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:

• Marshall Project: The True Cost of Court Debt
• The Hill: Fees, fines, and the ability to pay

'Doing justice isn't left, it's right'
The Texas Public Policy Foundation's Marc Levin thinks progressive prosecutors are mis-labeled.

Alleged staff-on-staff sexual assault at Stiles Unit

A recent lawsuit alleged three prison guards at the Stiles Unit in Beaumont sexually assaulted a female colleague, The Appeal reported in an item I'd missed from December. The three were indicted last year for unlawful restraint of a public servant and official oppression. The victim's attorney said "he interviewed other female correctional officers at Stiles while investigating Carver’s case, and they told him that sexual harassment was routine and that they were ignored when they filed grievances."

TDCJ spokesman Jeremy Desel told The Appeal that in 2018, "there were 52 alleged incidents of sexual assault and 47 alleged incidents of improper sexual activity with persons in custody by TDCJ staff; one report in each category came from Stiles." I see where that data comes from, but I also see seemingly conflicting numbers reported by the agency.

According to the agency's 2018 Prison Rape Elimination Act report, there were 775 allegations of staff on offender sexual abuse, sexual harassment, or voyeurism in 2018. "Of the 541 sexual abuse allegations, 74 (13.6%) were identified by OIG as meeting the elements of the Texas Penal Code for Sexual Assault, Aggravated Sexual Assault, or Improper Sexual Activity with a Person in Custody." However, only 20 were ruled "substantiated." Most of the 775 cases reported were dubbed unsubstantiated or unfounded.

I don't know how to square data from PREA and the Ombudsman report Desel cited. 

Nationally, allegations of sexual abuse by staff are more common than allegations against inmates, with about 6% being dubbed substantiated. Readers will recall Texas youth prisons allegedly have high levels of staff-on-inmate sexual assaults. But male guards assaulting female guards in groups is a whole other kettle of fish. Anyone else surely would be prosecuted for sexual assault, not unlawful restraint and official oppression.

That sort of hostile work environment could also play a big role in why the agency has trouble retaining female staff. 

RELATED: #MeToo among Texas women prison guards.

Sheriff candidate targeted for refusing to train detectives in Reid technique, prioritizing rape victims ... and this is an attack, how?

Until now, Austin PD brass, investigative reporters who studied the case, and Sgt. Liz Donegan all agreed: Donegan was removed as head of the Sex Crimes Unit in 2011 because she insisted on following the FBI Uniform Crime Report's definitions on whether a rape case is "cleared" while APD brass wanted her to fudge the numbers to boost the clearance rates upward. Regular readers will recall the scandal at the Austin PD, first reported on the national podcast, Reveal. Chief Bryan Manley portrayed the incident as a policy disagreement that was resolved with her removal.

When she was gone, clearance rates for the unit predictably skyrocketed. But an independent analysis by the Department of Public Safety found APD was improperly misclassifying many cases as "cleared." In other words, Donegan was right and should never have been removed. Donegan, ultimately left the department and is presently running as a Democrat for Travis County Sheriff. See Grits' prior coverage of her story and the fallout, here:

• Whistleblower: Austin PD fudged rape clearance rates to boost numbers, pretend hundreds of crimes were solved when no arrests were made
• Austin police chief needs better responses to whistleblower allegations of improperly cleared rape cases
• More than a clerical error: DPS audit proves Austin PD forced out sex-crimes chief for refusing to fake clearance rates
• Third party will review rape-clearance data that spurred ouster of Austin PD division chief
• Austin PD chief is the last person who should be giving other chiefs advice on rape-clearance data
• Austin's Chief Manley blames victims for misunderstanding his victim blaming comments

It's important to note that Chief Manley has never disputed that Sgt. Donegan was removed from the Sex Crimes Unit over the categorization of cleared cases. He just insisted she was categorizing them wrong. Then, at 4:45 P.M. on New Years Eve in 2018, the chief released the results of the DPS analysis declaring Donegan was right about the clearance-rate definitions and APD brass had made a mistake. Last I heard, APD said it would take at least until 2022 (!) to figure out how to adjust their policies going forward.

Nobody at the time claimed Donegan was removed because she was too victim-centric or had failed to train new detectives. But now, six weeks before the primary election that will decide if she becomes the next Travis County Sheriff, we hear these allegations.

The Austin Statesman was largely uninterested in covering this story when it was Chief Manley's turn in the barrel, but now has begun filing open records requests on Donegan and uncovered a memo, apparently contemporaneous with her ouster, which neither Donegan nor investigative reporters who earlier had peppered the agency with open-records requests had ever seen before. (My guess: someone must have leaked where it was and how to ask for it.) In it, an Austin PD Lieutenant both praised Donegan, in many respects, but also criticized her. The memo was presented to an APD Commander as providing a justification for Donegan's removal.

The memo, from Lt. Michael Eveleth, began by declaring he was promoted out of the Sex Crimes unit shortly after Donegan's arrival. So most or all of this is second-hand, not things he witnessed personally working under her. Many direct criticisms were pulled from detective surveys.

For starters, though, the memo began by praising Donegan at length, although hardly a whisper of that praise made it into the Austin Statesman's hit piece on the topic. For example:

Sgt. Donegan has fought for resources and additional investigators and has brought national recognition to the Austin Police Department's Sex Crimes unit. She has been instrumental (along with the Austin Travis County Sexual Assault Response and Resource Team, Safeplace and Victim Services) in educating the public and law enforcement in regards to stranger vs. non-stranger sexual assaults. Sgt. Donegan recognized that most sexual assault training addressed stranger assaults, when in reality, most offenders are known to the victim.

It's also worth pointing out that, by his own admission, Eveleth never made any of these criticisms to Donegan's face.

I truly believe that Sgt. Donegan has done a great job locally, statewide and nationally in educating and informing the law enforcement community, and the public, about the struggles and challenges of sexual assault victims and difficulties in investigating and prosecuting those cases, especially non-stranger. She also cares about her detectives and has always been supportive of them when they have had to deal with personal and family matters. I have shared with Sgt. Donegan that I believe she has made great strides with the Austin Police Department's Sex Crimes Unit.

But what Eveleth said to Sgt. Donegan and what he said to APD Commanders about her were wildly different things. While he told her she'd made "great strides," he told APD brass that "the national recognition, the educational campaigns, and the outside training has had significant consequences on the Austin Police Department's Sex Crimes unit," which suffers from a "void in day to day supervision." With friends like that, who needs enemies!

Eveleth's biggest complaint was that, even though all the data agreed with Donegan that non-stranger sexual assaults should be a bigger priority, he disliked reduced emphasis on stranger-assualt cases because those are "the type of assaults that the media reports on." A detective quoted says stranger rapes should be a bigger priority because "these are the cases that make the news." Eveleth lamented that Donegan had hesitated to encourage sensationalized media coverage on stranger rapes without full information. Eveleth wanted the department to issue a media release in one such case because those are the incidents that "garner the most attention."

Eveleth cherrypicked from detective surveys saying Donegan is too "one-sided" on behalf of crime victims' interests and too much of a "victim advocate." This is maybe the first time I'd heard that used as an internal criticism of a police officer! (In his prose, Eveleth mentioned that some detectives expressed pride at Donegan and the division's work and supported the unit's mission, but only negative quotes were pulled out to be highlighted.)

His other big complaint was even more telling and, if local reporters understood what they were reading, in reality reflects quite well on Sgt. Donegan. Eveleth was unhappy that she did not embrace having her detectives trained in the "Reid technique" for interrogating suspects. He was upset that only one person from her unit attended a training organized by the department.

The Reid technique emphasizes befriending suspects on the front end, then accusing them aggressively, threatening them with worst-case scenarios and hoping they'll crack. Grits readers will recall many articles on this topic, and lately it's starting to be abandoned by interrogation experts.

Honestly, it's very much to Donegan's credit that she failed to send her people to that training; these are methods that have been directly associated with false convictions. Austin PD shouldn't be training any detectives to use them.

So the complaints seem to be that 1) she refused to train her officers in techniques that produce false convictions; 2) she prioritized victims and their interests; 3) she refused to promote sensationalized media coverage before a case had been investigated; 4) some of her detectives thought they needed more training, and 5) national attention and accolades had left her too big for her britches.

Given the machismo-oriented departmental culture, any successful woman at APD would be criticized for #5. To me, #4 seems like something open for interpretation (especially if the training available is Reid-technique oriented). And #1-3 sound like badges of honor!

Steering the Statesman reporter toward this document was likely a campaign-driven attack, but it hardly matters. To anyone with enough context to understand what they're looking at, this document endorses Donegan more than it critiques her. Regrettably, "Statesman readers" do not necessarily number among those privy to context when it comes to local criminal-justice reporting.

Texas should raze last, large youth prisons in light of high sex-victimization rates

The Bureau of Justice Statistics came out with a new report last week declaring that one in seven youth prison inmates in Texas are sexually assaulted while in state custody, see the Texas Observer's coverage. This confirms based on data what legislators have already heard via anecdote: Texas juvenile prisons are unsafe for the youth incarcerated in them.

The Observer did a good job fleshing out the reasons, which will be familiar to (very) long-time Grits readers: Texas continues to rely on larger facilities instead of following bipartisan, national best practices of using smaller, better-staffed facilities closer to the urban areas where the youths' families live.

It was solely at those larger units that the sex-assault problem was so severe: Four facilities reported that double-digit percentages of inmates in their care said they'd been sexually victimized.

• Evins Unit: 13.5%
• Gainesville: 16.0%
• McLennan Co.: 16.1%
• Ron Jackson Unit: 14.0%

Some of this has been reported in the local press but this report reminds us that the problem has systemic roots.

By contrast, nationally, the new survey found that sexual victimization reported in juvenile justice facilities declined. The state-run Texas units were among a handful of outliers.

In addition to high rates of violence and sexual victimization, employee turnover at Texas youth prisons are the highest at any state agency, and employees describe a nightmarish work environment.

Over the last decade, Texas has closed most of its youth prisons, regular readers will recall, with youth-inmate populations down to 786 from more than 5,000 kids 12 years ago when the youth decarceration effort began.

Community-based responses are more expensive per kid, but more effective and less costly in the long run. And they aren't prone to large proportions of youth in their care being sexually victimized.

It's worth mentioning, since Texas began decarcerating youth prisons, reducing those held by the state by more than 80 percent, juvenile crime by all measures has continued to decline. Even though a handful of those released committed serious offenses, juvenile-crime rates plummeted and the state overall became a safer place.

Since Nate Blakeslee first broke the story that Texas Youth Commission staff were molesting youth back in 2007,  Texas has tried everything to reduce sexual victimization rates at youth prisons except to follow expert advice to abandon large youth prisons altogether. In 2007 when these allegations first arose and the Legislature intervened, they created a "blue ribbon panel" which recommended closing these large facilities and shifting to smaller, community-based settings. Red and blue states alike have followed that approach, but the Texas Legislature balked, insisting on keeping a few large units open, even as their numbers dwindled. That's where the youth are allegedly being sexually victimized.

To make matters worse, legislative leadership have used allegations of violence and high sexual-victimization rates at these facilities as an excuse not to "raise the age" of adult criminal responsibility from 17 to 18, insisting that youth prisons are already out of control and couldn't handle the influx. Despite bipartisan agreement that 17-year olds shouldn't be incarcerated as adults, Texas remains one of only three states that does so.

Think about that: legislative leaders have both insisted "We won't close dangerous youth prisons," and also, "As long as youth prisons are dangerous, we can't raise the age." That's a strange, self-imposed Catch 22, but a convenient one if you're somebody who just thinks 17-year olds should be incarcerated as adults.

Grits understands the raise-the-age transition could be bumpy and won't be cost-free. In the long run, however, the success of Texas' juvenile-decarceration experiment over the last decade makes me sanguine it can work. But only if Texas legislators embrace juvenile-detention best practices and abandon these large, anachronistic facilities.

MORE: From the Waco Tribune-Herald.

Humpty Dumpty, the Castle Doctrine, and other stories

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

Humpty Dumpty and the Castle Doctrine

The judge in former Dallas police officer Amber Guyger's murder trial for the shooting of Botham Jean gave the jury instructions on the Castle Doctrine defense, despite the fact that Guyger entered Jean's home and shot him, and wasn't defending her "castle." Her lawyers employed this argument as their primary defense (that it wasn't her home was a "mistake of fact," they said) so the judge had no choice but to address it, but Humpty Dumpty would be proud! The claim didn't help Guyger, however. She was convicted, anyway. UPDATE: Guyger was sentenced to ten years.

Death of trailblazing deputy raises difficult, familiar questions
The tragic shooting death of a Harris County Sheriff's deputy - a trail blazing figure who was the first Sikh to work in Harris County law enforcement - raises familiar questions with no satisfying answers. The alleged killer is a severely schizophrenic parolee who had gone off his meds and heard voices telling him to kill people. Is the criminal-justice system the best way to deal with people whose offenses are rooted in severe mental illness? How did this convicted felon and parolee get a firearm? He already was the subject of a warrant for violating his parole, should more resources be allocated to search for high-risk parole violators? His family had told officials he was dangerous and off his meds: Are there "red flag" laws that could have allowed them to act sooner? The circumstances surrounding this awful episode will provide fodder for these and many other debates in coming years. The public dialogue would have been easier, in a sense, if this had turned out to be a hate crime. The issues surrounding mental illness and the politics of gun proliferation are much more complex and difficult to deal with.

