spend the next couple of years lamenting what the Texas Lege DIDN'T do in 2019 - e.g., reduce marijuana penalties, pass the Sandra Bland law, close the dead-suspect loophole to the Public Information Act - or else frustrated by new criminal penalties boosting sentences for petty offenses.

But it's worth giving legislators credit for what they DID do on #cjreform, and by far the most important measures relate to providing relief from justice-system debt:

Abolishing the Driver Responsibility Surcharge: The Texas Fair Defense Project estimates that $2.5 billion in justice-debt will be wiped off the books on September 1st when HB 2048 takes effect, and some 1.5 million people will be eligible to have their drivers licenses reinstated.

Eliminating red-light cameras: While a few cities have lengthy contracts which will keep red light cameras operating for years to come, the Legislature forbade new ones and eliminated the ability to deny vehicle registration or license renewal for nonpayment. These cameras affect on safety is dubious, at best, and are viewed by locals as revenue generators.

Limited automatic driver's license suspensions: HB 162 would end the practice of searching driver records to suspend licenses of people driving without them. Now, such administrative suspensions based on a government database search will be limited to people whose licenses are suspended for DWI, and those would be limited to 90 days. The Washington Post last year reported that Texas has more people with suspended licenses than any other state. This new law and abolition of the Driver Responsibility surcharge should go a long way toward knocking that number down.

Defined "undue hardship" in debtors prison cases: In 2017, the Texas Lege approved legislation to make it easier for municipal judges and justices of the peace to waive Class C fines and authorize community service. But many local judges had been defining the term "undue hardship" narrowly to avoid waiving fines. Amendments to SB 346 define that term so that more fines will be waived. This was a cleanup bill, but quite necessary: Although more than 50,000 people had fines waived in the 2018, for example, more than ten times that number sat out their Class C fines in jail.

Two of these - surcharge abolition and eliminating red-light cameras - were pushed by reformers for 12 years before finally passing.

Overall, Grits is disappointed with the 86th Texas Lege, and particularly the Texas Senate, which produced scarce little reform legislation of consequence and killed most of what came over from the House. These bills amount to a consolation prize. But as my father likes to say, that's better than a sharp stick in the eye.

Defining an 'undue hardship': Updating last session's debtors-prison reform bill

The Texas House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee on Monday heard HB 465 (White), which is update legislation from debtors-prison reform legislation (HB351/SB1913) passed in 2017. (Attentive readers may recall that, when he laid out HB 351, state Rep. Terry Canales told the committee that the ideas in his legislation originated with a post on this blog!) Despite predictions two years ago that collections would plummet and indigent drivers wouldn't be held accountable, the opposite occurred: collections actually increased when some of the most regressive collections tactics were abandoned.

But the 2017 legislation only made a small dent in the problem. While there was an uptick in fines waived and community service granted, far more people (more than half a million) satisfied their fines through "jail credit" - i.e., they were incarcerated in lieu of payment.

Readers may also recall that, at their state conventions in June, both the Republican Party of Texas and the Texas Democratic Party included provisions in their platforms calling for an end to jailing drivers for non-payment of traffic tickets and other Class C misdemeanor debt, switching to commercial collections methods, instead.

HB 465 does not go that far. (White's HB 2754 comes much closer; more about that bill soon). Rather, HB 465 demands that judges take into account defendants' ability to pay, authorizing them to waive fines or order community service if penalties create an "undue hardship," a phrase which is defined more broadly in the bill than in the past. The changes would bump up usage of fine waivers and community service in lieu of incarceration, but leave the fundamental "pay or we jail you" structure of the system intact for most drivers. Regardless, it's a good bill making important improvements to a regressive, dysfunctional collections process.

Here's a fact sheet from the Texas Fair Defense Project and Texas Appleseed supporting the bill.

Texans incarcerated thousands of years over traffic-ticket debt

In 2018, according to Office of Court Administration data, 524,628 people satisfied Class C misdemeanor fines and fees through jail credit.

By contrast, despite legislation passed in 2017 to make it easier for judges to waive fines and provide community service options, only 53,773 people had their fines waived for indigency in 2018, and 97,260 avoided fines with partial or full credit for community service.

So more than three times as many people last year sat out their fines in jail compared to those who received indigency-based relief. But we know many more people than that struggle to pay traffic fines. Last year, the Federal Reserve estimated that 40 percent of Americans could not pay a surprise $400 bill without borrowing or going into debt.

The OCA provided no data on how long those getting "jail credit" were incarcerated. Grits thinks a reasonable estimated average may be two days. Most people will only be in jail one day, but some will be in much longer, with jail credit satisfying their fines at a statutory rate of $100/day. 

Based on an estimated 2-day average length of stay, Texans spent 2,875 bed years incarcerated for petty Class C tickets in 2018, at a cost of ~$63 million. That's a significant, hidden expense generated by the current system.

There are additional, unintended consequences to jailing hundreds of thousands of people over debt collection: Research shows that cities which rely on low-level fines as revenue sources tend to solve more serious crimes at lower rates.

Regular readers know that, in 2018, both the Republican and Democratic party platforms in Texas called for eliminating arrests for non-payment of Class C misdemeanor debt, using commercial debt collection methods instead. And an Office of Court Administration poll last year found that 2/3 of Texans oppose arresting people who can't pay court debts.

There's nothing sacred about government debt. When Texans can't pay their Visa or cable bill, those companies don't get to incarcerate them until they come up with the money, and neither should the government. Grits expects legislation to be filed soon addressing this populist (and popular) bipartisan priority. That's necessary to prevent more than a half-million Texans from going to jail next year over unpaid Class C misdemeanor debt.

