Counties have no one but selves to blame for jail health costs

The Texas Association of Counties wants to portray the cost of healthcare for inmates in county jails as an "unfunded mandate," but it's hard to see the logic. Counties own their own jails. Their sheriff and muncipal police forces are hired and managed locally, and law enforcement has always been primarily a local responsibility.

That would seem to make jail health costs a local problem. Certainly litigation over the years has required counties to actually provide healthcare -- after all, if the state chooses to deprive someone of their liberty, that person's health justly becomes the government's responsibility. But there's no new mandate: indeed, there's never been a time when counties weren't liable for those costs, even if they prefer to avoid them.

The San Antonio Express News reported recently on the Medina County jail's health budget ("Counties feel ill over inmate health budgets," Oct.16), and a strident debate among county commissioners over prisoner health costs:

Presented Monday with a dental bill for $1,570 — which included $600 for "deep sedation" to extract the inmate's teeth — County Commissioner Beverly Keller said, "They don't need deep sedation. Pull them out when they're awake."

Commissioner Chris Mitchell said, "It pays to be arrested."

Commenting later, Mitchell said it's not right that the county provides better health benefits to suspected wrongdoers than it can afford to give its own employees.

One wonders who, exactly, besides the commissioners court, chooses their employees health plan? I mean, if county workers' healthcare is inadequate, who is to blame but county government?

In any event, those comments indicate a deep level of frustration, but little understanding of why these costs are being borne. No one is forcing the county to incarcerate so many people -- like most counties in the state, the majority of inmates in the Medina County Jail are there awaiting trial (see the 9-1-05 county jail population report, pdf), not serving a sentence. Where appropriate, many of those could be released on bond, and then the county wouldn't pay for their healthcare. But if counties choose to incarcerate people unnecessarily, then commissioners shouldn't complain about the costs. Maybe the commissioners court needs to have a talk with the local judges about reducing bail or releasing more defendants on personal bond.

In bigger counties, the costs escalate rapidly with the size of the jail. Reported the Express News:

Treating detainees in Bexar County cost the University Health System $9 million in fiscal year 2004-05, spokeswoman Leni Kirkman said Thursday.

The system has clinics at the 4,000-inmate county jail and at two juvenile detention centers in Bexar County, and it maintains a secure ward for inmates at its hospital.

"We do about 90,000 patient visits a year by detainees," she said.

Like Medina County, Bexar County is paying for healthcare for many more inmates than absolutely necessary. Out of a jail population of about 4,200, a whopping 2,355 were awaiting trial as of September 1st, unable to make bond (9-1-05 jail population report, pdf). That includes 572 misdemeanants, and 369 accused of low-level state jail felonies (mostly commonly possession of less than a gram of controlled substance).

As Grits noted elsewhere, a decade ago pretrial defendants made up 30.3% of the statewide Texas jail population. Today the number is nearly half, at 48.3%. Those percentages are even higher in Bexar and Medina counties -- that's a huge source of both higher medical costs and jail overcrowding pressures.

Meanwhile, in Dallas, officials are debating whether Parkland Hospital or a private prison health company should run the county jail's medical facility ("Can Parkland go it alone on jail care?, Oct. 17). The county historically spent $14 million annually on jail healthcare, but that figure jumped to $23 million in the latest budget after a series of mishaps exposed serious flaws. (The Tarrant County Jail has experienced similar problems.) Now Dallas County is considering hiring a private firm to provide jail health services, but the Morning News quoted experts who feared such care would be inadequate:

Dr. Robert Cohen, who directed care for New York City inmates through a private hospital in the 1980s, said medical staff must be able to make decisions based on patient needs, without pressure from a company concerned about shareholder profit.

"I don't think these companies represent good models," Dr. Cohen said. "They have a bad track record. Those kinds of problems wouldn't happen if Parkland were running jail care. I think Ron Anderson at Parkland knows how to provide quality medical care to an underserved population."

The UT Medical Branch currently provides healthcare at the Dallas jail, and also for Texas prisons. But they've backed out of the arrangement as of February of next year after suffering heavy losses, and Parkland has hesitated at hanging that albatross around its own neck too quickly.

Costs are even higher for the state prison system, reported the Express News:

Inmates in state prisons received more than $400 million in treatment last year, said Mike Viesca of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

Since 2002, the average daily cost of care per prison inmate has fluctuated between $7.92 and $7.42 last year, he said, while the inmate population rose steadily in recent years, to 151,056 now.

All this should serve as a reminder to public officials: If you're not very smart about it, and in Texas we haven't been, being tough on crime pretty quickly becomes pretty darn tough on taxpayers' pocketbooks. That's partly why state Rep. Ray Allen (R-Grand Prairie) has argued that Texas should only incarcerate those we're "afraid of," not those whom the public is merely "mad at." Texas just can't afford to continue its policy of indiscriminate incarceration, especially for low-level offenders, and inmate health costs are a big reason why.

Inmate healthcare is a huge cost driver for the criminal justice system. But if county and state politicos plan to continue Texas' high levels of incarceration, they must be prepared to pay the piper.

Tom DeLay, Ronnie Earle, and everyday Texas justice

One wonders whether GOP criticisms of coercive plea bargaining practices by Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle against former House majority leader Tom DeLay might create a political space to revisit the unseemly practice. DeLay's getting his own taste of what other defendants in Travis County courtrooms see every day.

Indeed, the prosecutorial tactics DeLay's defense team are complaining about most recently are used so commonly against typical defendants that it's hard for the public not to see the irony: "Before the first indictment you tried to coerce a guilty plea from Tom DeLay for a misdemeanor, stating the alternative was indictment for a felony which would require his stepping down as majority leader of the United States House of Representatives," DeLay attorney Dick DeGuerin complained in a recent letter.

Compare that to how the average defendant (who can't afford Dick friggin DeGuerin to represent them) is treated. A recent consultant's report (pdf, p. 46) analyzing the Travis County probation system declared that frequently Travis County prosecutors "may not push for a prison sentence knowing that there is not enough evidence for getting a conviction to prison in a trial but there is enough to force a plea for a probation sentence."

In other words, prosecutors under DA Ronnie Earle routinely "force a plea" for crimes they know they can't prove in court!

