Monday, April 29, 2019

#cjreform on life support: Good TX justice bills need a House floor vote

›
How much criminal-justice reform the Texas Legislature can muster this year will largely be decided over the next few days. Marijuana-penalt...
6 comments:
Thursday, April 25, 2019

Podcast: Creuzot critiques, pot possibilities, Twin Peaks prosecutions peter out, and other stories that may or may not alliterate

›
Check out the April 2019 episode of Just Liberty's Reasonably Suspicious podcast, covering Texas criminal-justice politics and policy. ...
5 comments:
Wednesday, April 24, 2019

Time to move NOW on Driver Responsibility surcharge abolition

›
The Texas Legislature has its best-ever chance to abolish the Driver Responsibility surcharge before it in HB 2048 (Zerwas). All the major ...
4 comments:
Monday, April 22, 2019

Class-C arrests by Austin PD plummet after policy restrictions implemented

›
As bills are considered at the Texas Legislature to restrict Class-C misdemeanor arrests, Austin PD revealed that new policies limiting such...
5 comments:
Thursday, April 18, 2019

The Creuzot Crucible: Critic raves over entire cast's performance in media-driven melodrama

›
The kerfuffle over Dallas District Attorney John Creuzot's rather modest decarceration proposals, discussed in this Grits post upon the...
11 comments:
Monday, April 15, 2019

'Thousands of Sandra Blands': Just Liberty analyzes new arrest data from Texas traffic stops

›
As the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee today prepares to hear HB 2754 (White), the committee substitute to which would limit most C...
3 comments:
Saturday, April 13, 2019

$12K bail for stealing $1?; Twin Peaks prosecutions petered out; Harris justice system still digging out after Harvey, and other stories

›
Here are a few odds and ends that merit Grits readers' attention while mine is focused elsewhere: Hurricane Harvey aftermath still aff...
7 comments:

Austin PD misreported use of force data at traffic stops

›
After The Atlantic and the Austin Chronicle picked up on the data Grits first crunched in this blog post regarding use of force and Class...
Thursday, April 11, 2019

Dallas DA dishes decarceration decisions: John Creuzot releases a much-anticipated memo

›
At a debate co-hosted by Just Liberty last fall, then-Dallas-DA-candidate John Creuzot promised to produce a memo three months into his ter...
10 comments:
Wednesday, April 10, 2019

Governor Abbott radically scales back support for reduced pot penalties

›
I'll take "Things you say in a campaign that you don't really mean" for $500, Alex What a disappointment! During his...
11 comments:
Monday, April 08, 2019

Texas bail-reform legislation not ready for prime time

›
Competing bail-reform bills are up in the Texas House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee today, but in this writer's view, none of them is...
Tuesday, April 02, 2019

Vetting police arguments against limiting Class-C misdemeanor arrests

›
In preparation for tomorrow's hearing on HB 482 (Thompson) limiting Class C misdemeanor arrests Texas House Homeland Security and Publi...
6 comments:

'Epidemic' of Class-C arrests poo-pooed in 2001 by SCOTUS now documented by new Appleseed report, racial-profiling data

›
"Data, data, data, I cannot make bricks without clay." - Sherlock Holmes One of the frustrating aspects of debating the issue o...
1 comment:
Saturday, March 30, 2019

Class C misdemeanor arrests and incarceration in Texas, by the numbers

›
Beginning with the consideration of HB 482 (Thompson) in the House Homeland Security and Public Safety Committee on Wednesday, the Texas Le...
5 comments:
Thursday, March 28, 2019

Bail-reform blues: Can't please all parties when reforming pretrial-detention process

›
Governor Greg Abbott's endorsement of bail reform last year appeared to give the issue fresh life. But Abbott has now  backed a bail-ref...
4 comments:
Saturday, March 23, 2019

Modifying 3-strikes theft enhancement would ↓ TX state-jail population

›
On Monday, the Texas House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee will hear a good little decarceration bill modifying the enhancement for misdem...
8 comments:
Wednesday, March 20, 2019

Why Police Should Be Required to Get a Warrant to Use Cell-Site-Simulators (aka, "stingrays")

›
Legislation heard this week in the Texas House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee,  HB 352  (Blanco) would require warrants for Texas law enfo...
6 comments:
Monday, March 18, 2019

Podcast: Elsa Alcala says Texas death penalty unreliable; parsing new TX traffic-stop data; prospects for Lone-Star marijuana reform, and other stories

›
Here's the March 2018 episode  of the Reasonably Suspicious podcast, recorded last week on the SXSW Podcast Stage hosted by Cadence13. F...
4 comments:
Wednesday, March 13, 2019

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

›
The Texas House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee on Monday heard  HB 465 (White) , which is update legislation from debtors-prison reform le...
6 comments:
Saturday, March 09, 2019

New reports show Austin police use force at traffic stops much more often than other agencies

›
UPDATE : Austin Police Chief Bryan Manley announced that his agency had mis-reported use-of-force data in its racial profiling report. See h...
10 comments: