House committee: Raise age of criminal culpability from 17-18

The Texas House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee in its interim report (pdf) recommended raising the age of criminal culpability from 17 to 18 years old. What sorts of offenses are seventeen year olds committing in Texas?

Like teenagers in the juvenile system, 17-year-olds are typically arrested for non-violent, relatively minor offenses as demonstrated. In 2013, for example, 44% of all 17-year-olds arrested were arrested for larceny, marijuana possession, violating liquor or public drunkenness. Also, between 2012 and 2013, arrests of 17-year-olds dropped by 20 %, going from 32,981 arrested in 2012 to 26,274 arrested in 2013.

In all, "17-year-olds added up to about 3% of all adult arrests in 2013." So in the scheme of things we're talking about a significant but not monumental change. There's an excellent, in-depth discussion of this issue in the report that we'll come back to later when the legislation is heard and which is mandatory reading for those interested in the topic.

The committee also recommended expanding eligibility for expunction and shortening the waiting periods before people can apply for orders of expunction or non-disclosure. MORE: See an analysis of this section of the report from Bryan attorney Lane Thibodeaux.

They would expand regulation, modestly, of criminal history sales by the state. They would expand pretrial diversion and treatment programming for mentally ill defendants.

On graffiti, they suggested expanding abatement programs and raising the penalty thresholds to adjust for inflation.

They advocated reducing the number of criminal penalties outside the penal code, and expanding community supervision for state jail felonies, including implementation of "split sentencing" where a defendant is supervised on probation following a brief incarceration stint.

Grits may have more to say on these topics later when I've had a chance to read the report but for now I wanted to pass along the link. Read the full thing (pdf) for yourself.

Dallas considers opening levees to invited graffiti

Dallas has been tepidly experimenting with the idea of "free walls" for graffiti artists (see prior Grits coverage) to divert them from private property, reported the Dallas News (Nov. 15), but the real game changer could come from a different government source. The story concluded:

The Police Department’s experience with graffiti is one that Trinity Watershed Management has been watching closely as it seeks ways to mitigate vandalism on the bridges over the river, said Dhruv Pandya, the watershed’s assistant director.

Street artists were allowed to paint the underside of the Commerce Street bridge during the city’s last Trinity River Wind Festival. For Pandya, that has meant a slight change in attitude as he looks at ways to allow street painting legally — and to keep it only where it’s allowed.

“We have 30 miles of levees and we have concrete structures,” he said, “and there’s nothing but gray.”

Bingo! Grits has been advocating just such an approach: allowing graff artists to decorate blank portions of the urban landscape, both publicly owned sites like drainage culverts, highway supports, and even the backs of street signs and, where permission can be obtained, on private property in the vein of the Cardiff Empty Walls festival. (I'd also like to see arts re-emphasized in schools, but that's another subject.) By comparison, the cost-benefit analysis underlying an enforcement-only, arrest-and-incarcerate model makes no sense at all. Remove the emotionalism and tribal disdain and there are ways to manage this millennia-old problem that address concerns of property owners, but it won't be resolved by cops, courts or ever-more criminal penalty enhancements that never worked before and won't work now.

How graffiti artists can ingratiate themselves with the community

Awesome graffiti idea out of Chicago, if we can stretch the concept to call it that; an upgrade from an earlier, sarcastic version. Not quite as warm and fuzzy as these gals from Houston, but it certainly opens up, or rather fills up, new spaces in the urban canvas. I bet nobody complains!

BTW, since we're on the topic of graffiti, Cardiff, Wales sponsored something called the Empty Walls festival in which skilled graff artists were invited to fill up large, plain walls with enormous murals. Though press coverage naturally focused on an engorged horse penis that drew complaints in one of numerous murals (and was apparently altered by the artist to geld the offending animal), most of the art I've seen from the event was pretty great. See a few examples below the jump:

Forensic follies, Williamson County jury pools, COINTELPRO, and other stories

Grits noticed several items this week that didn't make it into full posts but deserve readers' attention:

Lawsuit over constitutionality of truancy charges
Texas Appleseed is taking Dallas ISD to court. See a lengthier account from the Dallas Morning News, but it's behind their paywall. More from Alternet.

The Michael Morton case and Williamson County jury pools
Because of hometown publicity, a capital murder case was moved from Waco to Williamson County, only to find during voir dire that "About 10 prospective jurors out of 55 questioned so far either were disqualified or excused by agreement because of their feelings of distrust for the criminal justice system spawned by Morton’s 
exoneration," reported the Waco Tribune Herald. That's a pretty remarkable development among Williamson County juries.

Art in public spaces - like utility boxes
Grits has advocated allowing invited, artistic graffiti in blank public spaces from utility boxes to the backs of street signs to highway facades. That seems to be the idea behind what's going on here, with the twist that the artist is a Buddhist monk.

Ellis County may privatize jail
The Ellis County (Waxahachie) commissioners issued an RFP to privatize their county jail, we learn from Texas Prison Bidness. More background here.

Most TDCJ volunteers are faith based
Reported the Conroe Courier, discussing a bill by rookie state Rep. Steve Toth, "TDCJ currently has 20,047 volunteers, including 18,111 who are faith-based volunteers providing religious and other services in jails and prisons statewide"

'Breathprint' as biometric?
Interesting concept. Probably needs more confirming research and field testing before it's ready for use as a practical, reliable, court-worthy forensic method. Despite the statement in the linked article, I'm not yet sure I believe claims that breathprints can be uniquely identified. My understanding is it hasn't even been proven fingerprints are unique in the world, much less "breathprints."

Allegedly fake certifications may compromise 1,200+ DWI cases
Even if "breathprint" biometrics are legit, the technical application of breath forensics must be also be valid. A DPS supervisor in Conroe, "Glenn Merkord was suspended for 30 days this month for renewing certifications for machine operators who had not fulfilled all of the requirements for certification, according to a letter the Department of Public Safety sent Merkord notifying him of his punishment," reported the Houston Chronicle. Up to 1,200 cases could be affected.

Salvador cases keep coming
Nuther case overturned today by the Court of Criminal Appeals based on the Jonathan Salvador case, this one an eight year sentence. By my count, that brings the total to 20, totaling 159.5 years so far. Now that the Coty case has been decided, one suspects we may see many more, similar cases on the weekly hand down lists in the very near future. Salvador worked on nearly 5,000 drug cases.

From the COINTELPRO files
Interesting, timely history lesson from the Austin Chronicle about a time just a few decades ago when the American intelligence apparatus was turned on domestic political dissidents, focusing on events at UT-Austin.

Edward Snowden, NSA phone spying scandal and cell-phone location data
Bruce Schneier lists questions that need to be answered before anyone prosecutes Edward Snowden. Ed Hubbard, writing at Big Jolly Politics, has questions of his own. Interesting post from Fabius Maximus on the meaning of government and corporate protestations the NSA does not have "direct access" to private systems. The telecom providers like ATT and Verizon, incidentally, have issued no such denials. Finally, somebody started a petition at whitehouse.gov asking President Obama to pardon Edward Snowden. Go sign if you support it. If the petition gets 100,000 online "signatures" in 30 days, the White House will formally respond. As of this writing, it had reached 68,435 in just four days.