In praise of pretrial-detention algorithms, the 'failure to appear fallacy,' Louisiana ↓ technical revocations, and other stories

Several national items merit Grits readers' attention here during the calm before the 86th Texas Legislature storm.

Debtors-prison reform: Economic populism and the justice system
The New York Times this week published a lengthy, excellent feature on how criminal fines and fees oppress the poor. Good analysis and background.

Best evidence supports use of risk assessments in pretrial release decisions
Some prominent heavyweight corrections researchers responded to criticisms in the press, not to mention by left-wing advocacy groups (I'm talking to you, ACLU of Texas), of risk-assessment algorithms used to aid pretrial detention decisions. One of the authors, Jennifer Skeem, has presented to Texas probation audiences, and is someone whose research Grits has relied on for years. Everyone concerned with the use of risk assessments in pretrial release determination should read this 20-page analysis. They show that the best evidence available - taking into account all the available studies about what works - supports use of risk assessments, which generate better safety outcomes and less unfairness than judges flying by the seat of their pants. The authors document consistent research-based findings that a structured decision making process, in which judges formally take pretrial risk assessments into account, produces the best results. If you care about bail reform, read this. Their analysis more or less coincides with Grits' views, perhaps because mine are to a significant degree influenced by Skeem's scholarship: Racial disparities created by validated risk assessments in pretrial detention decisions (the analysis differs for sentencing, predictive policing, and other risk-assessment uses) are measurably less problematic than disparities and injustices such assessments prevent.

The Failure to Appear Fallacy
A lot goes in to Failure To Appear (FTA) rates, and this extensive article from The Appeal offers one of the the more nuanced looks you'll see on the topic, including a detailed description of how judges in Harris County - most of whom were ousted in the last election cycle - sabotaged bail reform in an effort to artificially drive up FTA rates and use them as a "political football." Excellent background for bail reformers.

Louisiana successfully decreased technical-probation revocations; why can't Texas?
After the Texas Legislature created Intermediate Sanctions Facilities as part of the state's widely lauded 2007 probation reforms, the parole system was able to radically reduce the number of people sent to prison for technical violations. However, the probation system could never accomplish it: half of revoked probationers in Texas were sent away for technical violations, not because they committed a new crime. So I was interested to see the Pew Charitable Trusts researching causes for a big reduction in technical probation violations in Louisiana. The Bayou State was able to reduce the amount of time revoked probationers were incarcerated, reduce the number of revocations for new crimes (read: reduce crime), and save millions of dollars in incarceration costs, Pew found. If they can do it, why can't Texas?

Prisons during shut down
The Marshall Project has the best coverage I've seen of the brutal effects on federal prisons from the government shut down. MORE: From the Washington Post.

Bail injustice worst case
For all of the flaws which may exist in Texas' pretrial-detention system, they're minimal compared to the Philippines, which is the only other nation in the world besides (some states in) the U.S. that uses wealth-based bail to determine pretrial detention. Money quote: “When you are detained in Philippine jails, you are being tortured.”

Texas courts already know how to handle debt without incarceration; now the #txlege should apply those lessons to Class C misdemeanor fines

In a private conversation, a frequent #cjreform opponent recently criticized a proposal endorsed by both the Republican and Democratic Party platforms in Texas to eliminate arrests for non-payment of Class C misdemeanor debt.

"So you're just saying they shouldn't be punished?," our critic wondered, in an exasperated voice. "How is that justice? Should they face no consequence at all?"

We're going to be hearing this argument a lot in the coming months, so let's address it.

First, of course, no one is saying offenders shouldn't be punished. Overwhelmingly, most people who receive traffic tickets just pay them. And states that treat traffic infractions as non-criminal and send the debt to collections have essentially similar payment rates to us here in Texas.

So the question becomes, is it "justice" when a judge assesses debt which cannot be paid but fails to incarcerate the debtor for nonpayment?

Indeed, we need look no further on this question than to the same Texas Justices of the Peace who handle Class C traffic tickets at the county level. Those courts also handle civil claims up to $10,000.

When a defendant loses in small-claims court (it's not called that, anymore, but that's what it is), a JP typically orders monetary payment as judgment.

If the defendant cannot pay, jailing them is not allowed. Instead, plaintiffs must pursue debt collection using other methods, such as liens on property, turnover orders, sending the debt to commercial collections, etc..

We're left to wonder, why is debt to the government somehow such a big deal that it warrants incarceration of those who cannot pay? Clearly, non-carceral methods are sufficient for these same judges to declare "justice" done if the beneficiary of court-declared debt is a person, not the government.

The government has created a double standard to benefit itself. Ethical qualms about the private sector excessively squeezing the poor are routinely ignored in the public sector when it comes to criminal-justice debt, particularly Class C misdemeanor traffic fines.

Locals enjoy wide leeway on these questions and cities' reliance on Class-C-fine debt for revenue varies widely. Though apples-to-apples data is hard to come by, an item in Forbes a couple of years ago calculated 2013 per-capita ticket revenue for US cities with more than 250,000 population: In El Paso, the city received $6.16 per capita from these sources in 2013; in Houston the per-capita figure was $17.89; Dallas, $32.58; Plano, by contrast, received $43.36 per capita. That's all over the map.

Since municipalities which rely more heavily on ticket revenue have lower clearance rates for more serious crimes, no one should aspire to match those higher per-capita totals.

The use of incarceration to punish the poor for non-payment of traffic fines appears flat-out ironic when one considers that wealthier people are more likely to commit traffic offenses. So the class of folks facing the harshest punishments for Class C misdemeanors is also the least culpable. In a nation where 40 percent of the population, according to the Federal Reserve, cannot afford a surprise $400 bill without going into debt or selling something, that makes little sense.

There's nothing sacrosanct about debt to the government, certainly from the point of view of the debtor. From the perspective of the stone, it doesn't matter who wants to squeeze blood from it; none is forthcoming.