That's just what Tom DeLay accuses Earle of doing to him! So if it turns out that a jury doesn't convict DeLay, the only thing that should be considered extraordinary would be the acquittal.

Otherwise, welcome to everyday Texas justice.

Via Talk Left.

Stop snitching, or reform it?

I just posted an item on ACLU of Texas' Liberty Blog asking whether we should "Stop Snitching or Reform It?," reacting to a Pittsburgh Post-Gazette story this morning about a witness who ended a trial by wearing a "Stop Snitchin'" t-shirt into court. Regular Grits readers may recall a prior post discussing the work of Prof. Alexandra Natapoff, who is quoted extensively by the Post-Gazette.

Thug or hero?

This story of a youthful drug offender from New Orleans who stole a schoolbus and rescued 60 of his neighbors from the rising floodwaters reminds me of a truism driven home through years of watching police abuse cases: No person is as good as their best act or as bad as their worst one, from the preacher in the pulpit to the killer on death row. We're all capable of acts of goodness and heroism, and also tremendous evil and sadism, under the right circumstances. We all have lessons to teach and lessons to learn. Or, as the Tao Te Ching put it:

Sages always consider it good to save people,
so that there are no wasted humans ...
So good people are teachers
of people who are not good.
People who are not good are students
of people who are good.
Those who do not honor teachers or care for students
are greatly deluded, even if knowledgeable.
This is called an essential subtlety.

Via Norweigianity.

The real talent in the family

If, gentle readers, you'll indulge an off-topic moment, I'm awfully proud that my wife Kathy just produced a wonderful new online video for Consumers Union (where she runs their national e-advocacy program) titled "The Tower." It's part of a campaign urging folks to sign a petition to the FCC calling for greater public input on proposed media consolidation rules. The music is an original, commissioned tune by the Austin Lounge Lizards, and the art is from Austin's own Animation Farm, both wonderful homegrown Texas talents. Check it out.

Some Grits readers might recall the succesful video Kathy produced for Consumers Union earlier this year, also with the Lounge Lizards and the Animation Farm, called, "The Drugs I Need." That video was featured on the Today Show and has been downloaded by more than 3 million people.

Congrats, Kathy, and I hope "The Tower" reaches even more folks.

For more information about Consumers Union's work on media consolidation and "communications choice," see the group's website, www.hearusnow.org.

Keel: Congress would end drug task forces without reform

If you ran a drug interdiction agency that failed to reduce drug crime throughout its 17-year existence, you might be defensive, too.

The San Antionio Express-News' Zeke McCormack offered a piece about the recent demise of several Texas drug task forces funded by the federal Byrne grant program in yesterday's paper ("Drug agencies in transition," Oct. 16). As has become common when task force closings are announced, agencies tried to blame the Tulia episode and Texas' HB 1239 which passed this spring (proponents called it the "Task Force Beautification Act") for the collapse of the task forces. "'I think you had a few bad apples and it's killed the rest of us,' said Richard Dolgener, county judge in Andrews County, one of three rural West Texas counties in the Trans-Pecos Drug Task Force until it disbanded Sept. 30."

Dolgener's finger pointing shows a distinct diconnect from reality, indulging in extremist scare tactics that read much more into the new law than one would assume from the black and white letters on the page. Blustering with unfounded objections, he actually told the reporter law enforcement agencies couldn't even speak to one another anymore, but DPS said that's a wrong-headed view:

"We're just going to have a lot more drugs and contraband flowing free across the state because they've taken the task forces away and they've made it where you can't hardly work narcotic cases anymore," he said. "They've hurt us real bad."

He's been advised that his deputies can't confer with deputies in another county on a drug case unless they seek and receive DPS oversight, because otherwise their actions would constitute an illegal task force.

That's not how the DPS interprets the statute, agency spokesman Tom Vinger said.

"In our view, it's referring to formal task forces," he said. "Routine cooperation between law enforcement regarding crime is not prohibited."

I can understand why task force backers who decided to disband would misrepresent the law. It basically says they have to comply with rules they were supposed to comply with before, anyway, but many outright refused. DPS wants them to go after actual criminal organizations, but most of them would rather bust low-level drug users. Indeed, House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee Chairman and Court of Criminal Appeals candidate Terry Keel (R-Austin) said that if Texas hadn't acted, Congress could have gotten rid of drug task forces entirely for the Lone Star state:

"Multijurisdictional task forces would eventually have been wiped out entirely if we had not instituted professionalism in administration of those grants," said state Rep. Terry Keel, R-Austin, chairman of the House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence.

"The U.S. Congress, in regard to their oversight of Byrne grant funding, had expressed concern about the problems in the old way that we had been doing things here, and there was serious discussion about whether Texas was going to receive any more funding for these kind of programs," he said.

"The changes were instituted in order to give Texas the best chance possible to receive these kind of funds to continue these kinds of operations," he said.

Keel doubts the law will hasten the demise of task forces.

"They were going away under the old law, not just because the left was looking at it and the feds were concerned about it, but because the local law enforcement in rural areas were not being well-served by this arrangement," he said.

"These were originally set up to do narcotics interdiction in rural areas where it was not being addressed," he added. "Instead they were gravitating toward more populated areas because that's where the money was, and the seized money often went to help fund their operations."

The biggest irony to me is that nobody, not even the task forces' most ardent backers, actually think they do anything to solve Texas' drug problems. Task force commander Bill Hill, head of the 216th drug task force in Kerrville, told McCormack, "The drug problem is not going to go away and anybody in law enforcement will tell you that law enforcement is not going to solve the problem ... But at least we served as a deterrent to a great many people, to either not get involved in it or to keep their heads down." Is that really true, though? Since arrests of low-level drug users by his agency and others increased every year, with no end in sight, it seems hard to justify claims that drug task forces have deterred drug use by Texans at all.

UPDATE: See the recent Texas Observer editorial, "No More Tulias."

Friday Criminal Justice Roundup

Several criminal justice items from Texas and elsewhere deserve Grits readers' attention:

• Prison time for sexy pics? ACLU of Texas' Liberty Blog has the story of how Texans might wind up getting prison time for taking pictures of sexy women in public spaces.

• God and meth in Lufkin: Here's an interesting report from a large faith-based conference in Lufkin discussing meth treatment. Lufkin has a drug court that's been a statewide leader combating meth addiction.