Private jail operator keeps screwing up
At the Liberty County Jail, which is operated by the Geo Group, "In the last 60 days, there have been two felony escapes, one of their correctional officers was arrested for stealing from inmates while on duty, and most recently, there are questions surrounding the death of a prisoner who hanged himself while in their custody. Apart from those instances, they have also flunked two jail inspections this year, one on April 22 and the second on June 28," the Houston Chronicle reported. Local officials are considering whether to terminate ties with the private prison contractor.

The economics of high probation fees
Check out a new article from our friend Todd Jermstad, probation director in Bell County, on the history and future of court-imposed fees at Texas probation departments. Especially interesting was his thesis that policymakers should take into account reduced means of Gen X and Millenial defendants, whose economic prospects remain less robust than earlier generations. Grits may delve more deeply into this soon, but for now, here's the link.

Bail litigation roundup
See a write-up from The Appeal of recent bail-litigation news, including from Houston and Galveston. See also related Grits coverage and our discussion of the topic in Just Liberty's most recent Reasonably Suspicious podcast.

Over friggin' pot?
In Hutto, a police officer responding to a call that someone was smoking marijuana beat up a man in his driveway and made false accusations in official documents to justify it. The victim had no marijuana in his possession, and bodycam video proved the cop was lying about the victim pushing the officer before he was attacked. The officer was fired, was indicted in May, and the victim has filed a civil rights suit, reported KXAN-TV.

Homelessness problems and solutions
In the wake of Austin's tendentious debate over homeless policy, I was interested to see this excellent New Republic article on "housing insecurity in the nation's richest cities." When, in the 1990s, my wife and I could rent a dilapidated three-bedroom house in East Austin for $190, homelessness wasn't such a big problem. Now that rents in my neighborhood for similar homes approach $3k per month, it's little wonder more people are on the streets. Meanwhile, Bloomberg News had an informative piece a couple of months back on how Finland all but eliminated people sleeping on the streets by investing in preventive strategies like rent subsidies.

How police misconduct gets covered up by plea bargaining
Here's an excellent analysis from Brooklyn public defender Scott Hechinger of how mandatory minimums and the threat of long sentences help cover up police misconduct that would otherwise come out in court. That's because "victims of police abuse — illegal stops and frisks, car stops and searches, home raids, manufactured charges and excessive force — routinely forgo their constitutional right to challenge police abuse in a pretrial hearing in exchange for plea deals." This is undeniably true. It's only in cases like the episode in Hutto, described above, where victims face no charges that officers can be held accountable through regular court processes.

Financial motive not only reason prosecutors oppose actual-innocence claims
The New York Times published a feature on falsely convicted people who've been exonerated by the evidence but cannot secure an "actual innocence" ruling because prosecutors fear the financial consequences of civil rights lawsuits against local jurisdictions. All of the examples are from other states, but Texas' situation casts additional light on this topic. I was policy director at the Innocence Project of Texas when the Legislature passed the best-in-the-nation compensation package for exonerees in 2009. We hoped to avoid this dynamic by having the state compensate innocent convicts instead of the locals. Indeed, the bill was sold as a form of "tort reform," eliminating local liability for what were seen as systemic flaws causing false convictions. But it turned out, the real, underlying complaints weren't financial. Many prosecutors and some judges on the Court of Criminal Appeals simply don't want to see falsely convicted people compensated, ever, and go to great lengths to oppose actual-innocence claims, despite the fact that locals weren't on the hook. So Grits is skeptical of the article's thesis that the motive behind opposing actual-innocence claims is financial. I think it's more pernicious than that.

Sheriffs and #cjreform
Our pal Jessica Pishko published a New York Times op ed on Sheriff's offices, declaring "The problem of sheriffs is particularly acute in the South and Southwest, where the office has more power and was historically used to prop up white supremacy." She calls for Sheriffs to undertake what amounts to a truth-and-reconciliation process for past wrongs. That sanguine suggestion to me seems unlikely. Texas alone has 254 counties, after all - a few might do that, under the right political circumstances, but most will not. And abolishing the office, as some have called for, doesn't change the fact that someone has to perform those functions. Grits has often thought that sheriffs' jail-management duties should be separated from their responsibilities to patrol unincorporated areas. These are distinct functions involving very different skill sets, and typically those elected to the office only have knowledge of one or the other. Whether Sheriffs should be an elected position is a question for another day.

Deep thinking on sex-offender policies
A recent NY Times piece examined emerging research on people who are sexually attracted to minors, finding that its roots are not genetic, but are "prenatal," and "can be traced to specific periods of development in the womb." And this Marshall Project story looks at evidence-based anti-recidivism programs aimed at people convicted of violent, sexual crimes once their sentence is complete. I found both articles to be thoughtful contributions to the discussion.

Most crime dropping nationally, but look at those rape numbers!
New Uniform Crime Report data is out, and most categories of crime have continued to fall, except rape, which has risen precipitously since 2014. See first-cut analyses from the Brennan Center and the Marshall Project. No one knows for sure what's behind the rise in rape numbers. The feds began using a more expansive definition of sexual assault in 2014, but the numbers increased even using the "legacy" definition. The question arises: Have there actually been more rapes committed over this period, or are we simply now getting a more complete picture of the scope of the problem in the wake of increased reporting thanks to the #MeToo movement? ¿Quien sabe? Regardless, the year-over-year decline in property crimes, murders, robberies, etc., is cause for celebration, while the sex-assault data should contribute to deeper conversations on the question.

Austin's Chief Manley blames victims for misunderstanding his victim-blaming comments

Austin Police Chief Bryan Manley apologized if rape victims felt he had blamed them in his department's coverup surrounding inflated sexual-assault clearance rates, but insisted he had never done so. Here's what he said.

"If my comments made survivors of sexual assault in my community feel like we were victim-blaming, then I absolutely apologize," Manley said in the interview. "Sitting here today, absolutely, if there are survivors in my community that felt like we were in any way victim-blaming or finger pointing, that's not what we were doing. We were trying to point out the possibilities of why we had a higher exceptional clearance rate."

That's not an apology, that's more victim blaming. Rape survivors didn't feel that he blamed them, they observed it.

Here's the context: Manley's predecessor as APD chief, Art Acevedo (now chief in Houston) replaced the head of Austin's sex crimes unit because she refused to alter clearance-rate data to say cases were closed because victims wouldn't cooperate in situations where that wasn't the case.

The department actually did that to her. It's not a perception. It's documented history.

When, last year, Chief Manley spoke to your correspondent about the topic, he continued to claim that the cases were closed because victims wouldn't cooperate, saying there was nothing his department could do in such circumstances.

This was a false characterization. We now know that for certain. Out of a sample of a hundred, Texas DPS said a third were closed improperly. What was improper about them? Results were miscategorized to say the victims chose not to cooperate when that wasn't true.

