Showing posts with label fines. Show all posts
Showing posts with label fines. Show all posts

Wednesday, February 12, 2020

What the jury didn't hear, against SWAT raids for routine search warrants, bail explainers, courthouse architecture, and other stories

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

Margaret Moore, Rosa Jimenez, and what the jury didn't hear
Weird comments from Travis County DA Margaret Moore on the Rosa Jimenez case in The Appeal: “There is an ultimate fact question that was resolved by the 12 men and women who actually saw all the evidence and heard opinion testimony,” Moore told The Appeal. “Everything after that is opinion by people who were not in that courtroom.” But here's the thing: The reason four judges have now said Jimenez is likely innocent and should be released is that the jury heard false, un-rebutted expert testimony that biased their view. When judges looked at all the same evidence, and also evidence to which the jury wasn't privy rebutting junk science in the case, they said Rosa didn't do it. So jurors didn't consider all the evidence. That seems disingenuous. (See prior Grits coverage, and listen to a segment on the case on the latest Reasonably Suspicious podcast, plus coverage from a Travis DA Democratic candidates forum over the weekend.)

Use of SWAT raids for routine search warrants creates needless risk
The practice of using SWAT tactics to execute routine search warrants continues to result in unnecessary deaths. A Waller County man was killed in a SWAT raid by police who wanted to seize a computer (someone else's) over alleged possession of child pornography. Can it really require a no-knock raid to seize a computer? This was unnecessary; the man's death was much more a predictable policy failure than it was an accident.

Fewer inmates beaten up more often at TDCJ
Recent inmate deaths at the hands of guards in Texas prisons highlights that use of force by staff has increased dramatically in recent years, reported the Texas Tribune, even as the number of inmates supervised declined and eight prison units closed.

Whistleblower gaining momentum in Sheriff's race
Liz Donegan, the Austin PD whistleblower who was removed as head of that agency's Sex Crimes unit because she wouldn't improperly classify cases as "cleared," is now running for Travis County Sheriff and, remarkably, earned the Austin Statesman's endorsement. Although Donegan was removed from her Sex Crimes post during Chief Art Acevedo's tenure, current Chief Bryan Manley earned ownership of the topic by blaming data errors on victims when the story came out. Him having her as a Sheriff-to-Chief peer would be deliciously awkward.

Bail explainers
Egged on by police, the Dallas Morning News has been blaming Dallas County DA John Creuzot for failures in the legacy bail system. But when they tried to do that in front of the City Council, staff gave everyone a primer on who is in charge of setting bail in Texas: Judges, not prosecutors. In Harris County, a judge demanded an explanation from prosecutors on why they blamed her in the press for a violent criminal's release when they'd never informed her of the details. Meanwhile, at the Paris News (TX, not France), a local reporter offered better explanatory coverage of the bail system than the Dallas News has yet.

Travis County judges dip toes in bail-reform waters
Travis County judges are saying they want to implement bail reform, including requiring defense attorneys at magistration, despite opposition from Travis County DA Margaret Moore. But the Texas Fair Defense Project and their allies say there would still be too much delay before release under the new proposal, and called for changes to the draft. Still, judges taking leadership on this is heartening news. They'd mostly dug in their heels before now.

No extra prosecutors for you, Kim Ogg
For the Harris County Commissioners Court, turning down District Attorney Kim Ogg when she asks for more prosecutors has become habit forming.

Houston crime lab to use disputed DNA mixture software
The Houston Forensic Science Center has begun using STR-Mix software for analyzing DNA mixture evidence. But last fall, a federal district judge in Michigan excluded such software from evidence after a "Daubert" hearing. DNA mixture analyses have been fraught with error for many years. Under the Michigan judge's ruling, based on recommendations from President Obama's forensics commission, STR-Mix software may be used when a) there are no more than three contributors and b) when DNA from the target makes up at least 20 percent of the sample. No word if HFSC intends to abide by those limitations.

Cherry picking data for scary headlines
The Austin Statesman issued a story with the headline: "Violent crimes with homeless suspects, victims went up in 2019, data show." The big news was that reported violent-crime incidents in the city increased by one percent last year, with a small increase attributable to the city's homeless population. What they didn't say was that Austin's population has been growing by 2-3% annually, so the rate likely decreased! Austinites were less likely to be victimized by violent crime last year than the year before. Why wasn't that the headline?

Defending Austin's federal courthouse architecture
The Department of Justice wants all federal courthouses to look like Roman temples and specifically criticized Austin's federal courthouse as an example of what they don't want. But I really like the federal courthouse in Austin. I was there recently for a hearing in the Rosa Jimenez case, then later to retrieve audio from the clerk. It's incredibly well-designed, with much more natural light and customer-friendly arrangement than most of them. Here's more on the Austin courthouse's architectural approach.

Fines and fees
Two essays on fines and fees for you:
'Doing justice isn't left, it's right'
The Texas Public Policy Foundation's Marc Levin thinks progressive prosecutors are mis-labeled.

Wednesday, January 23, 2019

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.

Monday, December 03, 2018

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.

Wednesday, September 26, 2018

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.

Wednesday, August 01, 2018

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Thursday, May 18, 2017

On the pitfalls of current Driver Responsibility 'repeal' legislation

Legislation to "repeal" the so-called "Driver Responsibility Program" hardly seems like much of a repeal. The "civil" surcharges are mostly shifted into criminal penalties and $20 is added to traffic tickets, all so the amount given to hospitals can INCREASE substantially.

This is the hospitals' "solution" and it's no solution at all. It just recreates the same structural flaws - with some even worse aspects - in the criminal code instead of making it a separate civil surcharge. Politically, they and legislators pushing this approach have refused to accept ameliorating amendments and have turned the bill into an enormous money grab on the backs of indigent Texas drivers.

If Texas were in a budget year with a little black ink around the edges, the better solution would be just to pay for hospitals out of general revenue, perhaps recouping a fraction of the border security money being wasted on DPS to pay for pointless extra patrol time in the Rio Grande Valley. But during a budget crunch, legislators chose to double down on the DRP's inappropriate mulcting of funds from driving infractions to pay for trauma care. That to me makes the bill only barely tolerable, on the best of days.

Some have encouraged your correspondent not to throw the baby out with the bathwater on this, but I'm on the fence - this is an awfully ugly baby. The only real benefit is that DPS has promised (though a cynic notes it's not in the bill and they've broken promises about Amnesty before) that past surcharges will be forgiven if HB 2068 passes, meaning hundreds of thousands of Texans might get their driver licenses back. But going forward, the same problems could intensify, ramping up debtors prison practices that other bills in the Legislature this year aim to limit.

If this is to be the "solution," there are two main fixes Grits sees as necessary to make this bill even barely palatable: 1) There needs to be a mandatory indigency waiver like we got installed for the Driver Responsibility Program. Without it, we're moving backward. And 2) some version of HB 74 should be amended onto the bill limiting the length of time licenses can be suspended for nonpayment to two years. Otherwise, we just replicate the problems from the old program going forward.

Emily Gerrick of the Texas Fair Defense Project has written a summation of the main problematic aspects of this bill. Here's her assessment of what's wrong with the current legislation and how to fix it:
Cure worse than the disease? 
Unfortunately, the most likely vehicle for the repeal of the DRP is looking like its solution could be worse than the disease. HB 2068 has passed out of the house and today it passed out of the Senate Transportation Committee without amendments. Most advocates and many legislators were banking on getting a number of important amendments to the bill to make it palatable, but so far none of them have gone anywhere. 
HB 2068 would repeal the DRP simply by replacing all the surcharges with increased fines – specifically, a $3,000 fine for Driving While Intoxicated, a $750 fine for driving without insurance, and an increase in the state traffic fine of $20 (on top of existing criminal penalties). Here are the things that make those fine increases potentially worse than the DRP itself: 
Unlike the DRP, HB 2068’s fines and fees will no longer have a mandatory indigency waiver 
The DRP currently has an indigency waiver program and an incentive program for low-income Texans. People who make under 125% of the poverty guidelines are able to get all of their surcharges waived, and people who make between 125% and 300% of the guidelines can get their surcharges reduced to a more affordable amount. 
HB 2068 would replace the DRP surcharges with fines and fees, but it will no longer require full or partial waiver for low-income Texans. Without a mandatory indigency waiver, many people will end up in worse positions than they are currently in.  
People will still lose their drivers licenses for failure to pay 
The DRP isn't the only program that takes away drivers licenses for failing to pay something. The Failure to Appear/Pay program under Chapter 706 of the Transportation Code also puts a hold on your license if you fail to pay fines, barring people from getting or renewing their license until the amount is paid in full. Increasing fines will result in more people with holds under this program. And, unlike the DRP, the there is no indigency waiver for these holds.  
The $750 insurance fee and the $20 increase in the state traffic fine will add up quickly  
Low-income Texans who can’t pay their fines and fees often end up with holds on their vehicle registration. Because they cannot register their vehicles, their cars become moving targets and they get pulled over more frequently. When they get pulled over they usually get multiple tickets – one for no insurance, one for no registration, and one for no valid license. With the new $750 insurance fee and the $20 increase in the state traffic fine, debt will accumulate quickly for low-income Texans.   
These increases would not need to be so high if the trauma hospitals were willing to accept the same amount of money that they now receive under the DRP. Instead, under HB 2068 the trauma hospitals would get over $30 million more than they currently receive. 
Many people who can’t afford to pay the fines will end up in jail  
Even though it is unconstitutional, many people do end up in jail due to their inability to pay fines. Without a mandatory indigency waiver, people who cannot afford to pay the new $3,000 DWI fine may have their probation revoked for failure to pay, or they may have their probation extended until they can pay. In addition, thousands of low-income Texans go to jail every year for failure to pay traffic fines. Significantly raising the state traffic fine without a waiver will result in more people being jailed just for being poor.
The judges have argued that, if we simply allow them to waive when they see fit, things will be fine. But at present, waiver of fines is exceedingly rare and defendants never know when and how to bring up that they are indigent. Statewide, less than one percent of class C misdemeanor cases are resolved by waiver each year, and only 1.3 percent are resolved through community service. By comparison, 12.5 percent of these cases are resolved through jail credit each year. So I think it is far more likely that a person will go to jail for nonpayment of, for example, the $750 insurance fine than it is that he or she will receive a waiver.
MORE: From the SA Express-News and the Texas Observer.

Thursday, January 12, 2017

Community service in Austin muni court no sweet deal

Payment counter at Austin municipal court
Grits was at the Austin municipal court today with someone who'd allowed a warrant to be issued for a traffic ticket when she couldn't pay. I'd convinced her that, as she was in fact demonstrably indigent, she could get the warrant withdrawn by agreeing to perform community service. That turned out to be true.

Working from a preset formula with no inquiry as to her individual circumstances, the judge demanded 37.5 hours community service for a $460 fine - nearly a full work week for a single traffic ticket. That's about $12.26 of the fine waived per hour worked. Given that the estimated value of volunteer time for nonprofits is nearly double that (vis a vis how much they can estimate its value as an in-kind contribution), plus the fact that indigent people tend to have transportation issues and family obligations that might make a full week of community service onerous, that ratio seemed low to me. I bet the low rate contributes to people not completing community service and having their warrants reissued.

For more background and context on the vagaries of community service at muni court, see ACLUTX's Know Your Rights brief on Traffic Tickets and other Class C misdemeanors in Texas.

Monday, June 06, 2016

Roundup: Buena suerte a Kerry Cook, pretrial detention, user-pay justice and a flooded prison

Lots more has been going on than Grits has had bandwidth to blog about, so let me flag a few items in a roundup format which merit readers' attention:

TDCJ's Terrell Unit, photo via AP.

Thursday, May 26, 2016

Reform on bail and muni fines would be big boon for H-Town indigents

Two different stories out of Houston portray folks chipping away at unnecessary local jail detention from different angles.

Bail litigation adds oomph to reform push
First, see Lise Olsen's story, "Lawsuit adds pregnant mom who was jailed five days after traffic stop: Harris County pretrial detention practices challenged as unlawful," Houston Chronicle, May 24. She runs through the named plaintiffs in  potentially important impact litigation "filed last Thursday by a Washington D.C. group called Equal Justice Under Law, which has been challenging what it calls money bail practices in federal court cases filed all across the United States. Other jurisdictions it has challenged include Ferguson, Mo. and San Francisco, Ca." (See earlier Chronicle coverage.)  Reported Olsen:
The lawsuit names Harris County Sheriff Ron Hickman, who oversees the jail, and the five county hearing officers that generally review such cases and set bond. On any given day, more than 70 percent of those jailed in Harris County are pretrial defendants who have been accused but not yet convicted of a crime, though typically only about 500 at any one time are jailed for minor misdemeanor offenses like petty theft or trespassing.

U.S. Department of Justice attorneys have been monitoring conditions in Harris County jail since 2008. An investigation by the Houston Chronicle found that 55 pretrial detainees died in Harris County custody from 2009-2015, including offenders jailed for misdemeanor crimes like trespassing. Last month, another man  detained because he could not post bail after allegedly stealing a guitar - a misdemeanor - was beaten to death by two inmates jailed on felony charges.

In part because of federal pressure, county officials have been working on reforms - announcing this year that they had obtained a grant to create a diversion court, revamp pretrial reviews and attempt to urge judges to increase release options for non-violent offenders. But advocates like Sen. Rodney Ellis of Houston say those plans left the flawed bond hearings in place - opening the door for the federal civil rights challenge that he supports.

The civil rights case remains pending in federal court - where Equal Justice Under Law attorneys are seeking reforms in lieu of any kind of monetary compensation for all pretrial defendants jailed in Harris County on misdemeanor offenses.
There was a time 10-15 years ago when the prospects for such litigation would have been much dimmer in the 5th Circuit, despite a similar fact pattern existing for a long time. That's a big reason why most of the 21st century reform movement in Texas has focused on legislative solutions. But shifts on the court itself, in the controlling jurisprudence, and, more generally, in the national conversation over justice reform, have opened up new windows of possibility for successful federal civil rights litigation. Grits is excited about the prospects for this one.

In a separate, related story, the Chronicle's Brian Rogers reported that, in response to examples like this new plaintiff, "On Tuesday, Harris County officials took an important step in attempting to address the issue, by announcing a new screening process to help judges determine which suspects awaiting trial can be freed without bail." (Ed. note: before the top of her head justifiably blows off, let it be said former Pretrial Services director Carol Oeller tried to get them to do this for years!)
Proponents of personal recognizance bonds have been stymied in the past by a reluctance on the part of Harris County judges to let suspects out of jail without bail. The conventional wisdom has been that suspects who do not have a financial stake in returning to court will abscond.

On Tuesday, though, county officials touted a new diagnostic tool as a way to move past a decades-old culture that has required every defendant in Houston to put up money or collateral to ensure they would return to court to resolve their cases.