• Swanky new digs: The Texas Criminal Justice Coalition has upgraded its website, and it's beautiful. Congratulations, folks. If you don't know TCJC, they do a lot of very important work in Texas promoting criminal justice reform, from producing Texas' only annual statewide analysis of racial profiling data, advocating for saner policies on sentencing and incarceration, to working for a fairer indigent defense system.
  

• Locked up moms: Thanks to Doc Berman and PrawfsBlawg for pointing to this AP story on women and mothers in prison.

• Reducing street crime: Crimprof Blog points to an article describing a new study by the British Columbia working group on reducing street crime. The working group called for increased use of community courts and stronger probation systems instead of increased incarceration, advocating an approach "that shifts the focus away from determining guilt or innocence, to instead place the emphasis on treating the illnesses and addictions of criminals." I can't find the report itself online, so let me know if you see the full thing.

• NY Times does criminal justice: The New York Times recently had editorials endorsing reforms in response to the ongoing Texas prison rape trial, pleaing for an immigration fix, and advocating greater voting rights for felons.
  

McLennan County "snuffs" Agriplex task force

Texas' Tulia-style regional drug task forces are dropping like flies.

Most recently, officials decided to "snuff" the Agriplex narcotics task force based in McLennan County (home to Crawford, President Bush's vacation spot; Waco is the county seat) based on word that Byrne grant funding might cease next spring. Earlier this year, the Waco Herald Tribune called the Agriplex task force a "menace," and reported on why drug task forces carry with them tremendous liability for local taxpayers.

The task force based in Midland also shut down this month, and several others -- including the one covering Harris and Fort Bend counties -- closed recently. In addition, I received word yesterday that the 216th Judicial District task force based in Kerrville also will close its doors soon.

None of these counties should stop with "snuffing" their task forces. They now need to apply to use the same federal funds for other allowable purposes like drug courts, treatment programs, and strengthened probation services that could let officials draw down new state funds.

In the meantime, somebody cue that old tune from Queen, "Another one bites the dust."

Travis County should cut probation caseloads through early release

This is the second in a Grits for Breakfast series analyzing the Travis County, TX probation system based on a study by consultants at the JFA Institute. See the first and third installments.

Travis County probation officers' caseloads are so overloaded that probationers who abscond are almost never pursued. Even probationers who come to meetings and pay their fees receive little additional supervision, said consultants from the Austin-based JFA Institute in a recent report (pdf). The "department has not used field visits for most probationers in years; regular probation officers are not trained in how to do this well."

The system is broken. Most probationers in Travis County aren't receiving significant supervision at all.

There are only two possible solutions: Hire many more probation officers, or reduce the number of probationers to a manageable number. Probation terms in Texas last up to ten years, much longer than most other states. But research shows most folks who reoffend do so in the first two to three years. So thousands of people remain on probation long after they are likely to reoffend.

The JFA Institute noted that state law "gives discretion to judges to terminate offenders early from probation for good behavior ... 'at any time after the defendant has satisfactorily completed one-third of the original community supervision perod or two years of community supervision, whichever is less, the period of supervision may be reduced or terminated by the judge.'"

That's an important tool for reducing probation caseloads without harming public safety. In fact, rewarding good behavior by probationers has many positive benefits. The JFA Institute reported that "Early termination can be an integral part of a positive reinforcement strategy for offenders who are doing well on probation and have faithfully completed all the probation requirements."

In Travis County, a whopping 7,391 probationers -- 63.6% of offenders under direct supervision -- meet the minimum state guidelines for early discharge from probation. However, "The department has a policy against the early termination of eligible cases and, therefore, an insignificant number of early discharges from probation." That makes little sense when your probation officers are so overworked they can't do field interviews or track down absconders.

Travis County's jail is overcrowded and its probation department is too swamped to supervise offenders, but neither situation is inevitable. Both problems would be helped by expanded use of the probation law's early release provisions.

We have a winner! Habeas appeal approval first Roberts court decision

Doc Berman brings news of the first opinion (pdf) issued by the new John-Roberts-led Supreme Court, and it's a bench-slapping: The court reversed a denial of habeas by the Sixth Circuit in favor of murder defendant Paul Allen Dye. (For you non-legal-beagles, that means the Supremes agreed to hear the final appeal of a convicted murderer after the appellate court rejected his claims.)

One pro-defense ruling means little in the scheme of things, but as my Dad used to say, it's better than a sharp stick in the eye. Here's hoping that, when the story of the Roberts court is finally told, history regards this ruling as foreshadowing, not irony.

La Pistola y El Senador

Chingao! Texas State Senator Juan "Chuy" Hinojosa was detained by security for carrying a 9 mm pistol into the McAllen airport. That's classic, especially considering just this spring Sen. Hinojosa sponsored new legislation creating a defense to prosecution for Texans carrying handguns in their cars.

If you don't know El Senador Chuy, folks, this guy has big brass balls. Via PinkDome.

Travis absconders stay on probation rolls too long

This is the first in a Grits for Breakfast series analyzing the Travis County probation system based on a study (pdf) by consultants at the JFA Institute. See also the second and third installments.

A consultant has finally gotten to the bottom of the astronomical "absconder" numbers from the Travis County probation department. Grits had reported earlier that Travis' percentage of probationers absconding was the highest in the state.

It turns out, Travis County's rate of probationers who "abscond," or who quit reporting to their probation officer before the end of their term, isn't that much greater than other jurisdictions when time periods are compared apples to apples. But Travis keeps low-level absconders on the rolls for many years after they should have finished their probation term, artificially boosting the county's numbers. According to the consultant's report (pdf):

Travis has the largest percentage of its probation population absconding [of any Texas county]. While the percentage of the population absconding statewide is 18%, the same percentage in Travis was 39% in February 2005. ...

Of the 7,512 offenders classified as absconders, 60% had a probation start date more than ten years old. A departmental analysis indicated that over 50% of the absconders would have discharged from probation prior to 1995. Without these older cases, the absconder rate in Travis would fall to approximately 18% of the total probation caseload, exactly in line with statewide norms.

Two policy issues are related to the high number of absconders on the caseload in Travis. First, it is departmental policy in Travis not to drop absconder cases from the books until the offender has been located. Second, one of the focus group sessions revealed that misdemeanant absconders rarely receive the attention from the police department that would result in an offender’s apprehension, even if the probation officer has located the absconder....