Victims who observed 1) the department miscategorize their positions after 2) removing the department head who'd been doing it right, then 3) heard Chief Manley doubling down on the false characterization over and over in the media, will feel blamed. That's because they were blamed, in a cynical attempt at media manipulation.

Think "media manipulation" is too harsh? Last fall, Manley told anyone who would listen that his department couldn't help it if victims wouldn't cooperate. But when it was proven he was wrong - when DPS audit results showed many victims had not refused to cooperate and had been wrongly blamed en masse in APD data - he held onto the information for nearly three weeks before revealing it at a hastily called press conference late afternoon on New Years Eve. That's a tactic to minimize media coverage, but it backfired, demonstrating the Chief's mens rea on the subject.

Manley says he was trying to "point out the possibilities" regarding why "exceptionally cleared" cases were miscategorized. But the only possibilities he focused on, in fact, blamed rape victims. He has refused to countenance the "possibility" that APD brass intentionally, improperly inflated the data and removed the head of the sex-crimes unit when she refused to participate in their malfeasance. But that is, in fact, precisely what happened. Manley's "apology" claiming victims misunderstood him is another insult. He's the one issuing all the misleading statements.

If Manley's not going to actually apologize, he should stay mum. No one needs to hear him claim victims are too dumb to understand what's going on here, when everyone but him can see quite plainly.

See prior, related Grits posts:

• Austin police chief is the last person who should be giving other chiefs advice on rape-clearance rate data.
• Whistleblower: Austin PD fudged rape clearance rates to boost numbers, pretend hundreds of crimes were solved when no arrests were made
• Austin police chief needs better responses to whistleblower allegations of improperly cleared rape cases
• Third party will review clearance-rate data that spurred ouster of Austin PD division chief
• More than a clerical error: DPS audit proves Austin PD forced out sex-crimes chief for refusing to fake clearance rates

Austin Police Chief is the last person who should be giving other chiefs advice on rape-clearance rate data!

Bizarrely, Austin Police Chief Bryan Manley is scheduled to speak to the Major Cities Police Chiefs' Association in Washington D.C. this week to share "hard lessons he's learned" about how police categorize sexual assault cases.

He's not ready. Manley hasn't yet taken responsibility for what happened or been held accountable for his cynical strategy to blame rape victims for APD-management malfeasance. Until he does, he shouldn't be lecturing anybody on this topic. In fact, this might be a good week to cancel his trip and spend the time instead on self-reflection, or perhaps listening to some of the growing cadre of victims upset about how the department handled their cases.

Readers will recall Austin PD ousted the head of the sex crimes unit, Liz Donegan, because she refused to inflate data to make it look like her unit solved more crimes than it did. Under former Chief Art Acevedo, who is now chief in Houston, the department pressured her to claim detectives solved crimes but cases didn't go forward because victims refused to cooperate.

Donegan refused, and was dismissed from her post, replaced by officials who immediately began to change the data to increase "clearance rates" by 50 percent. When the news came out in a national podcast last fall, Manley doubled down, repeatedly insisting to the media, including to this writer, that victims' failure to cooperate was the source of the problem.

But an audit by the Texas Department of Public Safety, released with little notice by Chief Manley at a late-New-Years-Eve press conference, found that a third of cleared cases in the sample analyzed were improperly categorized as "exceptionally cleared" because the victims wouldn't cooperate.

That's significant because Chief Manley describes Donegan's ouster as stemming from a "disagreement" over how to report clearance-rate data, which he says was resolved when she was replaced. So he's granted publicly that she was dismissed over this issue under his predecessor, the only remaining question was whether APD was right to do so?

We learned on New Years Eve that they were not; she was a victim of some seriously shady employment practices. Donegan was wrongfully removed from her position because she wouldn't blame rape victims in her clearance-rate data for her own unit's failures. This can now be stated without fear of contradiction or accusation of libel. It's just true.

Manley wants to pretend the problems all stemmed from clerical errors, hoping to elide any culpability for malfeasance by APD brass. But that ignores the severity of the now-admitted/proven allegations. To repeat: APD dismissed the head of its sex-crimes unit because she wouldn't fake data, then changed the categorization of case results to blame victims for cases not going forward.

The chief has never publicly apologized either to Sgt. Donegan or the wrongly-blamed rape victims for his department's slanders against them, but now is going to lecture other chiefs about the "hard lessons" he's learned? Please!

Only one of two things can explain it: complete obliviousness or excessive chutzpah. Or, I suppose the third possibility is he's receiving really bad PR advice.

See prior, related Grits posts:

• Third party will review clearance-rate data that spurred ouster of Austin PD division chief
• More than a clerical error: DPS audit proves Austin PD forced out sex-crimes chief for refusing to fake clearance rates
• Whistleblower: Austin PD fudged rape clearance rates to boost numbers, pretend hundreds of crimes were solved when no arrests were made
• Austin police chief needs better responses to whistleblower allegations of improperly cleared rape cases

Third party will review rape-clearance data that spurred ouster of Austin PD division chief

Last night, the Austin City Council voted to have a third party review years worth of cases to discover the extent to which the Police Department inflated clearance rates in sexual assault cases. the agency pressured the head of the sex crimes unit to declare more cases "exceptionally cleared," then removed her when she refused and began puffing up the numbers, anyway. Now we know she was in the right and APD brass was fudging data to misrepresent success rates to the city council and the public.

Here's the Statesman's minimalist coverage, but you can watch the testimony yourself if you like. On the latest episode of the Reasonably Suspicious podcast, my co-host Mandy Marzullo and I included a segment on this topic, in which I took APD Chief Bryan Manley to task for blaming victims and playing hide-the-ball. I've excerpted it here to highlight the issue; give it a listen:


The city council is letting Chief Manley off easy. He has not behaved like a man who understands why what the department did here is a problem. OTOH, the controversy isn't over: Manley is scheduled to address the issue before the public-safety commission on Monday evening.

See prior, related Grits posts:

• More than a clerical error: DPS audit proves Austin PD forced out sex-crimes chief for refusing to fake clearance rates
• Whistleblower: Austin PD fudged rape clearance rates to boost numbers, pretend hundreds of crimes were solved when no arrests were made
• Austin police chief needs better responses to whistleblower allegations of improperly cleared rape cases

More than a clerical error: DPS audit proves Austin PD forced out sex-crimes chief for refusing to fake clearance rates

Auditors from the Texas Department of Public Safety  confirmed allegations that the Austin Police Department pressured the head of its sex-crimes unit to improperly classify rapes as "exceptionally cleared" when that was not the case. She was removed from her position when she didn't comply.

Chief Bryan Manley announced the results from the DPS audit late afternoon on New Years Eve, hoping it would get lost in the holiday media cycle. That's a disgraceful, punk move. This is too serious an issue to play media games. UPDATE: ProPublica reported that Manley received the preliminary results from DPS on Dec. 13, more than two weeks before he released them.