Texans think justice system skewed against poor, support end to debtors-prison practices

Stagnant wages and empathy for economic struggles, combined with questions of pragmatism, have caused debtors-prison reform to emerge as a sleeper-hit with the public, judging from recent public-opinion assessments.

Yesterday, Grits cited a new poll which found that "81 percent of Texas registered voters believe the wealthy enjoy substantially better outcomes in the criminal justice than poor and working-class people." That's an overwhelming majority who believe that poor folks aren't treated fairly in the system.

These findings corroborate sentiments documented in a recent statewide survey conducted by the Texas Office of Court Administration:

• Only one third (33%) agree that the average person can afford court costs and filing fees.
• Slightly less than 3 in 10 (29%) agree that Texas courts treat people alike regardless of socio-economic status.
• Two thirds (66%) disapprove of jailing people who owe court costs and filing fees when they cannot afford to pay.

So Texans think average people can't pay court costs, poor people are discriminated against, and the government should stop jailing people who can't pay debt to municipal courts.

Moreover, skewing government priorities toward debt collection has negative implications for public safety. For example, we know that cities that rely heavily on ticket revenue tend to have lower clearance rates on more serious crimes.

It's easy to see why the public thinks justice debt is such a big problem for low-income individuals. Earlier this year, the Federal Reserve estimated that 40 percent of Americans could not pay a surprise $400 bill without borrowing or going into debt. It's easy for municipal-court debt to exceed that amount. And many people owe more than that in delinquent Driver-Responsibility surcharges.

That's why, earlier this year, both Texas state political parties added platform planks advocating to stop jailing people for unpaid traffic ticket debt, instead sending unpaid bills to commercial collections. Roughly half-a-million people sat out traffic ticket debt in jail last year statewide, so that change would help out a lot of folks.

Clearly from these survey data, most Texans believe that jailing people for muni-court debt unfairly harms the poor and needs to stop. We'll find out over the next six months whether the Legislature will embrace this emerging, surprisingly popular view.

Build on momentum to end Texas debtors prison practices

Your correspondent has been openly pleased with the success of Texas' debtors-prison reform legislation from 2017. This will always be one of Grits' favorites because the House bill author, state Rep. Terry Canales, told the Criminal Jurisprudence Committee when he laid out the bill that many of the ideas behind it came from a post on this humble blog.

So I was pleased to see the site Edinburg Politics recently published an extended feature on the legislation, and the Rio Grande Valley legislators who championed it. As Grits had written previously, the legislation has overachieved, actually boosting collections, contrary to predictions by naysayers, most prominently municipal judges, who predicted all sorts of dark and terrible consequences if it were to pass.

But it's worth emphasizing that debtors-prison reform in Texas is a half-done task. The state has taken some of the most comically absurd elements out of its Class-C-fine system, but it's still grinding up hundreds of thousands of Texans every year who are too poor to pay.

According to data presented to the Lege by the Office of Court Administration (which, oddly, is only presented for 11-month blocs, September through July of each year), the total number of warrants issued for Class C misdemeanors, including for failure to appear, declined by 37.5 percent since the 11 months ending July 2015. But in the comparable period ending July 2018, there were still 1.25 million warrants issued!

In addition, the number of arrest warrants issued for failure to pay Class C fines declined over the same period, from about 700,000 in the 11 months ending July 2015 to ~500,000 for the comparable period in 2018.

But half-a-million arrest warrants issued for failure to pay in fine-only offenses is still an amazing number!

The number of people who sit out their fines and fees in jail because they cannot pay has also been in decline. In the 11 months ending July 2015, they totaled 620,491; for the comparable period in 2018, it was 456,220.

That pro-rates to about a half-million people in FY 2018 sitting out their fines in jail - the definition of a 21st century debtors prison.

By contrast, the new provisions installed in HB 351/SB 1913 are still being used sparingly. Judges were given greater authority to waive fines, but the increase from the 11 months ending July 2015 (24,876) to the comparable period in 2018 (44,603) pales in comparison to the number of people sitting out their fines in jail. Even after the reforms, ten times as many people were jailed for justice debt as had it waived.

Similarly, the number of people benefiting from increased access to community service, while not insignificant, was still small potatoes.

So the 2017 legislation was a good start, but it has also served to underscore how far we have to go.

Thankfully, there's strong momentum to build on these reforms. This year in June, both the Republican and Democratic state parties endorsed platform provisions to cease arresting drivers who cannot pay for Class C misdemeanor fines, a measure proposed by state Rep. James White in 2017.

Then, last month, a survey by the Texas Office of Court Administration found that 66% of Texans disapprove of jailing defendants over fines and fees when they cannot pay. And new research has lately emerged showing that cities which rely on low-level fines as revenue sources tend to solve more serious crimes at lower rates.

So entering the 2019 session, legislation to use commercial collections instead of incarceration to enforce Class C misdemeanor debt begins with a genuinely bipartisan pedigree, evidence-based backing, and 2-1 support from the Texan public. It's hard to think of a better-positioned reform bill headed into the session.

For best outcomes, shift focus of justice system away from debt collection

More jurisdictions are recognizing that, when it comes to using the justice system for debt collection instead of, well, justice, the juice isn't worth the squeeze.

After a state Supreme Court Committee criticized New Jersey's municipal courts for serving as an ATM for local governments, the court issued an order which could lead to dismissal of 800,000 old warrants statewide, ceasing enforcement on warrants more than 15 years old.

Texas, it should be noted, has this same problem: Traffic ticket warrants remain active for decades, and people many not even know they still owe money. In Austin, the County Attorney made headlines by having people arrested to collect debt from traffic tickets from the 1980s!