Approximately 57% of absconders (4,294) had been charged with a misdemeanor offense, while 43% (3,218) had been charged at the felony level. Of particular interest is the fact that approximately 17% of all absconders (1,297) had been charged with Driving While License Suspended, and subsequently absconded from supervision.

Actually, the rate of absconders in Travis County seems pretty low when you consider they "rarely receive the attention from the police department that would result in an offender’s apprehension." The policy of not taking probationers off the absconder rolls contributes directly to overcrowding at the Travis County Jail, since probationers whose terms should have ended 10 years ago might be arrested at a routine traffic stop and booked.

Most probationers who re-offend do so in the first few years, and those who commit new crimes automatically rotate back into the system. There's no public safety justification for that kind of policy, especially for misdemeanants, and no other large Texas probation department operates that way. Travis already has begun to close out many of those older cases through its newly established "Absconder Apprehension Unit," but an easier route would be to take probationers off the official "absconder" rolls if, when their probation term would have completed, they had not re-offended or otherwise re-entered the system.

Midland task force disbands, others may go in six months

President Bush wants to end the federal program that pays for local drug task forces, but officials in his home Texas county of Midland beat him to the punch last week by pre-emptively disbanding their's.

The Trans Pecos Narcotics Task Force, another Byrne-grant funded drug task force like the ones in Tulia and Hearne, is the "latest in a long list of these task forces in Texas and the nation to close up shop amid mounting criticisms of malfeasance and a dying funding stream," Ryan Myers reported Sunday in the Midland Reporter Telegram ("Local drug task force disbands amid funding cuts," Oct. 9). The move comes in response to the state's decision not to renew task forces' annual grant funding; instead the Governor re-upped their budgets for just six months, announcing significant changes in future funding priorities.

Apparently the state hopes to use its limited resources to target criminals producing and smuggling drugs instead of just low-level addicts, which would certainly be a welcome change. Said the Trans Pecos task force commander, "there's a shift happening now toward a statewide focus on larger level drug players, and that's never really been our role." In any event, officials said, locals shouldn't notice the loss. "Midland County District Attorney Al Schorre said the effect on drugs in Midland will most likely be small," the paper reported.

While immediate reasons for disbanding centered on reductions in funds, Midland County Sheriff Gary Painter traced other tensions to increased state oversight by the Texas Department of Public Safety begun in 2002. "I have nothing opposed to DPS but I don't work for DPS and nobody in the task force should have to work for DPS," he told the Reporter-Telegram. This spring the Texas Legislature passed new legislation to require task forces to comply with DPS rules or lose their asset forfeiture income.

Local coverage included more detail about a letter from Governor Perry's Criminal Justice Division foretelling changes to the Byrne grant program that many task forces have taken as cancellation of their funding:

just last month the state announced it is, "closing out its Byrne Grant program to be effective March 31,2006," according to a Sept. 16 letter to task force commanders from Ken C. Nicolas, executive director of the CJD of the governor's office.

Congress combined the Byrne program with the Local Law Enforcement Block Grant in 2005 forming the new Byrne Justice Assistance Grant, but the change, as it affects task forces, has not yet worked through the governor's office.

In the September letter to task forces, Nicolas said the Criminal Justice Division "will announce a funding strategy for the new Byrne Justice Assistance Grant (JAG) program in the coming months," the letter states, "The JAG program will support a statewide strategy that focuses on disrupting and dismantling criminal enterprise through collaboration between federal, state, and local agencies."

What this means for task forces is unclear.

"After March, nobody knows what will become of us," said DPS Lt. Sonia Garcia, commander of the West Texas Narcotics Task Force, one of the remaining 25 that has accepted the CJD's latest six month funding offer. "Nobody seems to have any real idea what will be done with the JAG money or if we will be included. After March, really your guess is as good as mine."

Now that most Texas counties, including the largest urban ones, no longer participate in drug task forces, the state should convert those resources into more productive programs providing drug treatment, strengthening probation, and focusing more on major crime instead of filling the prisons with non-violent addicts.

Midland County did the right thing by getting rid of its drug task force, but local officials have a fiduciary responsibility not to stop there: counties without task forces have an opportunity to apply for the same federal grant money to pay for other things, for example, drug courts and probation services that would let them draw down new state funds. They can choose not to, but their county's taxpayers no longer would benefit from that particular pot of their federal tax dollars.

See more Grits coverage of Texas drug task forces.

Wrongful convictions, jail overcrowding, Williamson County justice, and 'welcoming the stranger'

Here are a few Texas criminal justice items that caught my eye this week:

• Mexican Consulate Claims Wrongful Texas Convictions: Were two immigrants wrongfully convicted of murder in Littlefield, TX in 1998? The Mexican consulate thinks so. The defendants have always denied the charges, and a law firm hired by the consulate found one prosecution witness wasn't actually there when she said, while another was falling down drunk. Read a fine Dallas News article ("Did migrants get fair trials," Oct. 7) detailing the story.

• Nueces Jail Combats Overincarceration By Releasing Non-Violent Prisoners: Another Texas county jail -- in Nueces County, Corpus Christi is the county seat -- will begin releasing nonviolent offenders on personal bond to combat overcrowding. Reported the Caller Times ("County opts to release inmates," Oct. 6), "Some prisoners who judges have been asked to release on personal bonds haven't been formally charged but have been in jail for 30 to 90 days and are low flight risk prisoners." Hell, they oughtta let those people out of jail anyway just to lighten the load on the taxpayer. Who gains but the bail bondsmen from failing to give "low flight risk" defendants personal bond?

• Tracking Williamson County Justice: After a mentally ill hurricane evacuee was released instead of transferred to a mental hospital last month, then raped just blocks from the jail, you'd think the new Williamson County Sheriff sheriff might be in for some criticism. But the Austin Statesman lauded Sheriff James Wilson today for tackling his predecessors' cronyism, deputies' off-duty drinking, and jail overcrowding: "Within two months of taking office, he reduced the number of inmates from more than 700 to about 575 by tackling paperwork to get inmates out on bail or shipped to prisons." ("Williamson sheriff leads by example," Oct. 9) Perhaps the good sheriff is cleaning house. Let's hope so. Still, the blog Eye on Williamson County thinks District Attorney John Bradley's plan to eliminate constables reeks of the same stench the sheriff hopes to extinguish.
  