It should be noted, the issue of cell-phone "metadata" relates directly to the location-tracking legislation proposed by Rep. Bryan Hughes, Sen. Juan "Chuy" Hinonosa and Sen. Craig Estes during the 83rd regular session. In particular, as Grits reported from the conference at the Yale Law School on location tracking and biometrics, Verizon and Sprint use GPS coordinates instead of triangulation (like, say, ATT and T-Moble). The Wall Street Journal reports the NSA is gathering credit card data, too. That's an even greater invasion of privacy IMO than the pen-register/trap-and-trace data (phone numbers in and out) that's been more widely publicized.

Report bolsters graffiti reform legislation

The Texas Criminal Justice Coalition has published a new report by my pal Jorge Renaud on graffiti law and policy. See their press release and the report (pdf) itself. The release is timed to coincide with the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee hearing HB 3494 by Rep. Joe Moody this afternoon (previewed here) which, according to TCJC would:

implement a permissive pretrial diversion program with graffiti cleanup mandates and better address low-level graffiti offenses. 

• H.B. 3494 will allow a pretrial diversion program, requiring community service and victim restitution, for long-term reductions in recidivism and its associated costs.  Participation in a deferred prosecution program, as based on the consent of the district attorney, will require community service, including graffiti removal where possible, and may involve participation in outreach education focused on graffiti prevention and eradication, youth mentoring in art programs, mural painting, or other available community service opportunities. Furthermore, successful completion of the program may result in dismissal of the charges.  This will give a fair chance to individuals who have taken responsibility for their actions, helping them avoid the reentry barriers typically associated with a criminal record.

• H.B. 3494 creates a new, minor offense level (a Class C misdemeanor) for graffiti that causes up to $200 worth of damage.  Currently, all graffiti up to $500 worth of damage is a Class B misdemeanor, which brings with it potential county jail time.

• H.B. 3494 adjusts value amounts for certain graffiti offenses.  Current offense thresholds for graffiti offenses were set in 1993 and do not reflect two decades of inflation.  Consequently, the penalty grades for graffiti do not appropriately correspond to the value of the property that has been damaged.  So what amounted to a Class C misdemeanor 20 years ago may constitute a Class B misdemeanor today – a de facto “criminal inflation.”  Amending the threshold offense amounts for graffiti will save taxpayer dollars otherwise needlessly spent on incarceration costs for increasingly low-level offenses.

“H.B. 3494 will ease the financial burden on property owners, seek to involve community members in cleanup and beautification, and result in positive behavioral change in graffitists, instead of merely seeking harsher penalties that criminalize and punish,” said Dr. Ana Yáñez-Correa, TCJC’s Executive Director.

See prior, related Grits posts:

• Toward a restorative graffiti policy
• Graffiti solutions: A cost-benefit analysis
• Texas 'students do without art' but streets still open to graff writers
• Best ever graffiti prophylactic: 'We're going to get this kid a job'
• New Dallas 'free walls' for graffiti should expand to underutilized public spaces 
• What exactly is so great about a plain grey wall?
• New Dallas graffiti czar looking past criminal justice approaches
• Kids do less art in school, more in street, Lege reacts with hammer
• Creating public spaces for invited art adds carrot to stick of banning uninvited graff
• Invited graffiti: Solution or enabling for unwanted tags?
• Paint responsibly: Museum offers hands-on graffiti exhibit
• Allowing invited graff best way to reduce unwanted graffiti
• Austin lags on important third component of graffiti policy
• Mexico prevents graffiti by encouraging it at El Azteca Stadium
• Moscow turns to invited graffiti to liven up Soviet era buildings
• Sending a message on graffiti: Two approaches
• Out of our minds: Isn't felony graffiti overkill for sixth graders?
• Charging graffiti as a state jail felony?

Committee to consider recording interrogations, regulating graffiti, Texas' insane insanity defense and more

Let's point out a few items of interest on the Texas House Criminal Jurisprudence agenda tomorrow.

Record police interrogations
Rep. Terry Canales has a bill on the agenda, HB 1096, which would require police to record custodial interrogations in serious offenses. This is one of a handful of recommendation from the Tim Cole Advisory Panel on Wrongful Convictions that has not yet been implemented. (See this Grits post and the links at the bottom for more background.)

Regulating graff: Two approaches
There are a pair of graffiti-related bills up on Tuesday. One, HB 36 by Menendez, is a straight up enhancement bill as though harsher penalties have ever reduced graffiti in the past. (Naturally, the LBB assumes locking up more people for longer periods will cost no additional tax dollars). The other graffiti bill, HB 3494, is a much more interesting piece of legislation. It would raise the damage thresholds for graffiti punishments and establish a pretrial diversion program requiring community service, restitution, and, with the consent of the property owner, that the defendant clean up the sites they'd despoiled. Menendez's bill amounts to pointless grandstanding that wouldn't affect graffiti levels at all. Moody's bill is on the right track - making both the punishments and penalty categories fit the crime while focusing on restitution and cleanup. But the state should also offer up free spots - say on highway pillars, drainage ditches, concrete berms and the backs of street signs - where graffiti would be allowed. Like other forms of expression, it's appropriate to regulate the time, place and manner but a complete ban is as wrong-headed as it is unenforceable.

Wiping records clean for low-level alcohol and drug offenders
Rep. Alma Allen has proposed HB 1070 which would allow expunction for certain alcohol and drug offenses upon successful completion of probation. I'm for just about anything that facilitates employment upon reentry and provides incentives for good behavior instead of only punishing probationers' missteps.

Reduce penalties for petty drug crimes
Rep. Sylvester Turner has a bill on the dock (HB 2044) which would reduce penalties for less than a gram drug possession from a state jail felony to a Class A misdemeanor, similar to legislation heard last week in this committee by state Rep. Senfronia Thompson (see this discussion). I'm a bit surprised the bill wasn't heard along with Thompson's legislation.

Banning (more) native plants
Rep. Doc Anderson has yet again proposed legislation (HB 124) to ban salvia divinorum, a native Texas plant with moderate psychedelic properties which has emerged as a (mostly unsatisfactory) substitute for more common, illicit substances, but with sickening side effects. Anderson and state Sen. Craig Estes have been trying to pass this same bill since 2007, but with surprisingly little success.