Such examples of overreach have led to a bipartisan backlash: At their state conventions in June, both the Republican Party of Texas and the Texas Democratic Party included provisions in their platforms calling for an end to jailing drivers for non-payment of traffic tickets and other Class C misdemeanor debt, switching to commercial collections methods, instead. So maybe we'll see some movement on that front here.

Meanwhile, in California, Los Angeles County is eliminating $90 million worth of debt owed by families of juvenile defendants who were charged for their own incarceration. Declared an LA County Supervisor (the equivalent of a county commissioner in Texas), “It is simply not worth the cost and effort to the county — and more importantly, not worth the cost to families — to continue with these collection payments.”

Grits isn't sure if there's a juvenile analog to this policy in Texas, but some counties charge indigent adult defendants for their attorneys fees and even incarceration costs, creating the same conundrum for indigent probationers.

Among the reasons the Board of Supervisors took this action:

Research shows that juvenile detention fees impose financial hardships and strain on low-income families and weigh disproportionately on black and Latino youth who are overrepresented in the criminal justice system and are often sentenced to longer terms than white youth. ... 

Research also suggests the fees may increase recidivism. A study of more than 1,000 youth in Pennsylvania found that the total amount of fines, fees and/or restitution significantly increased the likelihood of recidivism within two years, even after controlling for demographics and case characteristics. 

“The two main purposes of the juvenile justice system are to rehabilitate kids and to protect public safety, and it turns out these fees undermine both of those,” said [law professor Jeffrey] Selbin of UC Berkeley.

Grits recently highlighted a new study showing that, when police departments focus on revenue generation through traffic tickets, their skewed priorities result in lower clearance rates for other crimes. It seems likely that the same is true for probation departments: That focusing on fee collection reduces the likelihood that their charges will succeed on probation. The recidivism data cited above from Pennsylvania certainly seems to support that supposition.

FWIW, it's not at all clear that these moves to erase criminal-justice debt will result in less revenue. Debt collection in Texas has remained relatively steady in recent years, even as the number of traffic tickets and warrants issued has plummeted.

Indeed, when Texas reformed Class C sentencing in 2017 to let judges waive fines and sentence people to community service more readily, collections actually improved. IMO that's because local officials weren't spending so much time spinning their wheels pretending to collect un-collectable debt, so could focus on other aspects of their jobs.

The project of shifting the justice system's priorities from debt collection to public safety - which in many ways began with the Justice Department's report on abusive policies around traffic ticket/municipal-court debt in Ferguson, MO - inevitably will be slow and arduous because it involves so many different institutions and decision makers.

But it's beginning to happen, bit by bit, and every time it does, the "sky is falling" predictions of the debt collectors are discredited and public-safety outcomes improve.

Study: When cities rely on ticket revenue, police clearance rates decline

On the latest Reasonably Suspicious podcast, released yesterday, Mandy Marzullo and I discussed a theory suggested by Jay Wachtel that the innocence movement and measures taken to prevent false convictions had contributed to a decline in crime-clearance rates.

Grits wishes I'd read this Washington Post op ed, published online the day we recorded, before that conversation, and perhaps we'll revisit the topic. The authors suggested another provocative, possible cause of low clearance rates: A disproportionate focus by police on revenue generation over public safety.

The writers are academics who recently published a study demonstrating that "Police departments that collect more in fees and fines are less effective at solving crimes." In particular:

Examining nearly 6,000 cities’ finance and crime data for each of the two studied years, we find a strong link between revenue collection and clearance rates. Police departments in cities that collect a greater share of their revenue from fees, fines and civilly forfeited assets have significantly lower rates of solving violent and property crimes. 

We suspect that this comes simply from how these police departments focus their time and resources. Departments that need to collect fee and fine revenue shift their officers away from investigatory work. That’s especially true in smaller cities, where we found an especially clear link: Higher revenue from fees and fines meant fewer violent crimes solved. Cities with smaller departments and fewer resources are less likely to have specialized investigators, so when patrol officers are collecting revenue, they’re not investigating more serious crimes.

How big an effect are we talking about?

Let’s imagine a city of 50,000 people — call it Middletown — where the per capita income, racial demographics, crime rate and similar variables are the same as the state averages. Nationally, on average, municipalities bring in 2 percent of their revenue from fees and fines. If Middletown’s police department collected only about 1 percent of its revenue from fees and fines, our model predicts it would solve 53 percent of its violent crimes and 32 percent of its property crimes. But if Middletown’s police department instead collected 3 percent of its revenue from fees and fines, our model predicts that clearance rates would fall to 41 percent for violent crimes and 16 percent for property crimes. That’s a stark drop of 12 and 16 percentage points, respectively.

In the podcast, Mandy suggested that one viable, alternative theory for low clearance rates might be increased alienation between marginalized communities and law enforcement, and the study authors also framed their findings in that vein:

Some communities have a saying: “The police are never there when you need them and always there when you don’t.” Our findings help explain this adage. In cities where police are collecting revenue, communities are at once overpoliced — because they are charged with more fines and fees — and underpoliced — because serious crimes in their areas are less likely to be solved. 

This dynamic of simultaneous overpolicing and underpolicing reduces the community’s trust in policing and in government more generally. For many citizens, police interactions may be their only contact with any government official. If citizens see the police in particular and the government in general as exploiting them for revenue, they are unlikely to see either as allies in keeping their communities safe. Low clearance rates, especially for violent crimes, reduce public trust in the police and in government as a whole — leading them not to cooperate with either.

A reduction in crimes solved surely is an unintended consequence of municipal revenue generation through ticketing. But just because the costs are borne by crime victims, and not the taxpayers as a whole, doesn't justify government ignoring them.