• Bible Lesson: Welcome Immigrants Like Your Own Blood: Grits commenter Mike posted this interesting item on a recent Sunday School lesson that related to Friday's Grits post on immigration. Here's a taste: "Melinda Lewis of El Centro visited St. Paul's Adult Sunday School to speak about 'welcoming the stranger.' She began with appropriate Biblical quotations showing the Christian tradition of hospitality to immigrants. For example: 'The immigrant that dwelleth with you shall be unto you as one born among you, and thou shalt love him as thyself; for ye were immigrants in the land of Egypt. I am the Lord your God.' (Leviticus 19:34.) She then asked in effect, what does 'welcoming the stranger' look like in the 21st century United States?" See here for her answer. Whaddya think, folks? Does it look like this?

And don't forget to check out what's going on at the ACLU of Texas' Liberty Blog.

So tell me, immigration opponents, what's the big deal?

Would somebody please educate me?

Reading through the great posts at Rep. Pena's blog and the comments from Wednesday's Grits post, I've been wondering: The main, non-racist source of opposition I hear toward illegal immigration is that, when people cross the border illegally, they may cut rancher's fences or vandalize property. From a public policy perspective, both of those are de minimus problems compared to the benefits to tens of thousands of business and households that rely on hundreds of thousands of illegal Mexican laborers. Plus, those negative side effects are purely consequences of immigration's illegal status, not inherent problems with immigration.

Otherwise, besides those with overtly racist motives, the main criticism seems to be that immigration is "illegal" and therefore immigrants are all "criminals." But those laws against immigration are national choices, and if the consequences of our choices become too dear -- if the detriments outweigh the benefits -- then they could be easily changed to "decriminalize" that segment of the workforce.

So besides one's punitive attitude toward any lawbreaker -- let's put that aside for purposes of this discussion -- can somebody tell me, with the U.S. unemployment at 5%, what is the big harm from immigration, illegal or otherwise, that we're trying to prevent? Don't we need more workers paying to keep Social Security and Medicare solvent? What's the big deal? And does any suffering that results from immigration outweigh these harms from its illegality:

• ranchers woes, cut fences and vandalism from using non-official crossings,
  
• inability of law enforcement to locate witnesses or crime suspects because of a lack of documentation, even home addresses, for immigrants,
• creation of the ruthless coyote industry,
  
• establishes routes, masks movements of real criminals, drug runners, etc.,
• creates a homeland security hazard in event of bioterrorism attack, etc., or any catastrophe where evacuation is required, since authorities don't have home addresses for hundreds of thousands of people,
• victimization of immigrants by employers, criminals, coyotes, etc.,
• creation of a class of criminals (like the confidential informants in the Dallas "fake drug" scandal) who are less likely to be targeted by law enforcement because they mainly prey on undocumented immigrants,
• heightened indigent care burden on local public hospitals and emergency rooms because of inability to qualify for Medicaid and CHIP,
• creation of categories of labor with no recourse to enforce state and federal labor laws, and
  
• overwhelmingly wasted federal law enforcement resources (immigration cases are now 1/3 of the federal total, more than any other type)?

Those are just a few off the top of my head. Maybe some commenters can think of other negative consequences from the choice of making immigration illegal. Or maybe somebody can explain to me the terrible harm that's befallen this country without me knowing it based on the presence of a few more people with brown skin?

Opponents of legal immigration, please tell me, what part of this problem wouldn't be made better if nearly all immigrants from Mexico entered the border at legal crossings, were given identification that included a description, thumbprint and home address (e.g., a DPS drivers license or ID card), and were allowed to work legally, pay taxes, and find recourse under the labor laws? In what way would that be worse than the status quo?

Texas used to be part of Mexico. Our state is home to lots of folks who moved here from there, and their kids, and their grandkids. I think we're better off for it. For the life of me, I just don't get the complaint.

Thanks Grits readers for a great first year

Today marks the one year anniversary of my first Grits for Breakfast post. (I didn't add the sitemeter counting visitors until a few weeks after.) I launched the site as a personal experiment, a way for me to take the "new media" out for a spin, as it were, to see how she corners.

What I didn't realize was that the blog would be so useful, allowing me to research and write about big subjects, piece by piece, without the overhead and publishing costs associated with print and broadcast forums. That's been invaluable on topics like drug task forces, snitches, and prison overcrowding. The old canard rhetorically asks, "How do you eat an elephant?" The answer: "One bite at a time." Blogs are a terrific medium for taking on big subjects bite by bite. And so often the feedback really does contribute to my own understanding of these subjects, I've become a big believer in the benefits of the two-way nature of the medium.

One caveat I should give about everything written here: Many times I'm writing about subjects like jail overcrowding, bail or probation policy, where there has been little public debate and where solid information sources are scarce. As I come across new information on my chosen subjects, I blog it, and try to explain what it means in light of other evidence I've seen and/or blogged. I have my own opinions, but frequently when I write about a subject I'm exploring it myself, using the writing process to marshall and coordinate disparate thoughts into a coherent position on little-explored terrain. Sometimes I make it there, sometimes I don't. It's a journey. And I'm thankful to the 400 or so people every day who come along for the ride.

Thanks Grits readers, for a great first year!

Hutchison immigration plan harms public safety

Texas Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison wants to give state and local law enforcement agencies authority to enforce immigration laws, but doing so risks worse lawlessness.

So many undocumented immigrants now live and work in Texas, Hutchison's proposal risks leaving hundreds of thousands of people in a position where they can't request help from law enforcement or even assist police investigations. If immigrants think contacting local law enforcement will get them deported, witnesses won't come forward. Worse, victims of crime won't report criminal acts perpetrated against them. Abused wives will fear to call for help. Even children would understandably refrain from reporting incidents of pedophilia or abuse.

Is that the kind of society we want to live in? Even if someone entered the country illegally, should we really create a class of crime victims who have no recourse to ask police for help?

Does that make us safer?

UPDATE: See more from the El Paso Times, Knight Ridder, the San Antonio Express News, the Houston Chronicle, the Dallas News, and the Daily Texan.