The insanity of Texas insanity defense
Rep. Garnet Coleman will present HB 3765 revisiting the insanity defense in light of difficult and terrible cases like that of Andre Thomas who murdered his family then ripped his own eyes out, eating one of them. If the insanity defense doesn't cover Mr. Thomas' situation then IMO the law is just as deranged as he is. See prior, related Grits coverage. Society has only just begun to think honestly about the implications of major schizophrena and people who hear voices - until now medication or incarceration have been the only two approaches and neither "solution" amounts to much more than a band aid. There are a small minority of dangerous mentally ill people who need to be institutionalized for their own protection and others'. But most people who hear voices will never succumb to such extreme impulses and for those who do there are almost always warning signs. The worst-case scenario arises with people like Thomas who fall through the cracks, never receive meaningful treatment, then are subjected to the harshest possible punishments when tragedy occurs, an outcome that satisfies no justifiable punishment goal save vengeance. (See Brandi Grissom's six-part series at the Texas Tribune on the Andre Thomas case.) Whether or not Coleman's bill provides a meaningful solution, there must be a better way to handle such cases than the way we do things now.

Enhancements here, there and yon
As usual in this committee, the bulk of the rest of the bills involve enhancements, not just for graffiti and salvia but there are also a pair of bills boosting penalties for hit-and-runs, one boosting the charge for assaulting emergency room personnel, another mandating LWOP for repeat sex offenders and restricting their employment (as though that's necessary!), another reducing access to probation for burglary with intent to commit a sex offense and one punishing registered sex offenders for misrepresenting their identity. Honestly, if this committee decided for just a session not to hear any bills creating new crimes or "enhancing" penalties, it would surely reduce their workload by more than half.

Criminal justice action on bill filing day at Texas Lege

Bill filing at the Texas Lege began yesterday for the 83rd session and the Texas Tribune listed these criminal-justice related bills filed on the first day:

• Sen. Leticia Van de Putte, D-San Antonio, and Rep. Senfronia Thompson, D-Houston, filed three bills that would focus on helping victims of human trafficking.
• HB 21, by Rep. Trey Martinez Fischer, would create a database of individuals with multiple family violence crimes.
• HB 23, by Martinez Fischer, would require sex offenders to list their offenses on social media sites.
• HB 104, by Rep. Larry Gonzales, would repeal the Driver Responsibility Act, which requires drivers to pay expensive annual surcharges for certain traffic violations. Failing to pay results in suspension of a driver's license.
• SB 88, by Ellis, would allow the governor to grant more than one 30-day reprieve for a death row inmate.
• SB 89, by Ellis, would create a commission to investigate and prevent wrongful convictions
• SB 91, also by Ellis, would require prosecutors and defense lawyers to share evidence in criminal cases

So in the House, we've got two of the more liberal members of the Legislature filing enhancement bills, and a conservative pushing to abolish the Driver Responsibility Act. Typical. Re: HB 23, if they're going to do that, I'd like an amendment to say legislators must attach a list of interested donors and how they'd benefit to bills they support. (In all seriousness, that's an ugly, slippery slope.) The family violence registry is as silly and unnecessary as an arson registry. Ellis' bills are repeats. SB 88 seeks to give Gov. Perry power he'd never use. SB 90 has been a major bone of contention  and in the past has earned support and opposition from factions of both prosecutors and the defense bar.

Ellis' innocence commission bill IMO is a bit of an anachronism and efforts in Texas to exonerate innocent folk from prison have arguably moved beyond it. Grits would rather see the state boost funding to innocence clinics at the state's largest law schools if it's going to invest in the task of investigating old innocence cases. (In the interest of full disclosure, my day job is with the Innocence Project of Texas, whose policy stance happily coincides with my own.) The innocence commission was a suggested tactic from the past, but where they were created they never did much and Texas has developed its own mechanisms - somewhat organically, though spurred and partially funded by the Legislature - for pursuing cold innocence cases through the law schools and a network of private attorneys. The investigation into old arson cases currently underway shows more promise as a model for how to vet old innocence claims than any "innocence commission" created anywhere in the country. At this historical juncture, the state should build on its own successes on this score rather than seek to copy what somebody else has done.

These weren't the only criminal justice related bills. On the House side (see all filed bills), Martinez-Fischer has a bill to create "an executive commissioner for the prevention of driving while intoxicated." His HB 27 would make cell phone use while driving illegal except for law enforcement and emergency vehicles. Allen Fletcher has an enhancement for leaving the scene of an auto accident that results in death. He also filed a bill exempting drivers' contact information on traffic tickets from the Public Information Act, a suggestion with all sorts of unintended consequences which IMO make it a very bad idea. (More later.) Rep. Menendez has a prostitution enhancement and another one for graffiti. And he's filed an interesting little bill requiring suspension of Medicaid eligibility for jail inmates bur also mandating their reinstatement upon release. (I'd need to know more about what problem this aims to solve to form an opinion.) Senfronia Thompson has a bill related to diversion programs for juveniles accused of prostitution. Lois Kolkhorst has a bill banning the use of RFID tags to track kids in school. David Simpson has refiled his bill to limit intrusive searches in airports. Richard Raymond filed a manslaughter enhancement for DWI, and a perhaps quixotic bill to abolish the Court of Criminal Appeals.

On the Senate side (see the full list of filed bills), I like state Sen. Dan Patrick's idea to eliminate straight ticket voting in judicial races. I'd personally like to make them entirely nonpartisan, like city council seats. And Sen. Ellis has a bill expanding access to probation for low-level drug offenders, including a court-fee based funding source for treatment programming. Though not exactly a criminal justice bill (the drug war prosecuted by other means), SB 11 would require welfare recipients to pass a drug test to receive support.

For betting purposes, Grits would put the over-under on new crimes and penalty enhancements the Lege will pass at 53. As an added prediction: Despite having just more than a third of House seats, most enhancements that pass will be filed by Democrats and most of them will originate in the House. I don't know why, but judging from years past that seems to be the trend.

Obviously, these are only filed bills listed above, and as my father likes to say, there's many a slip twixt the cup and the lip. Likely there will be some 7,000 or so pieces of legislation filed before the session is through, with perhaps 1,000 of them in some way shape or form (often quite different from how they began) eventually becoming law. I've only provided cursory summaries here, so please check out the bills that particularly interest you and provide your own analyses in the comments.

New Dallas 'free walls' for graffiti should expand to underutilized public spaces

The Dallas News reports that the city will begin to establish "free walls" for graffiti artists hoping to divert uninvited graff toward approved spaces ("Dallas will try to reduce graffiti by giving artists 'free walls'," Aug. 22). The story opened thusly:

Daniel “Tony Slowmo” Skelton used to run from cops. Now he runs with them.

Slowmo once flouted the law with his illegal artwork, but is now working with Dallas police to redirect the energies of street artists into legal mural projects. Similar efforts have met with success in Toronto, Phoenix and Venice, Calif.

“The youth really have to choose what path they want to go,” said Slowmo, 35. “We’re just trying to lead by example.”

The details are being ironed out, but the initiative involves establishing “free walls” where artists can legally paint. The city would sponsor competitions among street artists. Those who participate must sign a pledge to paint only in legal areas.

“The days of, ‘Let’s arrest them all and let God sort them out,’ is just not smart on crime,” Police Chief David Brown told Dallas City Council members during a recent meeting of the Public Safety Committee.

“This is an attempt to be smarter on crime.”