Notably, at their state conventions in June, both the Republican Party of Texas and the Texas Democratic Party included provisions in their platforms calling for an end to jailing drivers for non-payment of traffic tickets and other Class C misdemeanor debt, using commercial collections methods, instead. This new analysis shows that such a shift in focus may result in more, actual crimes being solved, bolstering the case for reform.

One recalls former Dallas police Chief David Brown suggesting that society calls on law enforcement to handle too many problems. Surely, municipal revenue generation is one of those demands that should be taken off their plate.

Texas #debtorsprison legislation overachieving, even boosted revenue

Texas "debtors prison" legislation last year drew plenty of critics among municipal judges and county officials focused on revenue maximization. Now we know that those criticisms were misplaced and the new law is working even better than anticipated.

At the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee on Thursday, Office of Court Administration Director David Slayton testified for the first time on the results of "debtors prison" legislation passed by the Texas Legislature in 2017. (You can watch his testimony on the bill here beginning at the 1:29:20 mark.)

When the bill was in play last year, county officials and municipal court judges predicted massive drops in revenue, prompting Rep. Andrew Murr to attach an extra fee counties can charge to indigent defendants sentenced to community service, aiming to offset presumed revenue drops.

As it turned out, that was unnecessary. At the Criminal Jurisprudence Committee meeting Thursday, Slayton told the committee the bill had significantly overachieved, including in ways that directly contradict the predictions of revenue-focused critics:

• The number of warrants for failure to appear is declining.
• The number of warrants for failure to pay is also declining.
• The number of cases resolved through jail credit is declining.
• The number of cases resolved through community service is increasing.
• The number of defendants getting on payment plans has increased.
• Collections per case have increased: By 6.7 percent at the local level and 7.3 percent at the state level.

To me, that's a remarkable result! The bill is achieving all of its goals and then some. Meanwhile, every sky-is-falling prediction by critics turned out to be wrong. (MORE [9/10]: Here's a link to the handout with the graphs being described above. See a summary of new provisions affecting collection of fines and fees and another specifically summarizing changes affecting jailable offenses.)

Regular readers may recall that the House sponsor of the legislation, Rep. Terry Canales, attributed the bill to a series of blog posts published on this humble opusculum, so I'm particularly glad to learn it's working out well.

Slayton also mentioned that the Texas Public Policy Foundation and the Brennan Center are doing a joint report on the costs to collect Class C misdemeanor debt that he expects will come out before the 86th legislative session. Grits can't wait!

Texas DPS getting a bum rap over proposed driver-license center closures

The press and politicians around the state are blaming the Texas Department of Public Safety for creating a list of 87 under-utilized rural driver-license centers for possible closure. Many of those centers have just one staff member and/or minuscule traffic.

Lt. Governor Dan Patrick was the latest to weigh in, declaring in a written statement, "I do not support the closing of these DPS offices." "I believe the Senators on the Sunset Committee will also make their voice clear on this next week."

Here's the problem with that statement: DPS only created the list because they were DIRECTED to do so by the Sunset Commission. In its April report (p. 3/p. 11 of the pdf) regarding the agency, one of the Commission's "Key Recommendations" for reducing lines at the license centers was to "Require DPS to develop and implement a plan to close inefficient driver license offices."

The Lt. Governor blamed the problem on drivers who don't renew their licenses online:

Patrick said the biggest problem for DPS license offices is that a majority of people visit them to renew their driver's licenses when they could do so online. He said the department needs to develop a more aggressive plan for educating drivers about renewing online. 

"I will be working in the next legislative session to ensure that DPS has the personnel and equipment needed so drivers can renew their license as quickly and easily as possible," he said. "However, the fastest and best way to significantly cut wait times now is simply to let the thousands of Texans who show up everyday, and don't need to be there, know that they can renew their license online."

But as Grits argued the other day, that critique amounts to blaming drivers for the government's failed systems and the Legislature's chintzy funding decisions. The Customer Service Center which takes phone calls from drivers with license issues is so understaffed that only 20 percent of calls are even answered, and 83 percent of those must wait on hold for 10 minutes or longer before they can speak to a person.

Although Sunset staff didn't address the underlying budgetary question, it's dire, and a huge aspect of drivers' confusion about where and how to renew licenses. According to the most recent DPS Strategic Plan, currently the agency's customer service center (CSC):

receives approximately 24,400 calls per day, but because of limited staff and technology it is only able to answer approximately 4,880 of those calls, 20% of the demand. The CSC is currently only able to answer about 17% of these 4,880 calls within 10 minutes, far below an acceptable customer service level. Customers are forced to call the CSC multiple times to enter the queue to speak with a Customer Service Representative (CSR). Once in the queue, customers must wait an average of 15 minutes before their call is answered.

That's a budget problem created by the Legislature, not a problem with DPS management. Fund the call center and confused drivers would have a way to know how best to engage with the DPS bureaucracy. As things stand, they show up at the driver-license center because there's no other way for them to engage with the agency to understand how to navigate the process.

Even that, though, won't fix the structural problems Grits identified earlier in the week. DPS revokes driver licenses for non-payment of debt about a half a million times per year, and all told 1.7 million people currently have their licenses revoked. That significantly increases the number of people showing up to renew their licenses every year. (California last year had to address the same issue, ceasing use of driver-license suspensions to punish non-payment.)

In the comments to that earlier Grits post, Mary Sue Molnar from Texas Voices added that the insensible requirement for nearly 100,000 sex offenders to renew their licenses annually (separate and apart from existing sex-offender registration requirements) also doesn't help the problem.

In essence, these structural problems with the licensing system mostly stem from driver-license "mission creep" - using them as a form of virtue signalling or debt collection as opposed to a mechanism for ensuring drivers have minimum driving skills and providing valid identification.