"Obviously, dangerous people need to stay locked up," state District Judge Susan Brown said at a news conference. "For others, the most effective and efficient course of action may be to release them before trial - with conditions such as electronic monitoring or supervision within their community."
Rogers' analysis shows why I'm less apt to reject all uses of risk assessments. Without them, nobody gets a PR bond! Rogers goes on to give a little more information on the risk-assessment instrument they'll be using in Houston, developed by the indigenous Arnold Foundation:
Tuesday's announcement was made by a county committee that has long worked toward reform, the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council. Earlier this year, the committee spearheaded an effort to diagnose and solve problems in the system with a grant from the MacArthur Foundation.

The diagnostic test announced Tuesday was developed by the Houston-based Laura and John Arnold Foundation. It was described as a neutral-based data tool that would assist judges in gauging the risk that a defendant poses to the community.

Foundation representatives were on hand to explain that defendants do not have to be interviewed and given a subjective assessment. Instead, information about them that is readily available in court documents will be weighed by an algorithm to put each person on a continuum of risk. That assessment will be provided to judges who determine whether a defendant can be released without bail.

The nine factors that are considered include age, prior convictions - including misdemeanors, felonies and information about whether the offenses were violent - and whether they appeared for court in other cases. The assessment does not consider race, gender, past drug use, national origin or income.

Matt Alsdorf, vice president of criminal justice at the Arnold Foundation, said the diagnostic tool was developed using more than 1.5 million cases across the country.

"Our research team figured out the factors that are most predictive of defendants' likelihood of missing court or being re-arrested, and in particular being re-arrested for a violent crime," he said. "There's actually a fairly limited set of factors that are highly predictive of those outcomes."

The tool, which backers said has seen success in cities like Chicago and in the state of Kentucky, is being provided with training to the county for free.

Alsdorf said the assessment will provide judges with two risk scores: one on whether defendants will return to court and another on whether they will commit another offense.

With that information, a judge can decide if a suspect should be freed without bail, offered a bail outlined in the county's posted bond schedule or held without bail.

Screening suspects to figure out, statistically, who can be released on a personal recognizance bond, sometimes called "free bail," is expected to lower jail populations, which represent a major county expense.

But officials said it may take weeks or months to train personnel and launch the new system
Not only is this good news for Harris County, it also bodes well for Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman John Whitmire's pledged push to enact bail reform during the 85th Texas Legislature. Litigation can help achieve reform not just by getting courts to order it, but it can also spur action to either preempt or react to the courts, as witnessed with the implementation of this new screening tool. Litigation helps prime the institutional players to steel themselves for possible change, giving them a common enemy and thus a psychological motivation for solidarity. After all, every local official has an interest in them calling the shots over their respective areas of turf instead of some federal judge. So next session will be an excellent moment to show up proposing solutions, both for the chairman and for advocates hoping to effect bail reform statewide.

Houston muni courts almost never waive debt for indigence
Next, let's turn to municipal courts and debtors prison issues. Check out "Get a ticket while being poor in Houston? Here's how you might end up in jail," Michael Barajas, Houston Press, May 24. Explained Barajas:
Under Texas law, if you fail to pay, miss your court date and get arrested on an outstanding municipal court warrant for that no-insurance ticket you couldn’t afford to quickly pay, a municipal court judge (or, if you’re in the county’s jurisdiction, the local justice of the peace) is supposed to hold a hearing to determine why you didn’t pay. If the judge finds that you’re too poor and can’t afford the fines against you, you’re supposed to be given some options, like a reduced fine or community service, to pull you out of the red.

That rarely happens in Houston, according to a report by Mayor Sylvester Turner’s transition team tasked with studying the city’s criminal justice policies. According to that report, of the 168,948 Houston municipal court convictions in 2014, community service was offered in lieu of fines in only 2,759 cases. In only six cases did a judge deem someone poor enough to justify reducing or partially waiving fines. That means that while nearly a quarter of Houstonians live below the poverty line, the alternatives for low-income people struggling to pay tickets are used in fewer than 2 percent of cases before Houston’s municipal court judges. The mayor’s transition team report calls Houston’s Municipal Courts Department a “profit center” designed to rake in as much in fines and fees as possible, disproportionately punishing the city’s poor in the process.

Despite reforms her department has implemented in recent years, Presiding Judge Barbara Hartle says a number of factors can lead to someone’s arrest over simple municipal court fines, from overwhelmed judges and court staff to defendants who aren’t forthcoming to the court about the problems they have paying their fines and instead skip their court dates. Plus, she says, it’s not always up to the court who lands in jail for fine-only offenses. Hartle says she’s explicitly asked that Houston police officers stop arresting and jailing people with only class C warrants and instead bring them to an on-call judge. Hartle says that both state and local politicians have for far too long looked to municipal courts as revenue-generators — Hartle’s court, the largest in the state, sends millions of dollars to both the state of Texas and Houston’s general fund every year.
Those interested can see the Mayoral crimjust transition team's full report. (Full disclosure: The document was produced by a committee chaired by Grits contributing writer Prof. Sandra Guerra Thompson.)