As is typical in Austin, the local press downplayed criticisms of APD, portraying the problem as a clerical error. The Statesman headline was, "Austin police improperly classified some rape cases, audit finds." KXAN's headline was, "DPS report: 30 APD rape cases should not have been cleared," although in fact DPS audited just a sample and those 30 cases represent many, many more. KUT parroted the same line, failing to mention that APD forced out its division chief over the issue.

These headlines could/should have been something along the lines of "DPS confirms whistleblower account of inflated rape clearance rates," but the Austin press remains in the pocket of local police and rarely publishes explicit criticisms unless backed into a corner by outside reporting and circumstances.

That's what happened here. Despite local advocates pressuring the department all year over inadequately investigated rape cases, the Austin press didn't cover the story until a podcast from national outlets reported on the whistle blower and bogus clearance rates.

Notably, although the DPS audit released Monday found a third of audited rape cases were misclassified,  Manley earlier claimed his own staff had audited the cases and found nothing wrong. The Statesman reported in December that "he asked his staff to do a random audit of cases to ensure they were properly closed. He said they found the department was complying with FBI guidelines."

I'd like to know more about this random audit the Chief supposedly had his own people do. Why did they find zero cases were miscategorized, and DPS found a third of them were? Were these staff incompetent? Or were they given directions designed to cover up the problem instead of expose it? That's the sort of thing an aggressive local press ought to be digging into with open-records requests, but Grits won't hold his breath.

All press reports that portray this as some obscure data mix up are misleading. This was a scandal, flat-out fraud and malfeasance, with APD removing the head of a major division because she wouldn't falsify data to make the department appear to be solving more crimes. As Grits opined on Twitter when the news came out, "This was not a bureaucratic error, as Manley would like to portray it. The head of the sex crime unit was removed from her job because she refused to falsify clearance-rate numbers. Thank God she spoke up!"

The ouster of the sex-crimes-unit head happened on former Chief Art Acevedo's watch, but Chief Manley's ham-handed response has made the scandal and its cover-up his own. In a city with an aggressive, watchdog press, he might not survive the scandal. In Austin, he's betting he'll limp through thanks to lapdogs in the lame-stream press, and a few years ago, that might have been a safe assumption.

But survivor advocates and city council members are going to read the audit for themselves, and in the wake of the union-contract fight, mainstream media has proven less important in the capital city than ever before when it comes to policing politics. Whether the press report it or not, APD has been caught in a lie for all to see. If he wants to keep his job, Chief Manley must stop the media games and obfuscations and address these topics more forthrightly.

An apology to the rape survivors whose cases APD lied about - claiming their cases couldn't move forward because the victims wouldn't cooperate - would be a good start.

Conflation of punishment with price system distorts justice in sex-assault cases

We live in an era when "justice" has been defined largely in terms of the price system, as though it were subject to laws of supply and demand. The root theory behind our modern justice system, in large part, holds that punishments are a "price" paid for misconduct and, if they do not deter, it's because the "price" wasn't high enough.

Defining punishment abstractly as the "price" of crime generates perverse cultural meanings for victims, prosecutors, jurors, and others engaged with the system. Under the price-system mindset, harsh punishment by the state (which monopolizes the currency of punishment) is evidence that the victim is valued, while more lenient outcomes are evidence that they are not, that a lower "price" has been placed on their suffering.

This implicit pricing model distorts nearly every part of the justice system, but particularly regarding sexual assault. Certainly, some women want maximal punishment for their rapist. But because the overwhelming majority of women know their perpetrators, often including beloved family members, harsh punishments can also perversely prevent some women from reporting crimes against them. For them, defining the "value" placed on their suffering vis a vis the "price" of punishment harms their interests, making them less safe and abnegating their needs rather than meeting them.

This is why Grits has often thought that restorative justice tenets may ultimately provide a viable, alternative path for how to confront these horrible situations. Such interventions focus on the questions, “Who was harmed? What do they need? Whose obligation is it to meet those needs?,” which seems like a more constructive approach than one-size-fits-all punishment regimens.

But the pricing model is what we've got, and a couple of recent, high-profile cases help demonstrate how treacherous this terrain can be.

In Waco, the town is in a furor over outgoing DA Abel Reyna's office agreeing to a plea bargain for a former Baylor frat president, Jacob Walter Anderson, indicted by a grand jury on four counts of sexual assault. Under the deal, he pled to a third-degree felony charge of unlawful restraint. He'll serve no jail time, undergo counseling, pay a $400 fine, and won't be required to register as a sex offender. Reported the Tribune-Herald:

The victim, who has been outspoken against the plea bargain, began to cry loudly Monday after Strother announced his decision to accept it. She urged the judge to reject the plea offer and set a trial so she could have her day in court. She said Anderson sexually assaulted her, repeatedly choked her and left her for dead after she fell unconscious. 

Later, in an emotional victim impact statement, she told Strother she is devastated that he approved the plea bargain. She called out prosecutor Hilary LaBorde, who struck the deal with Anderson, and McLennan County District Attorney Abel Reyna for not attending the hearing. 

“If I had the courage to come back to Waco and face my rapist and testify, you could at least have had enough respect for me to show up today,” she said. “You both will have to live with this decision to let a rapist run free in society without any warning to future victims. I wonder if you will have nightmares every night watching Jacob rape me over and over again?” ... 

The woman described in sometimes graphic detail what she said Anderson did to her. 

“When I was completely unconscious, he dumped me face down in the dirt and left me there to die,” the woman said. “He had taken what he wanted, had proven his power over my body. He then walked home and went to bed without a second thought to the ravaged, half-dead woman he had left behind.” 

The woman said she has learned through this process that “the McLennan County justice system is severely broken,” but she thanked the women who created an online petition opposing the plea agreement that she said was signed by more than 85,000 people.

So why did the McLennan DA's office fail to go to trial? They feared an acquittal, was supposedly the reason. ADA Hillary Labord

declined comment about the case. However, in an email she sent the woman and her family after they learned of the plea agreement by reading the Tribune-Herald, she said she offered the deal after an acquittal in a sexual assault case that she said was similar to Anderson’s. She said she was concerned Anderson would be found not guilty. 

“(The jury) engaged in a lot of victim blaming — and the behavior of that victim and (this victim) is very similar,” she said. “It’s my opinion that our jurors aren’t ready to blame rapists and not victims when there isn’t concrete proof of more than one victim.”

The prosecutor's motive ostensibly was to protect a victim who didn't want to be protected, but she never spoke to the victim to tell her about the deal, letting her learn about it in the newspaper. So far, one notices, no one has judged the behavior or credibility of the victim but the prosecutor. Jurors never had  the chance.

In that light, how did anything that happened throughout this process meet this woman's needs? The state demonstrated they didn't value her by judging her credibility, failing to communicate, even to say the DA planned to dishonor her wishes, then they placed a low, abstract "price" on her pain through lenient punishment without giving her a chance to tell jurors her side of the story. No wonder the woman's angry! A statement released by the victim's family, the Tribune-Herald reported, declared:

“This is an absolute travesty,” the statement reads. “By agreeing to this plea, (prosecutor) Hilary LaBorde and the McLennan County DA’s office have allowed that rape is no longer a crime in Texas. They are telling the rapists and sexual predators, ‘Go ahead and violently rape, choke to near death and abandon your unconscious, ravaged and used-up victim and we will make darn sure you get some counseling. Even if a grand jury indicts you on four counts of sexual assault, we don’t care.’ 

“Oh, and ‘All you rape victims, don’t bother to report it, because we will put you through hell for years, make promises about getting a conviction and lie to you about not accepting a plea the whole time. We will give your rapist counseling and drop all charges and let him go free. We don’t care about about justice and we don’t care about you,’ ” she said in the statement.

The victim here isn't just angry about a light sentence, although she clearly thinks her rapist should have been punished more harshly. But she's also angry about not being kept informed, about the DA's office ignoring her willingness to testify, and not getting her day in court. She feels lied to. She felt throughout the process that she wasn't being heard, viewed the trial as the moment when she finally could be, then saw that opportunity taken from her in a deal considered friendly to her assailant. Anyone would be mad.

By contrast, consider this recent story:  In Bell County, a man disproved false rape allegations by producing a selfie taken in Austin as an alibi. An ex-girlfriend accused him of breaking into her house, raping her, and carving an "X" into her chest. Police initially believed her, and the guy was in serious jeopardy of spending a long stretch in prison if he hadn't been able to prove his whereabouts.  Now, she has been charged for making the false report.

Thank heavens the fellow was out of the county and could produce a time-stamped selfie! If the same fact-pattern occurred in the pre-cell phone era, he'd be screwed.

False allegations are rare but do happen. Indeed, the FBI has asserted that, 'The “unfounded' rate, or percentage of complaints determined through investigation to be false, is higher for forcible rape than for any other Index crime." Some false allegations, as in the San Antonio Four case, appear to arise from retaliation. Some come from young women embarrassed at their own behavior. And some are women who are raped by a stranger and make an honest but tragic mistake about their assailant's identity.

In those incidents where a rape did occur but the wrong person was accused, a double tragedy occurs. An innocent is punished for the sins of another and the real perpetrator goes free. That's a worst-possible-case scenario that should justifiably scare anyone - say, jurors asked to pass judgment in these instances.  Women deserve justice, but justice is poorly served when an innocent person is punished.

Grits values both the victim's pain in Waco and the liberty interests of the man in Bell County. For that matter, I hope that the defrocked frat president turns his life around, repents his sins, goes on to live a productive life, and never does anything like that again. It's possible the best way to ensure that happens is to send him to prison for decades, but I've no evidence that's true.

I don't know how to resolve these high-level contradictions based on evidence, particularly when the evidence we do have suffers from undercounts and corrupted data about how many rapes are actually solved. One bit of good news: changes on the misleading data front are apparently in the works.

In response to the Reveal podcast criticizing Austin PD's categorization of "exceptionally" cleared rape cases (see Grits coverage here and here), the FBI will change its definitions regarding what qualifies a rape investigation for "exceptional" clearance, according to a followup story from the Center for Investigative Reporting.

For decades, law enforcement lumped cases which were "cleared" by arresting a suspect into categories along with much more numerous cases where police had identified a suspect, had probable cause to make an arrest, but chose not to do so because a judgment had been made by police or prosecutors that the case wasn't winnable. As with the case in Waco, typically victims weren't involved in or often even notified of those judgments.

Grits cannot presently discern the path leading from an unsatisfactory status quo to a system that more reliably delivers just outcomes in sexual-assault cases. But it's clear to me the justice system as presently constituted exacerbates the problem, and IMO a big source of the disconnect is this conflation of the value society places on victim's suffering with punishment as the "price" paid for crime.

Austin police chief needs better responses to whistleblower allegations of improperly cleared rape cases

After the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX aired complaints in a podcast from an Austin PD whistleblower claiming she'd been pressured to declare rape cases "cleared," the City Council got an earful at the hearing on police oversight Thursday evening. (Go here to listen to the podcast; the APD segment begins at ~35:10 mark.) KUT has now followed up, with one of the reporters discussing in detail what evidence they do and don't have surrounding the alleged clearance-rate coverup.

Grits wrote about the case the other day, so Chief Manley came up to me after the vote on the union contract (more on that, soon), earnestly wanting to explain to me why the issue was no big deal. But just as he did with the podcast reporters, he stopped short of being able to defend his position with specifics. He would say he had supervisors audit this or he was told that, while the whistleblower was speaking of specific cases about which she had first-hand knowledge. And his stance that he never intended the City Council to think "cleared cases" meant "solved cases" really doesn't match his comments to city officials quoted in the podcast. That's how any reasonable person would have taken it.

There probably needs to be an independent investigation of this episode by someone outside the department. The law enforcement responses so far seem more bent on obfuscating whether potentially viable rape cases were improperly cleared than on clarifying the matter.

Until then, my advice to Chief Manley: Find out to the letter what the sergeant thinks was wrong with your definitions of exceptionally cleared cases, then be able to explain the differences to reporters and the City Council. Don't just say there was a difference of opinion, as you declared on the podcast, and said to me at least twice. That's not good enough.

As it stands, the difference of opinion is that she has accused your agency of pressuring her to improperly clear rape cases, and your predecessor resolved the "difference of opinion" by removing her from her position as head of the sex-crimes unit so someone else could pump up the numbers. Given that fact pattern, the difference of opinion isn't trivial. Your side damn well better be right.

Whistleblower: Austin PD fudged rape clearance rates to boost numbers, pretend hundreds of crimes were solved when no arrests were made

A former Austin police sergeant who was in charge of APD's sex crimes unit claims she was forced out after refusing to clear cases where arrests were never made and no one was prosecuted, even if the suspect had been identified. The result was to give a false impression that the department had solved many more rape cases than was really the case.

The podcast, Reveal, from the Center for Investigative Reporting and PRX, covered the topic of clearance cases in rape cases, and about 2/3 of the way through the episode (~35:10 mark), they hone in on Austin as their primary case study. Go here to listen. The former sergeant in charge of the Austin PD sex-crimes unit described being ordered to re-categorize cases, refusing because they did not meet the criteria, then being moved out of the job and replaced by people who immediately made the data changes she would not.

Police chief Bryan Manley was quoted giving puffed up stats to the Public Safety Commission, then unconvincingly defended the decision to re-categorize cases as closed to reporters after Mayor Steve Adler ordered him to sit down with reporters.