The biggest reason DPS isn't doing a better job of "educating drivers" is the legislative decision not to adequately fund the DPS Customer Service Center. But there are also policy changes that would reduce pressure on lines at the DL centers, in addition to public-education campaigns. And I've yet to hear a Texas politician talking about any of them, at least in the context of this debate. (Some of these conversations did begin in the 2017 legislative session, but more in the context of equity, not license-center lines.)

If lawmakers want to make sure the state can afford to give rural people a local driver-license facility, regardless of how infrequently they use it in sparsely populated areas, and also improve customer service for most Texans, then they must: 1) abolish the Driver Responsibility Program, 2) stop debt-related driver-license suspensions and collect debt using private-market best practices, 3) eliminate unnecessary annual renewals for sex offenders (thanks Mary Sue!,) and 4) give DPS the resources it needs to pick up the phone when Texans call their Customer Service Center.

Your correspondent, perhaps unexpectedly, has a lot of sympathy for DPS in this debate. In all of this they're reacting to legislative mandates: from the license suspensions to requiring sex offenders to renew annually to understaffing the Customer Service Centers to compiling a list of license centers for possible closure. They have done exactly what the Legislature asked them to do in each and every instance, and now they are being blamed for following orders.

Exploring areas of #cjreform agreement between Texas Dem and GOP state party platforms

So, the results of Just Liberty's "Justice Needs a Platform" campaign are in and - having adumbrated reform measures in the criminal-justice sections of both the Republican and Democratic Texas state party platforms, including separate podcasts focused on reform planks proposed at each convention - let's take a look at areas where the parties agree.

 Before we do, though, just to get you in the mood, give a listen to Just Liberty's jingle created promote #cjreform in Texas' major-party platforms. (After the last couple of weeks, this ditty has been running through Grits' head near constantly.)

Having now established the proper atmosphere, here are the major areas where agreement between the two parties points to possible #cjreform legislation.

Raise the Age

Both parties agreed that Texas should raise the age at which youth are prosecuted as adults from 17 to 18 years old. Texas is one of only four remaining states that charge 17-year-olds as adults. When a couple of members of the GOP platform committee voiced opposition to the idea, another member I'd never met shut them down with references to brain science and research on child development. It was an impressive moment, because some of my Democratic friends like to claim that the GOP reflexively opposes science. On this topic, though, the platform committee voted pretty overwhelmingly to better align policy with scientific thought. The Texas House has twice now passed measures to make this change, with the Lt. Governor and the senate so far blocking it. Such explicit, bipartisan support could be a game changer.

Marijuana policy
Here's an irony: At the Texas Legislature, the only person ever to propose marijuana legalization was Republican state Rep. David Simpson, who wanted to "treat it like tomatoes." The furthest a Democrat has gone is state Rep. Joe Moody's bill proposed the last two sessions to make pot possession a civil offense punishable with a ticket. In the party platforms, though, those positions are reversed. Democrats favor full-blown marijuana legalization (they're already spending the tax money!), while Republicans essentially endorsed Moody's bill: "We support a change in the law to make it a civil, and not a criminal, offense for legal adults only to possess one ounce or less of marijuana for personal use, punishable by a fine of up to $100, but without jail time." On this topic, Just Liberty followed the lead of the indispensable Heather Fazio from Texans for Responsible Marijuana Policy, who has been pushing for these platform planks since 2014. The GOP also approved a platform plank promoting expanding the use of medical marijuana to more ailments and called on Congress to change it from a Schedule 1 to a Schedule 2 drug. (Your correspondent isn't completely clear on the difference, but as I understand it the change would allow more medical research.)

Cease arrests for Class C misdemeanors
Both Texas state political parties included platform planks suggesting law enforcement should stop arresting people for Class C misdemeanors for which the punishment is only a fine, not jail time. On the GOP side, the plank read simply, "We call upon the Texas Legislature to end the practice of jailing individuals for offenses for which jail is not an allowable consequence under the law." (Under Texas law, those are Class C misdemeanors; Class Bs are punishable by up to 6 months in jail.) The Democratic version calls for, "legislation that requires people suspected of minor, non-violent misdemeanors be issued summons to appear in court rather than placed under arrest," and ending "the practice of arresting individuals for offenses that call for a citation." Sandra Bland's case was prominently discussed in both party's discussions on these planks. Readers may recall that a similar provision was removed from the "Sandra Bland Act" passed in 2017. During debates over that bill, it came out that a whopping 11 percent of all arrests in Harris County are for Class C misdemeanors, a proportion possibly boosted because of intake screening practices by the Harris County DA. State Reps James White and Garnet Coleman filed legislation to make this change last time, along with Senators John Whitmire and Konni Burton. This could be a bipartisan bill that comes back and passes.

Eliminate the Driver Responsibility Program
For the first time, planks calling to get rid of Texas' Driver Responsibility Program made it into both party platforms. The GOP platform reads, "We call upon the Texas Legislature to abolish the Driver Responsibility Program and immediately restore the driver licenses of the citizens whose licenses were suspended by the DRP and to cancel their debt." Sounds good to me, how about you? Democrats, by contrast, focused on the issue in the health care section, calling for "stabilizing trauma center funding by repealing the Driver Responsibility Program fees, which many Texans cannot afford and never pay, and replacing the funding other budgetary means."

Require criminal conviction to seize assets
Both parties endorsed eliminating civil asset forfeiture, requiring a criminal conviction beyond a reasonable doubt before the government can seize someone's property. This issue seemed to have momentum in 2017, but was mainly pushed by conservatives and embraced by Republicans. Its inclusion in the Democratic platform may help to give it a little extra bipartisan oomph.