Interestingly, Barajas offered this background on the Texan origins of the relevant federal court precedent:
By the late 1960s, Preston Tate had picked up $425 in fines for rolling through stop signs, running red lights and driving without a license on the streets of Houston. Paying off his debt wasn’t an option, not with a wife and two kids to feed off the measly $290 a month he earned, so a judge ordered Tate to serve 85 days at the local prison farm instead.

When Tate’s case reached the U.S. Supreme Court, his lawyers argued that jailing him violated his Fourteenth Amendment right to equal protection under the law, since a wealthy man would have easily avoided jail. The high court justices unanimously agreed, saying defendants must be offered some sort of alternative to jail if they truly can’t pay off the punishment on a fine-only offense.

The same year Tate’s landmark case was decided, his home state passed reforms allowing judges to offer payment plans for people who can’t afford to quickly pay for fines. In later years, the Texas Legislature added community service as an alternative to fines as well as a requirement that judges determine whether someone is indigent before locking that person up for failing to pay. A law passed in 2007 requires judges to make that determination in writing.
Despite the decade-old requirement that muni judges and JPs now must make indigency determinations in writing, wrote Barajas:
Lawsuits filed across the state contend that’s not happening. Last year, Austin was added to the growing list of cities across the country that have come under fire for municipal court practices, with a class action lawsuit filed in federal court by the Texas Fair Defense Project alleging the city “operates a debt-collection scheme that jails dozens of people each month because they are too poor to pay.” Earlier this year, attorneys in Amarillo filed a similar lawsuit saying that city’s collection practices amount to a “modern-day debtors’ prison.” [Ed. note: Our old friend Jeff Blackburn is involved with this one.] According to the lawsuit, Amarillo’s courts dispose of cases by assessing jail time over alternative punishments (like community service, a waiver or a fee reduction) at a ratio of about 47 to 1, despite the city’s 17.1 percent poverty rate. The Texas Civil Rights Project sued the city of El Paso following a Buzzfeed News investigation that uncovered several Texas courts, including one in El Paso, that had failed to give defendants a legally required indigency hearing before jailing them.
Here's an issue I hadn't seen flagged before:
That Houston cops would jail someone for outstanding municipal court warrants isn’t surprising, not when you consider the language printed on each of those warrants commanding “any peace officer of Houston, Texas” to take the defendant into custody “and place him in the jail of your city until the said amount due upon said judgment and the further costs of collecting the same are paid or until the said defendant is otherwise legally discharged.” Trigilio with the ACLU called the wording of those warrants “problematic.”
We also get this data tidbit:
It’s unclear how many of the thousands of people Houston municipal courts have sent to jail in recent years couldn’t pay or simply would not pay. However, Mary Schmid Mergler, with the advocacy group Texas Appleseed, says there’s pretty good evidence the city is jailing people who should obviously qualify as indigent. Mergler, who is compiling a report due out next month on municipal court practices across the state, says data she pulled from Houston’s Municipal Courts Department show that between the start of 2012 and the end of 2015, 12,132 people were jailed for failure to pay fines or to otherwise comply with a municipal court judge’s orders. That averages out to approximately 3,000 per year, or about eight per day. According to Mergler, more than 1,000 of those defendants were listed as “homeless.”
Good stuff. It's exciting to see all the interest and action surrounding these heretofore obscure and seldom-discussed issues. We are living through a period pregnant with opportunity for criminal-justice reform, from Congress to the statehouse in Austin all the way to the most humble county jail or municipal court. One prays Texas doesn't miss the moment.

Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Previewing Texas Lege hearings on #CJReform next week

Next Monday and Tuesday will be full days at the capitol for criminal-justice reform topics, with three different committees holding hearings relevant to the subjects covered on this blog. The Legislative Reference Library helpfully compiled these background resources regarding the interim charges those panels will consider:

House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence (May 16) 
Charge: Asset forfeiture
House Committees on Corrections and Criminal Jurisprudence (Joint Hearing, May 17) 
Charge: Probation & parole - fees and revocations
Senate Committee on Criminal Justice  (May 17)
Charge 3: Reentry programs provided by TDCJ and the Windham School, including inmates in administrative segregation; Certified Peer Support Services; Darrington Seminary Program   
Charge 4: Pretrial diversion and treatment programs   
Charge 5: Dissemination of bulk criminal records   
Charge 6: Costs for family members to maintain contact with incarcerated family members    

Tuesday, May 03, 2016

Nobody trying very hard to distribute crime victim restitution

Grits was glad KXAN-TV published their story on unclaimed awards to crime victims, but the "gotcha" journalism approach aimed at the local probation department was misplaced. They reported that "a KXAN Investigation discovered $22 million that actually belongs to Texans are sitting in state coffers and little is being done to make sure that money gets to its rightful owner."
The money comes from restitution payments ordered in criminal cases from courts across the state. If someone is arrested and charged for committing a crime against you, anything from breaking into your house or crashing into your car while driving drunk, chances are, the court will require the criminal to pay you money for damages or injuries you may have. But, many crime victims are never called to appear in court and are unaware they have money coming to them. State law requires the courts to notify you, but in some cases that person may never see the money.

