Full prisons boosting parole rates for nonviolent offenders

Now that Texas prisons are overflowing, we're going to see a lot more articles like this one in the Paris News over the next couple of years: "Inmates' early release worries prosecutors," Dec. 9. Reports Bill Hankins:

A new and serious issue relating to justice is developing across the state of Texas, and local district and county attorneys are being caught up in the state’s drive to clear prison beds.

To do so, parole officials are under pressure to release some convicted people early to have space for more violent offenders.

“Clearly, this is a money issue,” said Lamar District and County Attorney Gary Young. “The state has to find a way to pay for these folks to be housed in prisons. But justice is not being served when someone does eight years of a life sentence.”

Young was referring to a Lamar County case in which Clifton Blackshear was sentenced in 1999 to life in prison for the manufacture of a controlled substance.

He was released earlier this year and is back in Lamar County.

In another Lamar County case, Timothy Brett Taylor received a three-year sentence and began serving his time in April of this year.

Parole officials already have announced his release. He is back in Lamar County.

“We are back to where we were in the late eighties and early nineties,” Young said. “Prisons are full again and the parole system is working to free up beds.”

“It is sad when defendants are getting their first parole consideration when they are still in our county jail awaiting transfer to the actual prison,” Young said .

That has happened in some Lamar County cases in which an inmate received his parole while still in Lamar County Jail.

“There are people who know how to work the system that are agreeing to go to prison for what appears to be decent five or six-year sentences who know they will be out in less than a year,” Young said . “Many of them would rather do that than be on probation for two or three years.”

Assistant County Attor-ney Bill Harris said he was amazed at the defendant’s reaction in a recent burglary of a habitation case.

“I was prepared to offer him a lengthy probation, no jail time, but he told me he just wanted a sentence,” Harris said. “He knows that on non-violent offenses, inmates are doing about a month and a half for each year of their sentence. He knows he is going to be out of prison in less than a year, so why would he want to be on probation six or seven years, when he can go to prison and get it over with in just months.”

The article spins this story in a very narrow fashion, and exhibits many assumptions common to MSM crime coverage that I find misleading if not outright fallacious. From a systems perspective, though, the cases described don't surprise me at all. Texas simply cannot sustain the rate of incarceration growth our state has experienced over the last thirty years.

As I've argued ad nauseum, what's really happening here is that pure pragmatism is forcing the parole board to make decisions that the state Legislature does not have the courage to impose: Shortening sentences for nonviolent offenders to free up prison space for more dangerous folks. The fellow whose life sentence turned out to run 8 years was imprisoned for drug manufacturing (probably meth). If you had to make the choice whether to house a drug addict for life or a rapist, who would you choose?

Is it ever appropriate to give life sentences for nonviolent offenses? Texas' law frequently allows it, but it makes little sense to me - not when there's not enough space to house much more serious offenders.

In addition, the story implies that the Legislature could just throw more money at the problem and solve it, but that's not true, either. Regular readers know that Texas prisons are already understaffed, and though voters approved new debt to build three more, even if they're built it's unlikely the state can find enough employees to staff them. There is a pragmatic limit to how much prisons can safely expand without sufficient staffing, and Texas already reached that threshold several years back.

The article hints at another big problem that the state only this year has begun to address: Texas' probation system is broken, and long probation terms with minimalist supervision maximize the number of low-risk offenders revoked to prison. Probation terms are so long and have become so onerous and expensive that many offenders would quite rationally rather serve an incarceration stint than agree to long, draconian supervision terms.

The Paris News says "“We are back to where we were in the late eighties and early nineties," but that's not quite true. In the late '80s the prison system actually had to let some violent offenders loose early to free up prison space. Today, more than half of Texas prisoners are nonviolent offenders, and they're mostly the ones the parole board has been releasing sooner when they become eligible.

Prosecutors like to spin Texas' overincarceration crisis to say more prisons are the answer, but to reach that conclusion they usually focus on the wrong questions, as did critics quoted in this story.

I predict similar articles will crop up more often in the coming years, but reporters writing them should ask more and different questions of a broader array of sources to get the context right: Why are low-level offenders receiving decades-long sentences, and does that help or harm public safety? How understaffed are current prison units? Where would guards come from to staff new prisons? How much would new prisons cost taxpayers in the long haul? What other priorities (roads, education, healthcare) must be short-changed to spend more money on prisons? Why aren't more drug offenders sentenced to treatment instead of incarceration?

The Lamar County DA says justice is not served when a defendant sentence to life serves only eight years, but arguably justice is not served by assigning such a draconian punishment to someone whose offense was nonviolent and addiction-driven. Texas' overincarceration crisis will push these justice defining issues to the forefront over the next few years, and its high time to have a collective conversation about whether it's desirable or even possible for the state to continue along its current path.

Revolving Door Between TDCJ and Private Prison Firm: Give a Contract, Get a Cushy Job

Perhaps it's all perfectly legal, but a recent hire by the Geo Group, a large private prison firm formerly known as "Wackenhut," raises questions, at least, about an appearance of serious conflicts of interest:

Former Texas Department of Criminal Justice chief Gary Johnson approved contracts to lease prisons from the Geo private prison group that he will now manage in his new position as Geo regional director, reports the Statesman's Mike Ward in a blog entry, via Texas Prison Bidness.