Manley comes off as non-responsive, while the Sergeant comes off as credible, with specific facts and data to back up her claims. The chief framed the issue as a simple difference of opinion which was resolved when the sergeant left the position. But the whistle blower saw more politicized motives at play in re-categorizing so many cases. While allowing that Manley may have been misled by subordinates, she insisted the re-categorization of cases as "exceptionally cleared" - which means cops had probable cause to arrest a suspect but could not, for some legitimate reason - simply wasn't justified for the cases in question.

Manley denied he was "blaming the victim," but his only explanation for "clearing" more than 1,400 rape cases in which a rapist had been identified, but not arrested, was that the "survivor" would not participate in the investigation. Problem is, victims can't participate if they don't know what's happening. The example of a UT student whose case was used to frame the story definitely fit the sergeant's characterization more than the chief's. She had to learn from reporters that Austin PD had found her rapist but closed the case without referring it for prosecution. She said she would have been willing to testify. It's hard to imagine, from the data presented by reporters, that that was an isolated circumstance.

Grits doubts we've heard the last of this topic. I'm looking forward to hearing the city council's next public conversation with the chief - perhaps this Thursday, when they finally approve the union contract and enact a new oversight system - in which council members have an opportunity to raise these questions.

Beyond Austin, a lot of the podcast focused on law enforcement gaming clearance rates, which is a topic this blog has returned to repeatedly over the years. Just to review a few of those items:

Clearance rates may represent the results of departmental-level decisions and priorities. For example, research shows that departments that are more focused on generating revenue through traffic tickets have lower clearance rates.

Low clearance rates are a source of political vulnerability for police, so there's an incentive to puff up the numbers, especially on something like rape where public sentiment is easily inflamed. Even so, clearance rates for many property crimes, in particular, are exceedingly low.

Homicide clearance rates have been on the decline in recent years, and one of the odd, unexplained ironies of modern criminology is that murder rates have declined even more than clearance rates, meaning the fact of solving a lower proportion of murders did not prevent overall homicide reductions. On the podcast in September,  Mandy Marzullo and I discussed (and for the most part, dismissed) a theory by an academic that those reduced clearance rates were a result of reforms achieved by the innocence movement.

MORE: This post brought to mind this classic, cinematic commentary on police clearance rates:

So many questions about H-Town sex-robot ban

Even the Chronicle's headline, "City Council may move to block sex robots near Galleria," raises so many questions ....

Will Houston only prohibit sex robots near the Galleria, and if so why has it alone been designated a sex-robot free zone? Will there be specified areas of town where one is allowed to have sex with robots? Areas where it's required?

It's not clear to me in which part of Houston it's legal to engage in coitus with a sex robot - whoops, oh yeah ... it's everywhere.

The Chronicle quoted an attorney declaring, “There are currently no laws in the U.S. to prevent the sale of the type of dolls intended for this ‘robot brothel."

For the record: If the City Council is interfering with their constituents' robot coitus, is that a cock-block, a bot-block, a bot-cock-block, or some other iteration Grits hasn't considered?

It feels like certain terms need to be updated for the scenario. The phrase "sex machine," for example, takes on completely different connotations.

If a person voids the warranty on one of these machines, would they be charged with a deviant sex act?

For that matter, which movements by the City Council, in particular, will block bot cocks? 

City Councils in Texas can only create Class C misdemeanors; they cannot create new crimes whose punishment involves jail time. So will the robots be ticketed? Or will their owners receive the citation while the bots are seized as contraband?

If police begin to seize sex bots, I'd expect the night shift in the HPD evidence room to become a much more popular assignment.

Or will this be a zoning initiative, where the City blocks bot cocks in some sections of town and not others? And how will neighborhoods know whether theirs is considered sex-robot friendly or if, as near the Galleria, they have been designated a Pleasure-Free-Zone?

Just to mention it, "brothel" appears to be a term used only by their critics, not the company itself. But the Chron story repeated the term ten times in one story and five times in another, including in both headlines. Not that they're taking sides, or anything.

Never mind that this is a "brothel" in which, under current law, no one can be prosecuted for solicitation, pimping, human trafficking, etc., or that the vicimization/degradation has been delegated to machines, which might be a better situation than the Best-Little-Whorehouse-In-Texas model.

It has to do with sex, so we'd better ban it.

The whole brouhaha began because "Toronto-based KinkySdollS had announced plans to open a Houston branch where 'adult love dolls' constructed of synthetic skin and highly articulated skeletons would be available 'to rent before you buy.'

To be fair, an adult love doll sounds like a big investment, so maybe rent before you buy isn't such a bad idea.

How many boat owners' spouses wish their partners had taken such a precaution?

Regardless, the Outrage-Industrial-Complex kicked into gear. Mayor Sylvester Turner soon announced he will not tolerate the sale of what amount to elaborate sex toys in his fair city.

However, the mayor comes at the argument from a point of weakness, knowing full well that, if the business opens, there is almost certainly a market for it. Hence, the need for a City Council vote.

For the time being, apparently, we're going to ignore the fact that the constitutional precedent against banning sale of sex toys is already well established. (If you'd forgotten, Sen. Ted Cruz can remind you; he's been through this fight.) 

These stories tickled my funnybone, but they also show how ill-conceived criminal laws get passed, with politicians and the media conjoined in a corrupt confederacy to "do something" about a made-up problem. 

The breathless response - bandying around the term "brothel" to maximize the shame/scandal factor aimed at a new local business - smacks of a prudery-based overreaction by government, intersecting with the media's need to promote salacious stories. Not exactly our society's best moment.

In the end, your correspondent agrees with the assessment of the Endgadget writer who declared sex robots "no more dangerous or awe-inspiring than a Roomba." And surely the government has better things to do than specify which body parts one can and can't insert into a Roomba.

New TJJD sex-abuse allegations recall similar, but different '07 scandals

For anyone paying attention a decade ago, news of sex-assault allegations against staff at a Texas youth prison in Gainesville brings on a deja vu feeling regarding the Texas Youth Commission scandals in Pyote, an episode which ultimately brought down the agency and sent its successor down a tumultuous path toward reducing incarceration levels by 75 percent.

Now, "At least four former staff members at the Gainesville State School, including a woman allegedly pregnant with a youthful offender's child, are facing prison time amid allegations of sexual misconduct at the state lockup for troubled youths," reported Brandi Grissom-Swicegood and Sue Ambrose at the Dallas News.

And everyone who was around in 2007 drops their heads and thinks, "Oh no, not again."

These troubles mirror problems witnessed at the adult system, where sexual misconduct by staff at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) is a big source of federal Prison Rape Elimination Act violations. The Texas Association Against Sexual Assault has recommended the Legislature create an independent oversight mechanism at TDCJ comparable to the Ombudsman created for TJJD after the 2007 scandals.

Which brings us to the big difference between this scandal and the last one: The perpetrators were caught by the government itself, not by reporters following up leads given to legislative staff by family members of raped constituents. And the perpetrators were promptly arrested and prosecuted. The agency culture that tolerated such behavior has shifted dramatically. So that part of the system worked better than last time, one notices.