Nuther UPDATE: See Kuff, Dos Centavos, and the Jeffersonian. Related: See Rio Grande Valley Politics and Rep. Aaron Pena's recent blogging on immigration topics.

Perry vetoes leave prisons packed pending post-Rita patch up

Thanks to God and the Governor, Texas' prison overcrowding crisis just got a lot worse.

It turns out, Hurricane Rita severely damaged two Texas prison units near Beaumont, forcing the state to start leasing beds from county jails and private prisons more rapidly than predicted, reported the Oct. 4 Austin Statesman ("Rita fills Texas prison system"). Exacerbating the problem, this spring Governor Perry vetoed legislation aimed at reducing overincarceration pressures, as well as additional money for leasing beds. Now, in the wake of Rita, those short-sighted decisions are coming back to bite the state in the ass:

"It's put a crunch in the system, that's for sure," said state Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston and chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, which oversees prison operations.

"We put money in the budget to lease about 6,000 beds over the next two years. This means we'll probably spend that sooner than we counted on. And that doesn't include whatever the cost will be to repair the damaged units."

Several top prison officials said privately that they expect the damage to be in the millions of dollars and that repairs could take months.After determining that the prison system could soon run out of bunks, lawmakers allocated $19.9 million in the spring to lease beds in the current fiscal year and $43.8 million for 2007. Gov. Rick Perry later vetoed all but $10 million for leased beds in the current fiscal year.

On Thursday, officials said, Texas' prison system held about 150,500 prisoners: 97 percent full. Several maximum-security units were reported to be 100 percent full, and some were operating at 102 percent of capacity.

The agency also had 826 beds leased in county jails and privately run jails, compared with less than 600 a few weeks ago.

No one could have predicted this kind of natural disaster. But that's why it was foolish for the state to cut its margins so close. Unpredictable things happen. Even without Hurricane Rita, because Governor Perry line-item vetoed much of the money for leasing new beds, it was likely Texas hadn't budgeted enough money for prison costs this biennium. Now, thanks to poor state planning and an Act of God, Texas prisons will remain overcrowded, and continue to bleed red ink, into the foreseeable future.

Strolling about the web

Light blogging at Grits today, but see these recent items from the ACLU of Texas' new Liberty Blog:

• Don't get sick at the Tarrant County Jail,
• Austin Taser death result of bad policy, and
• God, where is ACLU now that America needs it?

Also a few other items from around the web:

• Ten percent of US inmates are "lifers," reports the New York Times, with a great followup here. See also TChris from TalkLeft and more from Doc Berman.
• Not all the judges from Sherman are quite so silly: Read this excellent article from the Sherman Herald-Democrat about a Grayson County drug court.
• Injustice Anywhere laments how for years the Dallas PD turned a blind eye to abuses by confidential informants.
  

The Sex Police: This is really expecting too much of probation officers

The average Texas probation officer has about 140 people assigned to them. They don't have time to do home visits, or look for absconders. So realistically, how can rookie District Judge Lauri Blake from Sherman order a 17-year old girl not to have sex as a condition of her probation? Think about it. Whatever your stance on teen sex (and admittedly, when I was a teen, I was for it), can probation officers really enforce that?

When my daughter was 17, I could occasionally hinder but never ultimately dictate any aspect of her dating life (not for lack of trying), and that was as her parent, and a reasonably strict one, while she was living in my house! The notion that a harried, overworked probation officer can supervise a 17-year-old's sex life on top of 139 other cases -- much less derive any relevant information on the subject during regular check-ins -- indicates a near-complete judicial separation from reality. Trying to make some grand statement about teen morals, this judge is turning her courtroom into a public joke

Watch for Judge Blake's next landmark order dictating that, henceforth, the sun shall rise each morning only in the North, so she may better view the vistas across the Oklahoma border.

UPDATE: More at PrawfsBlawg.

Grading Texas' Sentencing Reforms

How does Texas fare compared to best practices among other states struggling to contain out-of-control prison population growth?

Thanks to the Social Science Research Network, I was glad to find this Note by Ben Trachtenberg from the Michigan Journal of Law Reform entitled, "State sentencing policy and new prison admissions." Trachtenberg this spring analyzed prison admission patterns to determine which states experienced actual declines in prison admissions, then offered qualitative case studies of the policies enacted in those states -- North Carolina, Connecticut, and Florida -- to determine best practices for states that want to lower their prison populations.

It turns out, that's a lot of them. Trachtenberg found that, "In 2003, about half the states eliminated some of their mandatory minimums, reinstating parole and early release programs while offering treatment to some drug offenders rather than imprisonment."

Trachtenberg identified three policies that contributed significantly to lessening incarceration pressures in his case-study states, all of which offer important lessons for Texas:

• Fund a range of alternatives to incarceration including drug treatment and other intermediate sanctions programs,
• Computer modeling of prison costs to accurately estimate the financial impact of policy decisions, and
• Accurate "Fiscal Notes" estimating the costs of legislative penalty increases.

Those are the main methods that worked in the states the author examined, especially in North Carolina, where he says the state's "experiences cry out for imitation." Texas prisons are full and the state is struggling with an overincarceration crisis. What kind of grades would Texas leaders get if their efforts were judged by Trachtenberg's best practices?

Fund a range of alternatives to incarceration: Texas completely gutted these programs in 2003. But in 2005, the state ponied up new resources in the form of three "budget riders" that direct new money be spent on local probation departments that enacted progressive sanctions models for low-level offenders. Governor Perry vetoed HB 2193, which would have further strengthened the probation system by mandating changes instead of just offering funding-based carrots promoting reform. The Lege has a history of indifference to incarceration alternatives, but now appears to have seen the light. By contrast, the Governor's veto of stronger probation left the state in a real bind.

Computer modeling of criminal justice costs: The abolition of the Texas Criminal Justice Policy Council by Governor Perry in 2003 via line-item veto ended Texas' ability to provide expert computer modeling of incarceration patterns for all practical purposes. Before that, the agency was underfunded and often ignored.

Accurate "Fiscal Notes" for penalty increases: In 2005 for the first time, Texas' Legislative Budget Board began to give positive "Fiscal Notes" for a handful of bills mandating penalty increases, and the debate over penalty increases often centered on budget concerns. In previous years, fiscal notes for every penalty increase were always zero, usually with a footnote stating the agency couldn't accurately estimate how many additional prisoners would be incarcerated. LBB's Fiscal Notes, though, are highly politicized, whereas Trachtenberg called for Fiscal Notes that were "respected for honest evaluation of proposals." That hardly describes Texas' process.