Traditional city and police efforts largely focused on arresting vandals and painting over illegal graffiti. You only have to look around to see they have met with limited success.

There are about 60 new reports each week of illegal graffiti in Dallas, and an average of about eight arrests a month. The most common form of graffiti is tagging, “chronic random markings” on walls, buildings, streets signs, overpasses and other property. Only an estimated 5 percent of graffiti in Dallas is estimated to be gang-related.

Grits considers this a step in the right direction, but IMO they city could go even farther. As discussed in 2010, I've "been advocating for quite a while on Grits that government begin to identify blank, under-utilized portions of the city landscape - underpasses, concrete drainage areas, even the backside of street signs - and allow street art there on a permission-based basis. Private property owners who wanted to commission free murals on outward-facing walls as a prophylactic against graffiti could also participate. Ideally, in this writer's opinion, the practice should be widespread, with available 'canvases' across every city and content only limited by obscenity laws and disallowing hate speech and known criminal street gang references."

Photo via the Austin Chronicle

Indeed, five years ago Grits suggested, "as you drive around town over the next few days, start to pay attention to the spots where you most commonly see graffiti and ask yourself, would I object if a quality, youth-drawn mural were allowed here instead? Anywhere you see quickly scrawled graff that you consider a blight could potentially be a spot hosting an invited youth mural. In most cases, as with the support poles along the highways, such illustrations would improve the landscape, not mar it."

The main problem with "free walls" is that usually there aren't enough of them, and sometimes taggers ply their craft in the neighborhoods going to and from the free-wall spots. But expand the concept to include more spots and the strategy IMO has an exponentially greater chance of success.

The strategy would be intended to complement enforcement, not supplant it. But there are limits to how effective an enforcement-only strategy can be. In 2010, just 289 people were prosecuted for graffiti crimes statewide in Texas, with 212 of them getting misdemeanor probation. A lock-em-up approach can't solve the problem by itself, and graffiti cleanup has become a significant expense for many American cities. If free walls and allowing graff in underutilized public spaces could even reduce those costs at the margins, taxpayers would benefit. And if wall-writers can work on their projects without constantly looking over their shoulders and preparing to sprint away, there's a decent chance the overall quality of street art may improve, as well.

Much of the over-hyped rhetoric surrounding graffiti assumes it's mainly performed by criminal street gangs, but according to the Dallas News, just 5% of graffiti in Big D stems from gangbangers. That means most graffiti is likely being performed by young people for whom wall writing (and perhaps a little pot smoking) is the most serious crime they commit. For them, maximum punishment isn't a significant threat because the risk of being caught on any given night is a helluva lot lower than, say, the dangers hanging off the side of a bridge like the one pictured above.

Grits is pulling for Dallas' experiment to succeed, and hopefully expand. IMO it's past time for a more thoughtful approach.

See related Grits posts:

• Toward a restorative graffiti policy
• Graffiti solutions: A cost-benefit analysis
• Texas 'students do without art' but streets still open to graff writers
• Best ever graffiti prophylactic: 'We're going to get this kid a job'
• What exactly is so great about a plain grey wall?
• New Dallas graffiti czar looking past criminal justice approaches
• Kids do less art in school, more in street, Lege reacts with hammer
• Creating public spaces for invited art adds carrot to stick of banning uninvited graff
• Invited graffiti: Solution or enabling for unwanted tags?
• Paint responsibly: Museum offers hands-on graffiti exhibit
• Allowing invited graff best way to reduce unwanted graffiti
• Austin lags on important third component of graffiti policy
• Mexico prevents graffiti by encouraging it at El Azteca Stadium
• Moscow turns to invited graffiti to liven up Soviet era buildings
• Sending a message on graffiti: Two approaches 

Will history judge society by our graffiti?

Dostoevsky said the "degree of civilization in a society can be judged by entering its prisons," but perhaps future historians will judge us instead by our graffiti, or at least the graff that escapes buffing. The headline of a recent article in Science Daily proclaimed: "Ancient 'graffiti' unlocks the life of the common man," referring to 2,000 year-old graffiti in Israel as a sociological treasure trove equivalent to the "tweets of antiquity."

It must infuriate anti-graff zealots like the good folks in Corpus Christi to imagine that history might someday judge them by the scrawls they buff, cover and prosecute with Sisyphian doggedness.

'Sending a message' on graffiti: Two approaches

Regular readers know Grits thinks "sending a message" though criminal penalties is one of the worst communication methods imaginable. Almost no one actually reads the laws, the media never reports on most of them, and when they do they get things wrong 1/3 to 1/2 the time. Besides, few criminals read the newspaper. If you want to "send a message," in general buying billboard space or TV time is a far superior method to any criminal-law one might pass, and that goes triple for crimes with very low clearance rates. Which brings us to two recent stories about "sending a message" regarding graffiti. The first arises out of Corpus Christi, where local officials have been obsessed with graffiti enforcement now for several years now, to little practical effect judging from continued public outcries and media hype over the problem. A story from KVII-TV this week made the "send a message" goal explicit:

As the war on graffiti vandalism rages, a word of warning from the people who's job it is prosecute taggers.  They say you will be caught, arrested and more than likely will go to prison.  It's the type of vandalism that's more than just a costly nuisance.  It's a crime.  Prosecutors want to send out a message to all "taggers" reminding them that this crime will get you prison time.

"You have to be held accountable for what you do...and that's why you're going to be doing time behind bars," says prosecutor Joe Mike Pena.

The problem with that message is that much of it is a bold-faced lie, particularly the contention that "you will be caught, arrested and more than likely will go to prison." At least for 99.9% of graffiti crimes (less than one tagger is arrested per 1,000 offenses), the overwhelming majority of offenses go unsolved and are not prosecuted.

How likely is it that taggers will go to prison? According to the Criminal Justice Impact Statement for a recent graffiti enhancement bill (discussed in this Grits post): "In fiscal year 2010, 212 offenders were placed on misdemeanor community supervision, 56 offenders were placed on felony community supervision, and 21 offenders were admitted to prison or state jail." So that's 289 people total convicted and sentenced for graffiti crimes in FY 2010 statewide, most of them juveniles. By contrast, there were hundreds of thousands of tags thrown up in Texas in 2010. The chances of getting caught and convicted are, in fact, minuscule. And even for those convicted, most of them (rightly) received misdemeanor probation, with just 7% going to prison. (mostly those who tagged a church, school, or community center, which now carries an automatic state jail felony charge).

Two recurring Grits themes are that heightened criminal penalties can't solve every social problem and that penalty enhancements have little effect on crimes with low clearance rates. Both observations apply in spades to graffiti crimes. The "message" sent by jacking up punishments for the handful of people caught is not only rarely delivered, it's in some ways a counterproductive one, serving to glamorize the activity for rebellious youth without actually solving the problem.