And to be fair, that's really all the Legislature's reforms after 2007 were supposed to do. As the agency reduced the population in youth prisons, it was pressed along the way for commensurate budget cuts, even though most of the facilities are chronically understaffed and suffer from among the highest staff turnover rates of any state agency. That's because of low pay, crappy working conditions, and the location of the facilities in mainly rural areas where the labor pool is either dissipating or otherwise occupied.

As a result, the agency has mainly improved the lot of youth under its care by reducing their number, with the Legislature financing (mostly cheaper) community supervision programming in lieu of housing them in state youth prisons. If those reductions had afforded  the agency a chance to improve staff-to-youth ratios more aggressively, or to invest the savings in programming, it would be easier to make a case for them.

But in their current state, it's hard to argue for keeping them around at all. When activists like Angela Davis talk about "abolishing" prisons on the adult side, Grits must admit I roll my eyes. But on the juvenile side, I'm all the way there. Funding community-based programs in lieu of incarcerating youth in state-run prisons empirically has worked. Youth crime in Texas plummeted at even greater rates than crime overall when Texas shifted most offending youth into local systems.

Expanding on that model for the last thousand-or-so kids left in Texas youth prisons would also afford the chance to shift to smaller-scale units run on a more treatment-centric basis. In an ideal world, the Lege would finance locally controlled facilities reconfigured according to best practices like those endorsed a decade ago by a "blue ribbon commission," whose recommendations the Legislature first eagerly commissioned and then, when they proved inconvenient and expensive, ignored.

The blue-ribbon panel recommended the state move to smaller facilities modeled after Missouri's juvenile system, and put the era of housing juveniles in large units with hundreds of bunkmates behind us. Instead, they depopulated youth prisons, but continued to run the ones that remained on the old, large-scale warehousing model.

The other option floated periodically is to hand the system over to TDCJ to run. But as noted above, TDCJ has trouble preventing inappropriate staff relations and contraband at its adult units, which fails to inspire confidence that they'd do any better running juvenile facilities. Plus, when TDCJ executives were brought in to run TYC after the original scandals were uncovered in 2007, their skill sets did not translate to the juvenile realm and their leadership was (if we are to be frank) an unmitigated catastrophe. So as solutions go, I see that one as a pig in a poke. It could invite new troubles and wouldn't necessarily solve anything.

Anyway, that's Grits' initial takeaway from this dispiriting news out of Gainesville: The mechanisms the Legislature created to identify, prosecute and punish sexual misconduct by staff actually appear to have worked. But the corrections culture that produces these illicit relationships at TJJD and TDCJ continues to afford opportunities for predatory behavior.

So we're better at catching and punishing predators. What hasn't worked is warehousing youth in large state facilities a decade after the experts recommended breaking them up. Texas was told ten years ago it needed to shift to smaller, treatment-based programs, locally controlled and located near their own communities. And with these problems recurring, maybe it's time state leaders finally heeded those suggestions.

Most TDCJ sex assault victims housed in just a few units, most victimized by staff

Here are a few highlights from a recent report on sexual assault in TDCJ put out by the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault and the Prison Justice League.

Their report represents a significant bit of research. They examined federal Bureau of Justice Statistics data on sexual assault in Texas prisons and sent a voluntary, confidential survey to prisoners who had self-reported sexual assaults at some point during their incarceration. This research was supplemented by correspondence with inmates who responded to the survey.

A disproportionate number (41.2 percent) of inmate sexual assault victims self-identified as LGBTQ, the survey found, confirming a pattern where inmates deemed gay or even just effeminate may be more likely to become victims.

Survey respondents reported sexual assaults at 15 prison units across the state with the majority of reports coming from three units: Estelle (Huntsville), Robertson (Abilene), and Allred (Iowa Park). A whopping 58.9 percent of respondents said they were assaulted by a staff member, which jibes with past investigations into sexual assault at TDCJ. "In 2014, 766 allegations of staff-on-offender sexual abuse and sexual harassment incidents were reported to the PREA Ombudsman by unit-level TDCJ staff." They cited a 2015 Marshall Project report showing that, nearly half the time, local prosecutors refuse to pursue cases involving staff-on-inmate sexual abuse. When they do, "Of the 126 staff members convicted of sexual misconduct or assault, only nine were sentenced to serve time."

Just as there's an argument for creating a division at the Attorney General to prosecute police misconduct to take decisions out of the hands of local prosecutors, there's an equally good argument to be made for doing the same thing when prosecuting TDCJ guards. Elected, rural prosecutors understandably are reticent to go after workers at the largest employer in town, and may feel more in common with TDCJ staff than their victims. That's a recipe for justice denied.

The federal Prison Rape Elimination Act has created new tracking and record keeping to shine a light on prison rape, the report found, but the Ombudsman function is notably underdeveloped. TDCJ employs 152 people in its Safe Prisons/PREA management offices around the state, but only one Ombudsman and an assistant to process 1,041 allegations of inmate-on-inmate alleged sexual abuse incidents across 109 facilities in 2013, and 1,467 in 2014. That's simply not enough warm bodies to perform the job properly.

The report included the following recommendations:

• Establish independent oversight to evaluate TDCJ facilities. (Paging Michele Deitch!)
• Halt the practice of placing sexual assault victims in solitary confinement "without thoroughly exhausting alternative protective measures."
• Increase resources to the PREA Ombudsman office.
• Improve the offender grievance system with better training for staff and accountability for failing to respond to victims.
• Involve outside agencies in assessing PREA compliance.

Acting Houston chief declined to engage in Halloween sex offender hype

Source

Grits has complained for years  about law enforcement hyping the dangers of sex-offenders on Halloween. IMO they're politicized scare tactics with little basis in reality that ignore the more significant and obvious threats facing families and kids. Indeed, readers are so used to these annual polemics that one commenter chimed in to complain I hadn't written this year's version.

Certainly a lot of sex offender hype went on in the press this year. Searching the terms "Halloween, sex offender" on Google News brought back 264,000 results. All those on the top pages were police PR pieces; none of them actually documented a child harmed or even approached by a sex offender on Halloween. 

So I was pleased to see the Acting Houston Police Chief break that mold and issue a Halloween warning focused on the real dangers facing kids Halloween night. Reported the Houston Chronicle:

Acting Houston Police Chief Martha Montalvo reminded motorists to take extra precautions this year. 

"Please be aware of your surroundings and slow down," she said recently. 

She also recommended that: 

*Parents should inspect candy before it is eaten. 

*Children should have a light source or reflective clothing

*Children not walk alone while trick or treating

And that was it. Thank you, Chief Montalvo, for declining to indulge in the fear-hyping surrounding sex offenders which has become an annual media and law enforcement ritual. Well done.