In addition, Trachtenberg approvingly notes a national trend away from mandatory minimums, three-strikes laws and incarcerating low-level drug offenders, while lamenting the continuing trend in states like Florida (and Texas, he could have added) where legislators continue to increase penalties without also financing adequate prison space.

Texas' incentive to change is great, but initial reform efforts on these fronts compared to national best practices afford a clear overall assessment: Struggling; needs improvement.

Stuff I wonder about: The consequences of criminalizing hookie

Since Texas has made cutting school a crime, and the the state won't adequately pay for schools to be good enough for students to learn much useful in them, why are we surprised when thousands of kids decide to drop out? One in three Texas ninth graders doesn't graduate. How many will graduate instead to Texas prisons?

I don't know anyone who learned a damn thing in high school
Or if they did, you know they sure didn't go to my school.

-Michelle Shocked (folksinger, East Texas homegirl), Hi Skool

Austin Taser death result of bad policy

See ACLU of Texas' Liberty Blog for details. Greg Moses has more.

Oklahoma meth law not working

Despite all the hype, Oklahoma's new anti-meth law turned out to be less than OK. Backers touted the idea as a national model. (Indeed, Texas followed the Okies' lead this spring by requiring pseudoephedrine, which is used to make homemade meth, to be sold only from behind the counter, and customers must sign for the purchase.) Now it turns out the much-ballyhooed new law hasn't worked at all, instead opening up the market for violent Mexican drug cartels. According to the Newhouse News Service:

police say a massive influx of meth made by Mexican "superlabs," which can obtain tons of pseudoephedrine, has kept meth plentiful and potent. The number of Oklahoma users shows no sign of falling, and property crime still keeps the Oklahoma County Jail at capacity.

"We took away their production," said Tom Cunningham, task force coordinator for the Oklahoma District Attorneys Council. "That didn't do anything for their addiction."

That's predictable. In Texas, the Oklahoma law was hyped as a cure-all that would rid the state of meth once and for all. Now it turns out we can expect the drug to be just as "plentiful and potent" as ever under the new law, maybe more so. What's saddest, in 2007 when the same politicians return to Austin complaining we need tougher drug laws, I doubt their constituents will call them on the fact that their past efforts never really mattered at all.

See also, "Pseudoephedrine restrictions raise fears of more addiciton, more overdoses and more violence."

Vets against the (drug) war

Read this Fort Worth Weekly feature about the group Law Enforcement Against Prohibition, which contains many prominent Texas members. Best line from a retired Huntsville, TX prison warden: "If you can’t keep drugs out of a maximum-security prison, you can’t keep them out of schools"

Muni Judge: System failing youth offenders

Austin municipal court Judge John Vasquez has an op ed in today's Austin Statesman describing how the criminal justice system is failing youthful offenders and disrupting the lives of mostly minority students. Writes Vasquez:

About 90 percent of the juveniles subject to warrants are minority children.

Almost 6,000 non-traffic, criminal charges are filed annually against juveniles between the ages of 10 and 16 in the Austin Municipal Court — a ratio of about one case filed for every 13 children in that age range. The charges range from possession of drug paraphernalia to disorderly conduct to curfew violation. These are Class "C" misdemeanors — the lowest-level criminal offense, punishable by fine only. About four out of every five cases are filed against African American and Hispanic juveniles.

In Travis County Justice of the Peace Courts, more than 7,000 criminal cases are filed annually against children for not attending school.

For many of these youths, timely and effective court intervention is desperately needed. But their cases move through the system much too slowly. Months may pass between the date of the alleged offense and the first court appearance. The Travis County Justice of the Peace Courts and the Austin Municipal Court are high-volume operations, easily processing more than 300,000 cases annually. Little time can be spared for juvenile offenses.

Vasquez thinks the solution lies in a "system of juvenile case managers [who] will work with young offenders and their families to identify programs and services that will help them overcome obstacles to success." I'd think an even better solution, though, would be to stop criminalizing so much petty juvenile behavior in the first place.

I cut school occasionally as a teenager. How about you? It wasn't a crime back then, just a violation of school rules. A fine wasn't attached, but you know what? I turned out okay. Those 7,000 kids in Austin being mulcted by the courts for playing hookie aren't any better off for the experience, and fining them won't make them better people. Same with tickets for breaking curfew - we're criminalizing behavior nearly all youth engage in at one time or another, so what's the point? In practice, it's just a cash cow for municipal government, a discriminatory law enforcement practice from the perspective of the minority kids targeted, and a big waste of time for everybody involved.

There are enough kids committing actual crimes to worry about without criminalizing class-cutting and plain ol' youthful rebellion.

Read the ACLU of Texas' Liberty Blog

Please check out the new and greatly improved ACLU of Texas website, including the new "Liberty Blog" covering Texas civil liberties topics. I'll be contributing some there (though Grits will remain active), as will other Texas ACLU project directors. So far the Liberty Blog has posted several items that may be of interest to Grits readers:

• Drug offenders foolishly denied benefits
• Updates on ACLU's Texas prison rape trial
• Austin school refuses to ban book
• Faith-based prison draws West Texas heat

Probation kiosks reduce costs when used properly

Check out this op ed by Marc Levin of the conservative Texas Public Policy Foundation on the new automated probation kiosks being used in Dallas -- essentially an ATM-type machine where probationers can check in, pay fees, and have their picture taken to confirm their identity without talking to a probation officer.

Levin thinks that "Inappropriate use of probation automation risks saving money in the short run while increasing long-term costs through higher recidivism rates." But it seems like the idea should work well for some offenders who need to check in and pay fees but don't require much supervision, a description that fits tens of thousands of Texas probationers. It's an especially good idea for those who've already successfuly completed two to three years of probation. Research shows that most probationers who re-offend do so in the first few years.

UPDATE: A commenter helpfully points out this Dallas News report that Dallas County has temporarily suspended the kiosk program while it retools its screening process to decide who gets on it. Hopefully media criticisms won't kill the idea, which was only being tried in Dallas as a pilot program under a state-granted waiver. Used for probationers who've successfully completed several years of probation, for starters perhaps limited to those who committed non-violent offenses or who've been identified as low-risk, could free up much needed probation officer resources for more careful monitoring of high-risk offenders.