Meanwhile, a different and far more effectively delivered message about graffiti is being trumpeted in Dallas, where graffiti artist Shepard Fairey (the man who did the Obama Hope posters and was featured in Banksy's Exit Through the Gift Shop) has been hired to paint a dozen large, outdoor murals. Reports the Morning News (behind paywall):

Fairey and his team fly in on Sunday and begin scouting 12 to 15 locations on Monday before pulling out the paintbrushes on Tuesday. The end result will be at least a dozen giant murals (with one stretching 150 feet wide) in such communities as West Dallas, Oak Cliff and Deep Ellum. Highland Park is not on the list.

Dallas Contemporary, which revels in the edginess of Fairey’s art, commissioned the project. Its director, Peter Doroshenko, loves Fairey’s ability to provoke reaction, no matter where his eerily bold images leave their imprint.

Aside from two events feting Fairey, none of his art will be shown at the Design District museum, even as it foots the bill for the outdoor murals.

“We’re doing this project to go beyond our walls, our building,” says Doroshenko, who came to Dallas Contemporary 14 months ago and worked with Fairey on a project in the United Kingdom in 2006.

Doroshenko cites Fairey as one of several artists he hopes to bring to Dallas “who work in nontraditional or outdoor kinds of ways, so that you don’t have to travel to Toulouse or Tunisia to see their work. It’s here, in the city, where it will reach millions of people as they drive by on the freeway or on their way to work.” Fairey loves having an outdoor canvas, Doroshenko says, rather than having to confine his work to a museum. Fairey, like Doroshenko, revels in the notion of “adding art to a person’s everyday repertoire.”

Doroshenko calls the project “giving back to the community and on a grand scale.” He says he picked Fairey not just because he knows him but also because “all the street artists that work in Dallas or Texas are influenced by him.” Even city officials and private landlords have come to appreciate what Doroshenko calls Fairey’s “art intervention” in their communities.

This turn of events reminds me of a Grits headline from 2010: "Yesterday's graffiti is today's art and tomorrow's economic growth." Fairey's illegal tagging hobby has transformed him into an internationally known artist whose talents are so well recognized that he's now being paid (in Texas, no less) to do projects for which he previously would have been prosecuted.

So in Corpus Christi, prosecutors hope to "send a message" by prosecuting the one out of a thousand or so offenses where taggers are caught, while in Dallas they're sending a message with 150' wide murals that graffiti can be real art and that some graff writers must be viewed as true artists, worthy of the admiration of their peers.

Which "message" do you suppose will influence taggers more?

See related Grits posts:

• Toward a restorative graffiti policy
• Graffiti solutions: A cost-benefit analysis
• Texas 'students do without art' but streets still open to graff writers
• Best ever graffiti prophylactic: 'We're going to get this kid a job'
• What exactly is so great about a plain grey wall?
• New Dallas graffiti czar looking past criminal justice approaches
• Kids do less art in school, more in street, Lege reacts with hammer
• Creating public spaces for invited art adds carrot to stick of banning uninvited graff
• Invited graffiti: Solution or enabling for unwanted tags?
• Paint responsibly: Museum offers hands-on graffiti exhibit
• Allowing invited graff best way to reduce unwanted graffiti
• Austin lags on important third component of graffiti policy
• Mexico prevents graffiti by encouraging it at El Azteca Stadium
• Moscow turns to invited graffiti to liven up Soviet era buildings

Texas 'Students Do Without Art,' but streets still open to graff writers

I was interested to see the headline from Business Week on Texas' failure to resolve its school funding crisis: "Texas School Finance Fix Eludes Perry as Students Do Without Art." Grits would add a coda to Business Week's art reference, captured in a headline from this 2009 post: "Kids do less art in school, more in street; Lege reacts with hammer." That post argued that:

Texas schools have seen the arts de-prioritized to focus on the TAKS test. As a result, Texas experienced "a drop in middle school fine arts participation from 75 percent student participation in 1999 to 66 percent in 2006."

Perhaps relatedly, during this same period in Texas graffiti crimes soared; the amount of graffiti in Austin, for example, increased 400% from 2002 to 2007. But all legislators can think to do is increase punishments, not artistic opportunities.

How 'bout it? Do you believe the fact that Texas youth are doing less art in school and more graffiti in the streets is a coincidence? Might providing more legitimate outlets for youth creativity produce the added benefit of reducing illicit tagging?

Best ever graffiti prophylactic: 'We're going to get this kid a job'

After the conviction of a prolific graffiti artist "Evero," Dallas graffiti czar John Barr came up with a solutions oriented suggestion that may do more to reduce graff than anything else (given the relatively small universe of truly prolific street writers): "We're going to get this kid a job," he announced, after serial graff offender, "Evero," aka Everling Wills was sentenced to six months in jail by Judge Teresa Hawthore. Wills, now 20, had a string of graffiti convictions as a juvenile before his current bout with the law. "Since his arrest," reported the Dallas News, "signs by fellow artists to 'Free Evero' have popped up on bridges around town."

Notably, at least two different opinions were offered in court regarding Mr. Wills' artistic talents. "“That’s not art, that’s vandalism,” was the assessment of the prosecutor. But the Judge Hawthorne begrudgingly granted that "Wills has talent, the judge said as she examined portraits submitted by his attorney. 'You can make a living at this,' she said." That was also, apparently, the graffiti czar's assessment, reported the News' Diane Jennings:

Going to court could turn out to be a good career move for Wills. Attorney John Barr, who has mounted a campaign to clean up graffiti in the city and has been dubbed Dallas’ “graffiti czar,” said the judge’s sentence was appropriate. “The point is that the kid’s got a lot of talent and doesn’t have a lot of support,” Barr said.

Dallas needs to develop alternatives for expression and ways to develop self-esteem, Barr said.

“We’re going to get this kid a job,” he said.

Wills was sentenced to six months in jail, though if he violates his probation Judge Hawthorned promised to sentence him to four years. Which do you think would be a better, long-term preventive to keep Mr. Wills and his friends from writing on walls in Dallas? A long stint in jail, a four-year prison sentence, or strong probation on the back end and a job? The latter sure costs less, if Mr Wills will accept and take advantage of the opportunity. As always in such cases, you can offer folks a chance but can never make their choices for them.

BTW, you know how else you can apparently make a living at in Dallas? Cleaning spraypainted trashcans. Reported the News, "Prosecutors told the court it cost the city $66 per trash bin to clean them." I keep trying to imagine what combination of products and labor might amount to $66 per trashcan cleaned, and a reasonable calculation eludes me. Further evidence, if more were needed, that Grits has chosen the wrong line of work.

Odds and Ends: On the harmlessness of being convicted of a non-existent crime

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

Praising Pat Lykos
Newsweek has an article this week praising Pat Lykos' transformation of the Harris County District Attorney's office that would make Murray Newman pull his hair out if he had any. (Just kidding, Murray, and my sincere condolences on your friend's recent tragedy.)

Everybody wants a piece of asset forfeiture money
The Department of Public Safety has $140 million in seized drug money that the Legislature would like to tap to help solve its budget woes, but Mario Carillo at Reporting Texas has a podcast declaring that Congressman Mike McCaul wants the feds to require that money be spent on border security.

DNA testing access expanded
The Senate this week passed a bill by state Sen. Rodney Ellis expanding access to postconviction DNA testing, eliminating procedural hurdles that have in the past delayed proving innocence in several cases. Said Sen. Ellis in a press release, "SB 122 will ensure that if there is DNA evidence available to prove someone's innocence, it can and will be tested. ... No longer will the door to justice be shut just because of a procedural error."

Budget crunch has Dallas deputies eating what they kill
In Dallas, the county commissioners court has created a "strike team" to go after ticket scofflaws with a twist: If they don't collect enough money, the officers will lose their jobs, which are only funded as long as they pay for themselves, reports Kevin Krause at the Dallas News. I've heard of nonprofit fundraisers who're required to raise their own salary - who "eat what they kill," in the lingo - but applying that scheme to cops seems like a bad idea. As for the scofflaws, adds Krause, those who don't pay will be taken to jail, despite the fact that the county has only recently "gotten the jail population under control after years of crowding. Officials don't want to throw misdemeanor offenders in the jail, but [Commissioner John Wiley] Price said they will manage it." The county budget office even proposed forcing judges to increase fine amounts, but Krause reported that "Judges say they're sympathetic to the county's budget woes but that it's not their duty to save the county money. They say dispensing justice is their role and that you can't get blood from a turnip." UPDATE: A commenter rightly declares this policy may violate Sec. 720.002 of the state Transportation Code. Under that statute, "A violation of this section by an elected official is misconduct and a ground for removal from office."

Another counterproductive graffiti enhancement
After two decades of passing bills "enhancing" penalties for graffiti crimes, you'd think if higher criminal penalties were going to solve the problem it'd have done so by now. But the Texas House passed yet another graffiti "enhancement" bill this week, making it a state jail felony to apply graffiti to historic structures. (Thanks to past enhancements, it is already a state jail felony to do graffiti at schools, churches and community centers.) But like schools, churches and community centers, graff on historic structures is more likely to be a one-off, while the repeat offenders typically look for more out of the way targets that are more difficult to buff. Meanwhile, despite tens of thousands of graffiti crimes each year, fewer than 300 people annually are actually arrested and convicted for the offense. So boosting penalties for the handful of people actually caught is among the least effective tactics because it only ever applies to a handful of taggers. Because of this limited impact, the most effective graffiti policies focus more on non-criminal justice solutions, but the Legislature has pretty much been a one-trick pony on this subject.

Error in convicting Enron chief of non-existent crime deemed "harmless"
Tom Kirkendall and Ellen Podgor have excellent discussions of the implications of the latest Fifth Circuit  decision finding "harmless error" in the Jeffrey Skilling/Enron case regarding so-called "honest services fraud," with Tom decrying "the "utter vacuity" of the latest ruling. The Supreme Court declared the honest-service fraud statute invalid, but the Fifth Circuit said the prosecutors' error in relying on it was "harmless" because jurors could have convicted on other counts. Tom calls that "Poppycock," citing "the absurd amount of time that the prosecution spent during trial on Skilling's alleged honest services violations in regard to Photofete." Doug Berman says the decision makes Skilling's recent win at the Supreme Court "pyrrhic," but there's still a long way to go before this saga is complete: Next up: Re-sentencing at the District Court.

Geo Group corporate debt downgraded
For several years this blog has been following the growing debt burden of the Geo Group (formerly Wackenhut), which is one of the largest private prison operators. In their SEC filings for the last several years, GEO warned that its debt burden could "require us to dedicate a substantial portion of our cash flow from operations to payments on our indebtedness." So I was interested to learn via NPR that in January the company's "credit rating was downgraded to B+." Quite candidly, though, the dynamics that caused the debt downgrade have been evident for some time; lowering the company's credit rating was long overdue.

Lies, damn lies and LBB fiscal notes: Why it's really not free to make K2 possession a felony

Marc Levin from the Texas Pulbic Policy Foundation emails to alert me to another absurdist budgetary claim on criminal penalty enhancements from the Legislative Budget Board: A "zero Fiscal Note for legislation making K2 possession a felony!" (K2 is a form of currently legal, synthetically produced marijuana.) Suggested Marc, "You might want to explore on Grits how this legislation could have a zero fiscal note given that it makes possessing even the smallest amount of K2 a felony. I guess they assume if it is outlawed, no one will use it. But that has not been the case with other drugs!"

I wish that were the case. I'd like to believe LBB fiscal notes promote such absurdities because of an honest error, because somebody there really does believe that nobody will be incarcerated under such a statute if it becomes law. But nobody actually thinks that.

The problem is, fiscal notes on enhancements aren't actually mathematical calculations, they're political ones. Bills that LBB knows for a fact will increase the number of prisoners routinely are dubbed "insignificant" in cost, despite the fact that we must lease extra beds for them from private prison contractors. There's literally only one criminal enhancement I've ever seen which gets a fiscal note - bills increasing penalties for burglary of a motor vehicle (BMV) from a Class A misdemeanor to a state jail felony - and the only reason is back in 2005 a bunch of us spent months fighting with LBB over it until they finally caved. But just on that one bill. Even bills sending the same number of people to state jail as BMV get "insignificant" fiscal notes.

Rep. Allen Fletcher just passed a bill out of House Criminal Jurisprudence enhancing a crime from a Class B to a first degree felony that, according to testimony, would apply to 130 people per year just from Houston, but it's supposedly got an "insignificant" cost. And Sen. Leticia Van de Putte's human trafficking bill has several enhancements LBB didn't account for. Everywhere you look, bills increasing criminal penalties are passed at the Lege with no regard at all to the costs of incarceration. By contrast, LBB acknowledges that bills reducing incarceration pressures save money, but not the converse. And the worst part, there's little evidence such enhancements reduce the behaviors they target. So the expenditures not only are unaccounted for, but taxpayers get little bang for the buck.

I hate to use words like this, but the budgeting process on criminal sentencing is simply dishonest. And it's equal opportunity dishonesty. Democrats and Republicans play the same game. Such slight of hand benefits politicians as a class, sorta like lobby perks. It's become a staple ploy for legislators to use "enhancements" to symbolically align themselves against this or that activity that's annoyed some class of their constituents. Graffiti's a great example: We see bills boosting penalties every session, but prosecutors secure fewer than 300 convictions annually statewide compared to tens of thousands of crimes. Yet boosting clearly ineffective penalties even higher is the only solution ever proposed, even though the clearance rate for the offense is so low the punishments never apply to most taggers.

At the municipal level folks may try more practical approaches, but for whatever reason, there seems to be a fundamental failure of imagination at the Lege when it comes to addressing social problems like drug abuse and graffiti. Instead, partially because it's considered cost-free in the budget, the knee-jerk legislative response to every fresh complaint is to propose criminalizing a disliked behavior or increasing punishments if it's already against the law. That usually doesn't stop the behavior, but in the next election cycle the politician gets to say they were "tuff" on whatever disliked activity they've targeted.

