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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Reforming use-of-force policies, incarcerating pregnant women because they're poor, and other stories

Let's share a few links with Grits readers, just to clear the browser tabs:

Charles Sebesta as Inspector Javert
Defrocked prosecutor Charles Sebesta is waging a legal battle to overturn the state bar's decision to disbar him, reported Brandi Grissom at the Dallas News. He was already retired so this legal campaign, which must be costing the guy a small fortune, is all about ego. It's like watching Inspector Javert drown himself in the Seine.

State invests $400K in defense support on DNA mixtures
The Houston Chronicle ran a feature on the review of DNA mixture cases going statewide through the Forensic Science Commission, which Grits has discussed at some length. That report included this notable news:

Signs posted in Texas prison libraries in December tell inmates in English and Spanish about the issue and provide a Harris County post office box to which inmates may write if they believe their cases included this kind of DNA evidence.

Bob Wicoff, head of the appellate division for the Harris County Public Defender's Office, said about five to seven letters arrive each day, but he anticipates the box eventually could receive hundreds.

Backed by a $400,000 grant from the Texas Indigent Defense Commission, Wicoff will spend the next several years steering the statewide effort for the defense bar, aided by volunteer lawyers and law students. He will train lawyers to understand the science and vet cases to see whether they meet the criteria.

Dueling use-of-force reform suggestions
Grits earlier mentioned that Campaign Zero, a project of the national Black Lives Matter movement, had begun targeting use of force policies as an avenue for reform. Now the Police Executive Research Forum has come out with its own set of more moderate reform proposals on the topic. As I wrote in an email to two of Grits' contributing writers, between those two sets of suggestions - plus the legion of law enforcement interests who will just say "no" to any reform proposals - new terms of debate over use of force policies are beginning to emerge. For the first time in my life, people don't just ask Sam Walker what to do and then stop the debate!

More conservatives push for asset forfeiture reform
The Institute for Policy Innovation, a conservative think tank which to my knowledge has never done much on criminal justice before, is hosting an event on asset forfeiture next week in Dallas in collaboration with the Right on Crime campaign. See a column in the Fort Worth Star-Telegram from their president on the topic.

Incarcerating poor pregnant women pretrial in Tarrant County
In the Star-Telegram, see a story about women taking prenatal classes in the Tarrant County Jail. Particularly disturbing, some of the 20 pregnant inmates in the Tarrant County Jail are "waiting to make bail," meaning a judge deemed they were eligible to be released but they didn't have enough money to pay a bail bondsman. So poor women stay incarcerated and county taxpayers pick up the tab for their prenatal education classes and healthcare instead of Medicaid. Does that make any sense?

Cornyn pushing federal sentencing reform
Grits doesn't track federal stuff much but can't help but notice that Sen. John Cornyn continues to expend political capital on criminal justice reform even as Texas' junior senator and active presidential candidate Ted Cruz opposes it. Bully for Cornyn, and good luck to him.