Require written or recorded consent for roadside searches
Both parties endorsed legislation to require officers to get written consent to search a motor vehicle if they don't have probable cause and consent is not recorded by a body-or-dashboard-camera. Essentially similar legislation passed in 2001 and was vetoed by then-Gov. Perry, who also vetoed weaker legislation on the same topic in 2005. Now, with a different governor and bipartisan support, this common-sense policy may have new legs. Honestly, in the wake of the Sandra Bland episode and given the broad-and-deep array of 21st century police reform proposals our there, this idea that seemed (and was) controversial back in 2001 today looks almost like a no-brainer and relatively small potatoes. The proliferation of cameras - both police cameras and the public's - certainly has altered the terms of debate on the topic. But accountability at roadside searches remains important and this is still a good idea.

Militarization of police
Both platforms suggested restricting militarization of police through the federal government's 1033 program that provides military surplus equipment to domestic, civilian law enforcement agencies. The Democrats want to "reject" the "continued receipt" of such equipment. The GOP platform called for transparency including new "reporting and training standards" and a requirement that the governing body of any law enforcement agency formally vote to accept 1033 program equipment. Transparency is always helpful, and "training" may get to an Achilles heel of the program: Many local agencies don't have personnel trained on specialized military equipment they receive, so it falls into disuse. If agencies must report what they have, demonstrate that they're training on the equipment they get, and submit 1033-equipment requests to their city council or commissioners court, that would eliminate a lot of the BS.

End debtors prisons
This one may be my personal favorite: Remarkably, both parties embraced a reform that would essentially eliminate the use of debtors-prison practices for most criminal-justice related debt, relying on regular commercial collections processes, instead, and essentially ending "warrant roundup" practices. The GOP platform called for the Lege to "enact laws that end the incarceration of individuals because they cannot pay tickets, fines, and fees for Class C Misdemeanors, including traffic." The Democrats wouldn't limit the idea to Class Cs: They supported, "ending the practice of sending poor people to jail or prison for inability to pay fines and court costs." Between those two stances, there's definitely enough overlap to get a bill passed. House Corrections Chairman James White, an East Texas Republican, filed essentially this legislation last session. (Thanks to former House Corrections Chairman Jerry Madden for making sure it got into the platform on the GOP side.)

* * *

Those are the major areas where #cjreform platform planks for Texas' two major political parties include overlap. There are still areas of disagreement, certainly (e.g., they're diametrically opposed on capital punishment), and the Democratic platform articulates a more aggressive reform agenda than does the GOP on more topics (e.g., Dems want to make crime labs independent, and explicitly called to "reduce mass incarceration" and "end racial profiling.") But there are enough spheres of concurrence to identify areas primed for major, bipartisan legislative pushes with a good chance to succeed.

To be clear, party platforms typically aren't decisive in legislative votes. Most #cjreform bills that ever passed in Texas since the turn of the century weren't included in either party's platform document. But as markers for where the two parties stand on the issues, these common threads certainly point to practical possibilities for bipartisan collaboration. That, plus identifying allies in both parties willing to join us in pushing these reforms, really were all Just Liberty could ask for from this campaign.

#cjreform in the Texas GOP 2018 party platform

Grits is back from the Texas state GOP convention in San Antonio, where Just Liberty had a booth from which we promoted a number of criminal-justice reform planks in the party platform. Delegates approved quite a few #cjreform items worthy of readers' attention:

• Raise the Age. Calls on the Lege to raise the age of adult criminal culpability from 17 to 18.
• End debtors prisons. The party wants to "end the incarceration of individuals because they cannot pay tickets, fines, and fees for Class C misdemeanors, including traffic citations."
• Abolition of the Driver Responsibility Program. Includes a call to "immediately restore the driver licenses of the citizens whose licenses were suspended by the DRP and to cancel their debt."
• Quicker processing of rape kits. The party wants crime labs sufficiently funded to reduce rape-kit processing times to 90 days.
• Opposition to warrantless government surveillance. Two planks on this, one with general wording, and one calling on the Legislature to require a warrant for the government to access cell-phone location data.
• Civil penalty for pot possession. The party endorsed reducing penalties for low-level marijuana possession from a Class B misdemeanor to a civil offense (essentially, a $100 ticket).
• Remove cannabis from list of Schedule 1 drugs. This was a plank aimed at Congress.
• Medical marijuana. The party wants to "allow doctors to determine the appropriate use of cannabis for certified patients."
• Militarization of police. Calls for "reporting and training standards" for military equipment obtained by police from the federal 1033 program, as well as a requirement that the elected governing body approve any application to the program with a formal vote.
• Indigent defense. Calls on the Legislature to fully fund indigent criminal defense.

Moreover, several items that were in the 2016 platform made it in again:

• No arrests for Class C misdemeanors (except when necessary to prevent family violence)
• Require a criminal conviction for asset forfeiture
• Eliminate red-light cameras and other photo-enforcement systems

Notably, the "Criminal and Civil Justice" section of the state GOP platform included a requisite appreciation of law enforcement, but with caveats:

We express our gratitude and appreciation for police officers, first responders, armed forces, and veterans. And furthermore we support local law enforcement agencies and associated personnel to the extent local and state police officers are properly and adequately trained and supervised or otherwise internally and individually held accountable for any conduct which is found to violate state law or the Texas State Constitution.

There were a few #cjreform items that didn't make it in, but overall that was a successful effort. Check out Just Liberty's special, hour-long podcast interviewing conservative leaders on various #cjreform platform planks being proposed.

* * *

A few thoughts on the process:

Historically, party platforms don't carry tremendous influence during the legislative session. The dizzying array of suggestions and demands can be overwhelming. No one can agree with all of it, which in a strange way frees legislators from an obligation to agree with any of it.