KXAN obtained a list of crime victims Travis County says it can't find to give them their money. However, we found it's pretty easy.
Expensive to scale up
In what's a bit of a cheap shot from a journalistic standpoint, they proceed to locate several people with relatively distinct names on the list (e.g., "Ian Pirie") to demonstrate that, with some legwork, these crime victims could have been located via Google and social media.

But to scale that process up would require staff, and the probation department doesn't have it. Nor does the state pay them for that task, which is beyond the minimum statutory requirement for what they're supposed to do to locate crime victims owed restitution. Admittedly, the law's insistence on a certified letter to the last address as the sole mandated investigated tactic is needlessly limiting and anachronistic. But from the standpoint of how government historically has communicated with the public, it's pretty typical. And the alternatives being suggested aren't free.

According to the report, "California created an 'Unknown Victims Unit' that successfully located thousands of crime victims and handed out more than $9 million since 2010. Comptroller Hegar is now looking into how his office could do something similar." Presumably, that unit has dedicated staff whose job it is to do that. While it's probably a good idea, nobody at either the Comptroller's office or already understaffed local probation departments are paid to perform that function right now.

Victims a low priority
For at least three decades in American political culture, crime victims have been used mostly as fodder for tough on crime political salvos against candidates and advocates deemed too "soft." As the restorative justice movement has long understood, though, in reality the criminal justice system sometimes seems designed almost antithetically to victim's needs, right down to, clearly, not prioritizing victim restitution. Giving crime victims their money would be a good start but cannot resolve the more fundamental questions and dilemmas facing 21st century crime victims. Regardless, thousand mile journeys must begin with a first step.

Saturday, April 23, 2016

Wood weighs in on collections rules for Class C misdemeanors

For years, Ted Wood was the go-to expert on fines and fees at the Texas Office of Court Administration's General Counsel's office; he likely has forgotten more about the topic than most lawyers will ever know. Now he's an assistant public defender in Harris County. Grits asked Ted's opinion on the recent letter by Judge John Bull, highlighted in this post, and reforms being debated aimed at reducing burdens from Class C fines and fees on indigent defendants. He responded thusly:

From Ted Wood, Assistant Public Defender, Harris County
Here are my thoughts on: (1) Judge Bull’s letter; (2) the Buzzfeed article about Judge Bull’s letter; and (3) your analysis of the letter and the article in your Grits column of April 21, 2016.  You can consider this to be “on the record.”

FIRST, you have identified the main problem.  The main problem is Article 45.0491 of the Code of Criminal Procedure which reads as follows:
A municipal court, regardless of whether the court is a court of record, or a justice court may waive payment of a fine or costs imposed on a defendant who defaults in payment if the court determines that:
(1)    the defendant is indigent or was, at the time the offense was committed, a child as defined by Article 45.058(h); and
(2)    discharging the fines and costs under Article 45.049 [i.e., discharging the fines and costs by performing community service] or as otherwise authorized by this chapter would impose an undue hardship on the defendant.
There is a parallel statute that you did not mention.  The parallel statute is Article 43.091 of the Code of Criminal Procedure.  This statute deals with courts other than municipal courts and justice courts.  In other words, this statute deals with district courts, statutory county courts, and constitutional county courts.  The language of this statute is almost identical to Article 45.0491 discussed above.  Article 43.091 is set out below:
A court may waive payment of a fine or cost imposed on a defendant who defaults in payment if the court determines that:
(1)    the defendant is indigent or was, at the time the offense was committed, a child as defined by Article 45.058(h); and
(2)    each alternative method of discharging the fine or cost under Article 43.09 or 42.15 [discharging fine and costs through the performance of community service] would impose an undue hardship on the defendant.
As you pointed out in your analysis, “judges don’t have authority to declare them [defendants] indigent, according to that reading of the law.”  I might add this: “that reading of the law” is correct.  Judges may not waive court costs at sentencing.  Rather, judges may only waive court costs once a defendant has been ordered to pay court costs and then defaults on that obligation. Also, judges may not authorize a defendant (other than a child) to perform community service until a defendant has been ordered to pay court costs and has defaulted on that obligation.

I am in 100% agreement with your following statement:
The Legislature could help things a lot by deleting the four above italicized words [who defaults in payment] from the statute, clarifying that muni judges can waive fines and fees for indigence at sentencing and don’t have to wait until the indigent defendant has failed to pay.
Your idea needs to be expanded to delete those four words in both the statutes I set out above so that all judges (not just municipal judges) can waive fines and fees for indigence at sentencing.  The law also needs to be changed to permit judges to order defendants to perform community service (in lieu of paying a fine) at sentencing. 

This is currently permitted for children. See Article 45.058(h) referenced in both statutes set out above.  For example, one of my sons pleaded guilty to a speeding violation in the Leander Municipal Court when he was sixteen years old.  He asked to be able to perform community service instead of paying the fine and court costs because he did not have the $165 that was required.  The judge, appropriately, allowed him to perform community service which my son did go on to perform.  This was a totally appropriate action by the judge.  But the judge would not have been able to let my son do this if my son had been one year older (17).  This is because this type of action is only permitted in cases involving children – not adults.