If LBB would just do its job - calculating the number of extra prisoners from such bills multiplied by current rates for private prison beds - lawmakers would be forced to secure appropriations for every enhancement bill they pass. Even better, maybe, just maybe, legislators would be forced to think through problems constituents bring them more carefully, set priorities, and actually come up with cost-effective solutions that work, maybe even that save money. In any event, Texas won't see real, fundamental reform in the criminal justice arena until LBB fiscal notes are based on math, not political expediency.

See related Grits posts:

• 308 bills push tougher penalties
• Time for Truth in Sentencing Budgets from LBB
• On expanding the death penalty, budgets, and unfunded mandates
• Copper theft: Case study in failed criminal penalty enhancements
• Why is creating new felonies the solution to every social problem? Immigration edition
• Predictable as bluebonnets in spring: Biennial march of the enhancements begins anew
• Dozens of new crimes proposed at Lege: Will LBB man up and assign them fiscal notes?
• 2,383 and counting: How many felonies from the 82nd Texas Legislature?
• New crimes, penalties 'enhance' nothing but spending side of state, county budgets
• Privatization and the fallacy of zero 'fiscal notes' for criminal penalty enhancements 
• Bigger priority on vehicle burglaries: Solving crimes or harsher punishment?
• Levin: Time to rethink what's a crime
• 'Absolutely irresponsible': Okies boosting criminal penalties but can't house inmates they've got
• Parole board: Texas created 59 new felonies in 2009
• Penalty hikes represent a failure of imagination

Roundup: Assorted facts and heresies

Here are a few disparate items that merit Grits readers attention before I turn mine for the day to college hoops:

Constable pursues truancy make-work to justify staff increase
Usually it's a mistake when the criminal-justice system seeks to solve social problems unrelated to traditional "crime," and that certainly applies to using constables to enforce truancy laws instead of investing in schools until the product they offer is valuable enough to students to make them want to go. Here in Austin, a local constable wants to hire four full-time deputies to enforce truancy laws. This is make-work and another example why I'd prefer constables were simply eliminated or radically scaled back instead of giving them leeway to seek out new missions to justify their anachronistic existence. State Sen. John Whitmire is right that ticketing under criminal laws will never be a true solution for what ails Texas' school system.

DWI supervision on a budget more difficult in age of media hype
The death of a police officer killed by a drunk driver in San Antonio has spawned absurdist commentary in the Alamo City that somehow Texas doesn't "take DWI seriously," when really the situation bemoaned may be attributed to the shortcomings of two decades of unrealistic, media-driven git-tuff efforts that prioritized rhetoric over reality. The driver was already on probation with an ignition interlock mandated for his motorcycle, but he was driving another vehicle he owned. The fact is, so-called "technocorrections" like ignition interlocks or GPS monitoring are not cure-alls. They require substantial investment in human resources to monitor the data generated by the electronics, and cuts to investments in supervision - e.g., proposed elimination of state funding for misdemeanor probation - exacerbate that already serious shortcoming. It doesn't make sense, for example, to expand ignition interlocks to first-time offenders when cases like this one show local departments can't effectively supervise those with interlocks now. Talk is cheap, but rhetoric doesn't pay to supervise high-risk probationers. For that you need probation officers with manageable caseloads. Meanwhile, such rhetorical broadsides fail to address the biggest problem with DWI enforcement in Texas: Declining conviction rates attributable to the so-called Driver Responsibility surcharge. We're arresting more people than ever for DWI, but securing fewer convictions. The House Public Safety Committee has a chance next week to address that problem when it considers legislation by Rep. Leo Berman to abolish the surcharge, but unraveling that public policy mess isn't nearly as sexy, it seems, as shaking one's fist at the devil over the most recent tragedy of the day.

Fewer than 300 graff convictions statewide in 2010
How many graffiti crimes do you suspect are committed in Texas each year? Tens, possibly hundreds of thousands, right? Most of it is never reported to police as a crime, just cleaned up by property owners (or not). But Texas cities spend millions collectively cleaning graffiti at thousands of sites across the state. So how many people do you suppose are convicted of graffiti crimes each year? The answer comes from the Criminal Justice Impact Statement for a recent graffiti enhancement bill (discussed in this Grits post): "In fiscal year 2010, 212 offenders were placed on misdemeanor community supervision, 56 offenders were placed on felony community supervision, and 21 offenders were admitted to prison or state jail." So that's 289 people total convicted and sentenced for graffiti crimes in FY 2010 statewide! And most of them received probation. Two recurring themes on this blog are that criminal penalties can't solve every social problem and that criminal penalty enhancements have little effect on crimes with low clearance rates. Both observations apply in spades to graffiti crimes.

A brief (passing) moment of economic realism on closing the border
People who say the want to "close" or "shut down" the border over immigration, drug smuggling, etc., simply have no clue about the interconnectedness of Texas border economies with Mexico or the astonishing volume of goods and people that travel each direction through the checkpoints. This story from the El Paso Times provides a glimpse of that hidden but critical relationship which a) is growing at a vast rate and b) benefits the United States at least as much as our southern neighbor. The more ideologically driven and detached from business interests calls for immigration enforcement grow, the more explicit this tension will become, but do not doubt that Texas' economy will be harmed if the search for solutions to black markets cause our legal markets to become less competitive or generate fewer jobs. You could never hire enough Border Patrol agents to make up for the economic and employment growth along Texas' southern border over the last decade. Bottom line: One may become frustrated with a goose laying golden eggs, but that won't make it wise to cook it for supper.

Prisoners can pay more if allowed to earn
Here in Texas, legislators have proposed increased prisoner copays for healthcare. In Ohio, the Governor wants prisoners to pay part of their electricity bill. But in Canada, I learned, prisoners are paid minimal wages and charged part of their rent if the take exceeds a certain amount during a pay period. Prisoners in Canada are paid as an "incentive to invite them to actively take part in their rehabilitation." In Canada, prisoners "generally make, before deductions, $35 to $40, every two weeks and that’s for 12 hours a day, generally six days a week," and their advocates are pushing for their first raise in 25 years. Ten percent of their earnings is put in a savings account, but the amounts aren't large enough to be significant upon reentry. The Canadian example struck me as interesting because, whenever prisoner pays ideas are proposed as in Texas and Ohio, I often think they're either trying to get blood from a stone or will wind up mulcting families instead of the person who committed the crime. But if prisoners can earn, it's less problematic to require them to pay. Henry Ford wanted to pay his employees enough where they could buy one of his cars from him, and similarly if states want inmates to help solve their budget crises, it might behoove them to allow inmates to earn more money so they can pay more of the freight.

Army rocked by crime lab scandal
Read about another ugly crime lab scandal, this time from the military courts.