But the Texas GOP under the James-Dickey regime has been promoting their platform more vigorously. E.g., failure to comply with the platform was the pretext for censuring House Speaker Joe Straus. And there were failed attempts at the convention to censure sitting officials like state Rep. Byron Cook and U.S. Sen. John Cornyn for failing to abide by the platform's principles. Especially on the GOP side, politicians are being called to account more than any time in recent memory over fealty to the platform. (Correction: Rep. Byron Cook, a commenter corrected me, ultimately was censured on a re-vote.)

At the same time, many delegates expressed deep dissatisfaction with the platform overall, which is a bit of a jumbled mess, in places, and is too long for any normal person to ever sit down and read. While this wasn't my first convention, I'd never seen the platform process up close. Those 31 volunteer committee members go through a grueling and thankless experience, working late into the evenings (read: missing all the parties), with very little time to investigate any issue closely. (Note to the state party: Next time, feed those people and give them coffee!) By the end, they were all exhausted. That didn't seem like a reasonable thing to expect human beings to endure. And they all paid to be there!

On culture-war issues, the platform takes some extreme stances that appear to flaunt a basic commitment to the rule of law. E.g., it calls on the Legislature to "reject" the Supreme Court's ruling allowing same-sex marriages, and to "ignore and refuse to enforce any and all federal statutes, regulations, executive orders, and court rulings" on pro-life issues.

Can we be frank? It's difficult to reconcile the extremist devotion to the Constitution expressed by so many party loyalists with a legislative priority to "ignore and refuse to enforce" federal laws and Supreme Court rulings on pro-life stuff. Since every Texas elected official takes an oath to uphold and defend the "Constitution and laws of the United States," that clause in the legislative priorities almost screams to elected officials, "You don't have to follow this!"

But that's the culture war. For the criminal-justice issues Just Liberty cares about, the platform signals to GOP legislators that a #cjreform vote on these topics is a "safe" one.

In addition, in an interesting and useful way, the process of promoting reform planks through all the various senate districts was like a massive focus group getting feedback on our issues. Even better: It introduced us to hundreds of supporters across Texas whom we now can contact and help plug into the process when the legislative session rolls around. If delegates who supported these ideas in San Antonio continue to participate next spring, it will help all these bills move forward.

I appreciated everyone who helped promote Just-Liberty-endorsed planks and who helped us navigate the party processes. Thank you! We had a lot of fun this week.

Finally, just for kicks, if you haven't heard our little platform campaign jingle (which means you're not a podcast listener or following Just Liberty's Facebook page), give it a listen. It's been running through Grits' head all morning.

Special Reasonably Suspicious podcast: Conservative leaders promote #cjreform planks in Texas state GOP platform

Want to better understand the reasons why prominent conservatives in Texas are embracing justice-reform policies? You won't find a better primer on conservative justice-reform principles than Just Liberty's special, hour-long podcast aimed at promoting #cjreform planks in the party platform at the 2018 Texas state GOP convention. Check it out:

This special episode includes original music and interviews with:

• Dr. Derek Cohen, Director of Right on Crime
• John Baucum, Chairman Emeritus, Texas Young Republican Federation
• Charles Blain, Executive Director of the Restore Justice Project, Empower Texans
• Jason Isaac, President of the Conservative Coalition Research Institute
• Heather Fazio, Campaign for Responsible Marijuana Policy
• David Safavian, American Conservative Union Foundation

Enjoy!

Find a transcript of this special episode below the jump.

Cowtown bucks Great Texas Warrant Roundup

Fort Worth may be the first Texas city to pull out of the so-called "Great Texas Warrant Roundup," according to a report in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram:

now the City of Fort Worth Municipal Court has decided it wants to save you from an embarrassing arrest by bucking the aggressive roundup approach for a more neighborly discourse that it also believes will prove to be more productive. 

"We're calling it Warrant Forgiveness Month,” Municipal Court Director Theresa Ewing said. 

No, it's not wiping the slate for those with Class C warrants, however this new "Court in the Community" initiative — a mobile courthouse coming to a part of town near you — does guarantee an arrest-free encounter while meeting with a municipal judge to arrange a payment plan (or even swapping fines for community service) to make that burdensome warrant a thing of the past. 

The program began to take shape after last year’s Convoy of Hope event at Southwest High School. The Municipal Court was invited to set up a mobile unit, and the people came. Ewing said 87 people were able to rid themselves of warrants by working out a payment plan.

That's what it looks like when government seeks to enforce these petty laws for the public good instead of mere rent seeking motivations. Nobody's getting off the hook, but neither is the focus on a "roundup," as though poor people with unpaid traffic tickets were so many bovine to be punched by armed-and-badged cowboys participating in a human cattle drive.

If this were happening Austin or even Dallas, one might write it off to Democratic officials setting more liberal policies. But that's not what's going on here. "Cowtown" is Trump country, and them dropping the "warrant roundup" may inspire other Texas jurisdictions to follow their lead.

Grits wishes every Texas legislator and staffer, much less every JP, muni court judge and city council person, would read these stories from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram about why Fort Worth, a GOP bastion, stopped issuing arrest warrants for most unpaid Class C misdemeanor violations:

• Fort Worth bucks Great Warrant Roundup for kinder approach
• Warrants, jail, and job loss: How unpaid tickets can unravel your life

That second story in particular is a must-read. Add in the Driver Responsibility surcharge on top of the warrants described, and unpaid traffic tickets can become an insurmountable mess.

There has been some legislative push to get at these issues, like SB 1913 from 2017 which eliminated some of the more egregious practices for squeezing blood from stones. But firmer measures like House Corrections Committee Chairman James White's bill to eliminate arrests for traffic ticket debt outright didn't make it through.

Fort Worth's example shows those stronger approaches are workable and should be revisited. We haven't jailed poor people for private debt in America for more than 180 years, and in the 21st century, there's no good excuse for jailing them for traffic-ticket debt, either.