So I am wholeheartedly with you on getting the statute changed. 

SECOND,  I am a member of the advisory committee to the Judicial Council along with Judge Bull, Judge Spillane, and several others.  We have been tasked with proposing changes to the current Collection Improvement Program rules.  We have not been tasked with suggesting legislation.  According to your quote of Judge Spillane, he said something about “creating legislation.”  I think this is exactly what needs to be done – exactly as you have suggested and exactly as Judge Spillane has said.  But this is not what the advisory committee has been asked to do.  Rather, the advisory committee has been asked to change the collection program rules.  I don’t think changes to the collection program rules really solve any problems.  The statutes still don’t allow for judges to waive court costs and that is what we need to do to solve the problem.  As Judge Spillane said (as stated in your article), “judges need to be free to exercise proper discretion by assessing alternative punishments like community service or waiver of fines for indigent defendants.”  Legislative changes are going to be necessary to give judges this freedom.

The members of the advisory committee are to provide suggested responses to the committee chair (Justice of the Peace Bill Gravell of Williamson County) by April 29th.  (Judge Gravell is also a member of the Texas Judicial Council.)   I have not yet written out my response – maybe I will just send in this letter.  In any event, I expect to say that what we need is not so much a reworking of the Collections Improvement Program rules as a change to the statutes as described above.

THIRD, I share Judge Bull’s feeling that courts should not exist to bring in revenue.   Courts should not, to quote Judge Bull, “be viewed as ‘cash cows’ as opposed to places where people can receive a fair and impartial hearing on their cases.” But, with all due respect to Judge Bull, I think his broadside against the Office of Court Administration (OCA) is misdirected.

The Legislature had directed OCA to operate a Collections Improvement Program (CIP). See Article 103.0033.  OCA is only doing what the Legislature has required.  I strongly disagree with Judge Bull’s suggestion that OCA’s Collections Improvement Plan is “encouraging courts to jail people who don’t pay.”  Here is what Judge Bull wrote:
In fact, the “analysis” implies that “‘community service” is an option, but “credits for jail time should be limited to cases in which a  defendant refuses to pay or perform community service, but has the ability to do so.”  The language in the analysis could be read in such a way that encourages courts to jail people who don’t pay.
It could?  How can this language be interpreted to encourage courts to jail people who don’t pay?  I understand this language to put a limitation on the situations in which a person can be jailed for non-payment of fines and court costs.  This limitation is precisely in line with Article 45.046(a) of the Code of Criminal Procedure which says:
(a) When a judgment and sentence have been entered against a defendant and the defendant defaults in the discharge of the judgment, the judge may order the defendant confined in jail until discharged by law if the judge at a hearing makes a written determination that:
(1) the defendant is not indigent and has failed to make a good faith effort to discharge the fine and costs; or
(2) the defendant is indigent and:
(A) has failed to make a good faith effort to discharge the fines and costs under Article 45.049; and
(B) could have discharged the fines and costs under Article 45.049 without experiencing any undue hardship.
See also Article 43.03(d) of the Code of Criminal Procedure for the equivalent statute applicable to courts other than municipal courts and justice courts.

The past practices in El Paso that you also discuss in your April 21st article were absolutely wrong.  Defendants were being jailed without regard to the limitations set out in Article 45.046(a).  But OCA is not encouraging this practice.  In fact, OCA is discouraging the practice.  Here, Judge Bull takes a statement from OCA about the limitations on jailing defendants and somehow twists it into an encouragement by OCA that courts jail people who don’t pay.  This is not at all what OCA is suggesting.

I just hate to see OCA and its Collections Improvement Program dumped on.  OCA is not the problem.  The Collection Improvement Program is not the problem.  The problem is that the current statutes do not allow for the waiver of court costs up front.  The problem is also that the current statutes do not allow a judge to order that a person perform community service in lieu of paying fines and court costs up front.  The problem is also that some courts were improperly jailing people.  Again, this improper jailing is not something that OCA and the CIP are advocating – at all.  To the extent that Judge Bull suggests otherwise, I part ways with him.

But my final word is this – although I disagree with parts of Judge Bull’s letter, he is a fine man and an excellent judge.  I look forward to working with him and others on the rules advisory committee.

Ted Wood
Assistant Public Defender
Harris County Public Defender’s Office

Thursday, April 21, 2016

Buzzfeed kicking ass on TX muni courts as revenue generators

Kendall Taggart and Alex Campbell at Buzzfeed have done a great job over the last year or so covering Texas cities' and counties' use of Class C misdemeanor offenses as revenue generators that result in de facto debtors prisons when municipal and county jails are used to leverage payment from defendants of limited means.

New El Paso litigation
Yesterday they reported on new litigation filed by the Texas Civil Rights Project in El Paso. (See TCRP's complaint.) That article gave this description of the litigation:
The two plaintiffs in the suit, Carina Canaan and Levi Lane, were profiled in the BuzzFeed News investigation that found El Paso municipal court judges had routinely jailed people for unpaid traffic tickets. State law and two U.S. Supreme Court decisions bar courts from jailing people simply because they are too poor to pay their fines. Judges must first assess whether defendants have the money to pay, and if they do not, judges must offer them the chance to perform community service instead.