Rent-a-bed policy, not Rita, responsible for Gregg County jail turning away prisoners

Overincarceration at the Gregg County jail in East Texas has forced local law enforcement officials to "turn away" nonviolent offenders in the near term. Officials blamed Hurricane Rita, even though state jail population reports show the bulk of the problem was caused by their own management choices:

The city of Longview also has agreed to not arrest Class C misdemeanor warrants for about 15 days while the jail grapples with an overcrowding situation spurred by the addition of 30 inmates from Southeast Texas prisons.
The problem was compounded when the state's criminal justice department canceled all jail transports due to Hurricane Rita.
"We're supposed to have double digits going out last week and this week," Cerliano said Friday, noting that 95 offenders on state parole warrants were already at the jail.
"The state quit taking them, so they put us in a bind."

Those 95 offenders, though, even added to the 30 evacuees, aren't why overcrowding forced fewer arrests. Instead, Gregg County has rented out nearly half its jail beds on contract -- 234 out of a jail population of 536, according to the September 1, 2005 Jail Population report (pdf). So Gregg County taxpayers paid to build plenty of jail space for their local needs, but the county's leaders filled it up with inmates from other jurisdictions so that in time of emergency, all their extra capacity was predictably gone.

That's just bad management by the Sheriff and the Gregg County commissioners court, reducing public safety for their own community in order to generate a slush fund housing other's prisoners. (It's a good thing the Sheriff already got his $700,000 budget increase approved this year I guess.)

Across the state other counties are making the same mistake, even building new jail capacity speculatively hoping to lease beds out to the other entities in an essentially entrepreneurial fashion. Much of the boom is driven by the US Marshals Service, which must find somewhere to house defendants in the skyrocketing number of immigration cases the US Attorney in Texas' Southern District (Houston) has chosen to prosecute.

Just as President Eisenhower warned of a military-industrial complex, a prison-industrial complex has arisen that views incarceration not as a sad outcome to be avoided, but, improperly, as a venue for entrepreneurship, seemingly inspired by a weird sort of greed-driven, state-sponsored schadenfreude. What's happening in Gregg County shows that such policies aren't just cynical and soulless, they're bad for public safety.

Why are Texas county jails overcrowded? Pretrial detention

SEE ALSO: Grits' best practices to reduce county jail overcrowding.

Inmates aren't yet everywhere sleeping on the floors like they are in Harris County, but across Texas most county jails face an overincarceration crisis. What is the cause? Are there really that many more criminals today than before? Hardly, crime is actually down. So why? Put simply, more Texans are incarcerated pending trial, i.e., before they're convicted, than in the past, especially in larger counties.

An analysis by Grits of data from the Texas Commission on Jail Standards found that, while county jail populations increased 27% between 1995 and 2005, almost all that stemmed from more frequent detention of defendants before trial. (For 1995 data, see this report [pdf]; for current data, this one [pdf].) In other words, there are many more defendants who can't make bail awaiting trial these days in the county lockup. Particularly for misdemeanants, just a decade ago many of those defendants would have been released on personal bond so taxpayers wouldn't pay to house them.

Bottom line: These trends represent harsher decisions by judges about when defendants should be released on bond -- another case where being tough on crime amounts to being tough on taxpayers, with little public safety benefit. A decade ago, pretrial defendants made up 30.3% of the statewide Texas jail population. Today the number is nearly half, at 48.3%.

Historical data from the Texas Commission on Jail Standards shows dramatic increases in pretrial detention since 1995. The number of felony defendants statewide being held pretrial increased by 60%, while the number of misdemeanants increasd by a whopping 116%. In addition, a new class of defendants that didn't exist before-- those awaiting trial for state jail felonies, mostly low-level drug offenders -- went from zero in 1995 to occupying more than 5,400 county jail beds statewide on September 1, 2005.

What does that mean to the average defendant? Judges are more likely to require them to put up bail than ten years ago, when they may have been released on 'personal bond,' or a promise to appear. Now if they can't pay, more defendants must sit in jail awaiting trial. Defendants in drug cases, in particular, wait long periods racking up unnecessary jail costs while the Department of Public Safety tests for controlled substances. (See earlier Grits coverage of pretrial detention policies in Harris and Tarrant counties.)

The knee jerk reaction to lock even petty misdemeanants up before trial can't be justified based on what's best for public safety. It's just kind of mean-spirited and counterproductive, showboating for gullible voters with little tangible crimefighting benefit. With so many jurisdictions operating local lockups that are bursting at the seams, it makes little sense to continue the trend, unless, perhaps, you're a bail bondsman. Here are the incarceration rates for pretrial detainees at several of Texas' larger county jails:

What percentage of Texas county jail

inmates are awaiting trial?

In 1995, just 30.3% of Texas county jail inmates
statewide were incarcerated awaiting trial. Now it's nearly half.
In many large counties, the figure is much higher:

County	Pretrial Detainees as Percentage of County Jail Population
Bexar	55.6
Brazoria	85.1
Cameron	52.2
Collin	63.5
Dallas	53.0
Denton	57.2
El Paso	44.0
Harris	42.7
Hidalgo	68.2
Smith	51.9
Tarrant	58.5
Travis	51.1
Wichita	68.3
Williamson	54.8

Source: Texas Commission on Jail Standards,
September 1, 2005 Jail Population Report (pdf)
CLARIFICATION: Link goes to current month's report; 9-1-05 is no longer online.
(Percentages calculated by adding separate figures for felony, misdemeanant, and state jail felony pretrial inmates, and dividing the sum by the total jail population.)

Pay-per-snitch: "It's the American way"

Smith County Sheriff J.B. Smith (the county seat is my hometown of Tyler) extolled the virtues of the Crimestoppers program in a recent speech, according to this morning's Paris News, portraying it as one, big pay-per-snitch program:

“I run one of the biggest jails in the state of Texas. I’ve got over 900 prisoners. And it’s because of programs like Crime Stoppers that a lot of them are there. It’s the American way of doing it. Pay ’em for it. Snitch on somebody and let’s get ’em in jail. It works,” Smith said.