Jury out on effectiveness of faith based prisons
A comprehensive meta-analysis of research regarding the benefits from faith based prisons found, unsurprisingly if unhelpfully, that "based on current research, there’s no strong reason to believe that faith-based prisons work. However, there’s also no strong reason to believe that they don’t work." The author concludes "with thoughts on how faith-based prison programs might be improved, and ... a strategy that would allow such experimentation to proceed consistent with the Constitution." Via Sentencing Law & Policy.

Drug, graffiti sentencing, criminal discovery highlight House Criminal Jurisprudence agenda

Here are some of the big issues up in the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee today:

Discovery in criminal trials
Chairman Pete Gallego has a bill up requiring mutual pretrial discovery for both the prosecution and the defense, with related bills up by Reps Guillen and Dutton. If you get four lawyers in the room you're likely to get five opinions on the subject, but I'm not a lawyer and as I've listened to the debates over the years, I've warmed to the idea. There has to be some way to ensure exculpatory evidence is disclosed before trial. Just requiring open files of prosecutors might be my personal preference (many counties operate that way just fine), but having witnessed this fight go on for years, I know it will take at least minimalist defense disclosure to seal the deal politically at the Lege. Mutual discovery isn't a bad compromise given the severity of the problem.

Punishing graffiti
Rep. Jose Menendez has yet another graffiti enhancement, but one which at least pays for its penalty increase by reducing higher-level graffiti penalties. It would stop the practice of charging the offense based on the amount of damage caused, but increase the base penalty for graffiti to a Class A misdemeanor from a Class B, making it state jail felony on the second offense, or for graffiti "on a school, an institution of higher education, a place of worship or human burial, a public monument, a government building, or a community center that provides medical, social, or educational programs." Higher-levels of offenses up to a first-degree felony for graffiti would be eliminated. It's rare (and fiscally responsible) for a bill to "pay" for penalty hikes on one class of offenders by reducing them for others, which is what this bill does. The legislation is less cognizant, though, of counties' financial situations, requiring three days of jail time, mandatory, for all graffiti offenses. The fiscal note declares that "A county jail would incur costs associated with increased jail time per offender, but it is anticipated those costs could be absorbed within existing resources." Is that true in places like Harris County where jails are already completely full, shipping inmates off to other states and counties? Perhaps not. Interesting bill, though of course all of this is basically symbolic because clearance rates for the crime are astronomically low. I'm of the opinion that graffiti policy, as is the case with many social problems, needs to look beyond criminal justice approaches.

Rationalizing petty drug sentences
Rep. Harold Dutton has HB 853 up that would reduce penalties for less-than-a-gram drug offenses from a state jail felony to a Class A misdemeanor, a move which would save $120 million-plus during the next biennium, and $80 million per years in the out-years, according to the fiscal note. In my mind, I consider this companion legislation, in a way, with Dutton's legislation heard last week in the same committee reducing low-level marijuana penalties, mainly because, as a practical matter, space would need to be freed up in county jails. If both were passed, it would save money for the state and counties and allow government to focus scarce criminal justice resources on areas that more directly affect public safety. (RELATED: "Possession busts driving increased drug arrests: States tired of footing the bill.") Also, several items are up related to criminalizing synthetic cannabis, etc..

See the rest of the full agenda here. Click here to watch once it begins, which should be any old time now.

Roundup: Ugly spectacles, alternative solutions

While I'm focused today on work someone is actually paying me for, here are several items that merit Grits readers' attention:

Failure to disclose exculpatory evidence caused another wrongful conviction
In Dallas, a fellow named Larry Sims is about to be released after 25 years in prison after it was revealed that prosecutors failed to disclose exculpatory biological evidence. DNA test results show the victim lied about parts of her story, and the district court is expected to find that no reasonable jury would convict him based on the newly tested evidence. The Dallas DA isn't yet calling this an "exoneration," but it's certainly a wrongful conviction.

Law vs. Science: E pur si muove!
At the Houston Chronicle, Rick Casey has a column about the Forensic Science Commission's coming request for an Attorney General's opinion on whether it has jurisdiction to investigate the Todd Willingham case and other older incidents of forensic negligence or misconduct. (See earlier Grits coverage.) Noting that the jurisdictional concerns came from the City of Corsicana and the state fire marshal (he said he suspects that's the case but Chairman John Bradley actually said as much at the meeting), Casey declares that "we are watching an ugly spectacle of two law enforcement agencies, unable to marshal science on their side, aggressively fighting against science with lawyers." (MORE: From the Innocence Blog.)

Cuts to mental health would burden local jails
An analysis by Harris County of the proposed Texas House budget found that "cuts would transfer the burden onto a county government already contemplating hundreds of layoffs." The biggest unfunded mandates would come from cuts to state mental health services.

Legislating from the bench
Liberty and Justice for Y'all has a writeup of a recent case in which "the Court of Criminal Appeals donned their legislative hats and signed a new bill into law." Blogger B.W. Barnett agrees with the end result, but notes that "of course, you would always prefer that a legislature be the body handing down the law." 

Fourth time's a charm?
Smith County is considering yet another jail bond proposal which could go before voters in May. This would be the fourth plebiscite in as many years promoting jail expansion, which voters keep rejecting. (At least they're suggesting a much smaller facility than some of the grandiose proposals in the past.) If at first you don't succeed, I suppose ...

Jobs for ex-offenders reduce prison costs
The New York Times published an interesting story this week on various states helping ex-offenders get jobs to reduce recidivism and prison populations. In Michigan, "Through vigorous job placement programs and prudent use of parole, state officials say they have cut the prison population by 7,500, or about 15 percent, over the last four years, yielding more than $200 million in annual savings. Michigan spends $56 million a year on various re-entry programs, including substance abuse treatment and job training." Notably, both the Texas House and Senate budgets would eliminate Project RIO, which is the only state program we have (whether or not it functions as well as one might like) aimed at connecting ex-offenders with employment. These results argue the program should be expanded instead of deleted if the goal is to save money.

How to cut 30% from prison health costs
In California, legislators are gagging over high prison health costs, but the federal conservator appointed to address the problem says medical parole is the best, quickest solution: "You let me unload 1,500 inmates, and I'll give you a 30% drop in [prison healthcare] costs," he told legislators this week. Fifteen-hundred inmates amounts to less than 1% of the total California prison population.

Court program teaching art to graff writers
In Brooklyn, a juvenile court judge teamed up with an ex-tagger to create an art program for juvenile probationers convicted of graffiti crimes. The youth are actually taught professional-level art skills and the judge hangs examples of their artwork around his courtroom. Excellent idea! There are a lot of jobs and economic growth to be had in the creative sector, and I'd rather see the small handful of juvie graff writers who're actually caught channeled in that direction instead of focusing on punishment for punishment's sake.

Feds may cut reentry, reduce local asset forfeiture shares to save money
Budget cutters at the US Department of Justice have suggested reducing federal funds for reentry available under the Second Chance Act. They're also suggesting "Increasing the amount of time deducted from prison terms for good behavior," as well as "Sharing less of the proceeds from property confiscated from criminals with state and local authorities."