Canaan has never earned more than $8 an hour, according to the lawsuit. She started driving to school before she was old enough to have a license and quickly racked up $3,000 in tickets. She spent 10 days locked up to pay them off, while pregnant with her first child, but still owes additional fees that make it impossible to get her license.

Lane could not afford to keep his car insured and registered, but he said he had no choice but to keep driving: Public transportation shut down before his shift at a pet food factory ended. He racked up five tickets, totalling more than $3,400 in penalties, and was finally arrested. He could have avoided jail time if he had paid the fines on the spot, but he made only $8 an hour and had outstanding student loan debt. He was sentenced to three weeks in jail, during which he lost his job.

The lawsuit seeks an order prohibiting the city from jailing people who are unable to pay as well as compensation for people who have previously been jailed under those circumstances.

The city of El Paso did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Though it is El Paso judges who impose the jail sentence, El Paso’s city council created the 25% down payment requirement. In an interview last year, presiding Judge Daniel Robledo told BuzzFeed News he did not support it. “I think that’s wrong,” he said. “In fact anybody that goes out there, anybody that’s in my court, to me there’s no such thing as 25%.
Judge Bull calls 'bull' on OCA collections program

Another recent article by this pair adumbrates a remarkable letter from San Antonio municipal court Judge John Bull to the Office of Court Administration.
Judge Bull was writing to protest a little-known state program that oversees the collection of court fines and fees for traffic tickets and other low-level offenses. The state takes about 30% of those fees, a cut that last year amounted to $236 million.

Bull’s letter says that the program puts municipal courts under “constant pressure to bring in ‘revenue.’”

Officials are “applying ‘best practices’ that might be relevant for banks or credit card companies,” he said, but that are “oppressive” in courtroom settings. In a memo to Bull’s court, a state collections specialist wrote that judges should devise “strict payment plans with the goal of collecting the largest amount of money in the shortest period of time, based on the defendant’s ability to pay.”

David Slayton, who heads the Texas Office of Court Administration, responded to a question about Bull’s letter by saying the state does not look to the courts as revenue sources. He pointed out that judges have discretion to waive fines for defendants who cannot afford them. “By the time it gets to the collections program,” Slayton said, “we should only be dealing with people who have the ability to pay.”
That last bit isn't entirely correct. In Dallas, for example, the city has advised municipal judges they may only reduce fines and fees for indigence after defendants have been sentenced, failed to pay, and have gone into default, not at the time the sentence is imposed. That guidance stems from Art. 45.0491 of the Code of Criminal Procedure, which specifies that courts "may waive payment of a fine or costs imposed on a defendant who defaults in payment" (emphasis added).

So the collections program is dealing with precisely defendants who cannot pay and have not yet been declared indigent. Until they default, judges don't have authority to declare them indigent, according to that reading of the law.

The Legislature could help things a lot by deleting the four above-italicized words from the statute, clarifying that muni judges can waive fines and fees for indigence at sentencing and don't have to wait until the indigent defendant has failed to pay. That's not the only legislative fix that needs to be done, but it's an important one.

And speaking of legislative changes, I asked Judge Edward Spillane from College Station what he thought about Judge Bull's letter and he replied to say Bull and other judges may soon get a chance to rewrite that statute:
I and many judges have read the letter and look forward along with Judge Bull and other interested parties to working with OCA on May 19th as part of an advisory committee to the Judicial Council to create legislation to ensure the Collection Improvement Plan takes into account that judges need to be free to exercise proper discretion by assessing alternative punishments like community service or waiver of fines for indigent defendants.
So that's a significant opportunity on the legislative horizon; there's a lot of momentum to reduce pressure from Class C fines and fees on low-income people, reduce the number of offenses they're penalized for, enhance judges' discretion to address noncompliance, etc.. The 85th Texas Legislature will be an interesting historical moment in which to be confronting these questions.

New rules extend payment plans, clarify requirement 'does not apply' to indigents 
Finally Taggart and Campbell recently published an item on new rules aimed at "designed to keep people out of jail when they can’t afford their traffic tickets." By their account:
Texas officials have proposed extended payment plans for people struggling to pay their fines and fees.
The Texas Judicial Council has also made it explicit that the state’s collection demands do not apply in cases where a defendant is found to be too poor to pay. ...

The new rules, which were approved by the judicial council last month, could take effect later this year. ...

Two municipal judges who spoke to BuzzFeed News said they felt the state Office of Court Administration’s previous rules put too much pressure on cities to collect fines and fees, creating burdensome requirements that made it harder for them to exercise their discretion and waive fees when it was in the interest of justice.

“We have judges for a reason — if we wanted this to be done by formula, we would get computers,” said one judge, who requested anonymity out of fear that state officials would retaliate by auditing his court.
Grits uploaded the new rules to my Google drive, for those interested.

Nice reporting by Taggart and Campbell; this is an important and little-covered beat and they're doing a good job with it.