Johnson was executive director of TDCJ from 2001 through December 2004, when he retired after 27 years service. As E.D., he presided over draconian budget cuts from which the agency still has not recovered. "In 2003, TDCJ was forced to reduce its budget by approximately $240 million dollars and eliminate more than 1,700 positions during the fiscal year 2004-2005 cycle." Yet despite these cuts, the agency could still find money to lease new private prison space.

Pretty cozy, huh? Give Geo fat public contracts at the expense of public employees, then retire and get rewarded with a cushy administrative gig. Gives you a real warm fuzzy feeling about how well TDCJ exercises oversight over private prison contracts, doesn't it?

Dallas News: All claims of terrorist infiltration of border so far have been bogus

When it comes to claims that the US-Mexico border allows terrorists through to harm America, they all have one thing in common: So far, none of them are true, reports David McLemore at the Dallas News ("Tales of terrorists breaching border overblown, so far," Dec. 11), confirming prior assessments of similar public statements on this blog.

Said Texas homeland security director Steve McCraw to McLemore, "These reports get out into the public and get magnified quickly before the facts can be confirmed, and that's a shame." Well, gee, sir, I've got a solution for you: Stop making unsubstantiated claims whenever it suits your political aims!

See prior, related Grits posts:

• Hyping Fear: As Texas Congressmen tell big fat lies, where are media factcheckers?
• Texas homeland security chief hyping phony border threats
• Congressman made up Al Qaeda incident at Texas border
• I wish the truth would hurry up and tie its shoes
• Even more hyped border threats
• Governor's ad avoids debating real border problems

Early identification, treatment of dyslexics would reduce crime, boost economy

I've argued before that expanding emphasis in public schools on combating dyslexia would reduce crime. Now we can also argue that it would be good for the economy!

Dyslexics make up 10% of Texas children who are tested but 30% of Texas prison inmates, and illiteracy is a key indicator increasing the likelihood of imprisonment. Now new research indicates that in addition to overpopulating the criminal justice system, dyslexics also overpopulate another, more socially acceptable class of people: Entrepreneurs! Who'da thought? According to the New York Times ("Tracing business acumen to dyslexia," Dec. 6):

It has long been known that dyslexics are drawn to running their own businesses, where they can get around their weaknesses in reading and writing and play on their strengths. But a new study of entrepreneurs in the United States suggests that dyslexia is much more common among small-business owners than even the experts had thought.

The report, compiled by Julie Logan, a professor of entrepreneurship at the Cass Business School in London, found that more than a third of the entrepreneurs she had surveyed — 35 percent — identified themselves as dyslexic. The study also concluded that dyslexics were more likely than nondyslexics to delegate authority, to excel in oral communication and problem solving and were twice as likely to own two or more businesses.

“We found that dyslexics who succeed had overcome an awful lot in their lives by developing compensatory skills,” Professor Logan said in an interview. “If you tell your friends and acquaintances that you plan to start a business, you’ll hear over and over, ‘It won’t work. It can’t be done.’ But dyslexics are extraordinarily creative about maneuvering their way around problems.”

The study was based on a survey of 139 business owners in a wide range of fields across the United States. Professor Logan called the number who said they were dyslexic “staggering,” and said it was significantly higher than the 20 percent of British entrepreneurs who said they were dyslexic in a poll she conducted in 2001.

She attributed the greater share in the United States to earlier and more effective intervention by American schools to help dyslexic students deal with their learning problems. Approximately 10 percent of Americans are believed to have dyslexia, experts say.

One reason that dyslexics are drawn to entrepreneurship, Professor Logan said, is that strategies they have used since childhood to offset their weaknesses in written communication and organizational ability — identifying trustworthy people and handing over major responsibilities to them — can be applied to businesses.

“The willingness to delegate authority gives them a significant advantage over nondyslexic entrepreneurs, who tend to view their business as their baby and like to be in total control,” she said.

When I proposed a "Real Public Safety Agenda for Texas," prior to the 80th Texas Legislature, one of the principal new investments called for was to "Train 10,000 new teachers to perform individual training with dyslexic children, and increase funding for early testing for dyslexia."

I considered reducing crime a powerful enough incentive by itself to focus new resources toward treating dyslexia, but this new research finding that dyslexics who receive that extra support more frequently become creative, productive entrepreneurs means that the state is wasting valuable human capital, leaving extra, home-grown economic growth on the table by channeling dyslexics more commonly into prison than into creating small businesses.

Reading this new data, I couldn't help but think of a recent program I heard about at a Texas Public Policy Foundation forum in Austin a few weeks back, described thusly on their website:

November 07, 2007
Policy Primer: Jobs After Jail - Enhancing the Employment of Ex-Offenders (audio file)

Approximately 30 percent of Texas adults have a criminal conviction. Ex-offenders who are employed are three-times less likely to re-offend and much more likely to pay restitution and child support. However, one reason some are unemployed or underemployed are state regulations that can be used to exclude them from over 150 different licensed occupations. Also, hiring ex-offenders can expose an employer to civil liability, and there is a lack of vocational opportunities in state and local lockups that correspond to available jobs in the economy.

An impressive program described at that forum - the Prison Entrepreneurship Program (PEP) - trains inmates to become legitimate entrepreneurs when they leave prison. Several of their program's graduates so far have become significant success stories to tell.

I wonder what's the relationship if any of inmates with dyslexia and participation in PEP?

These are just initial thoughts from disparate research that perhaps raise more questions than answers. Would dyslexics who turn to crime be more likely to launch their own legitimate business enterprises if they received specialized education support, plus training that prepares them with entrepreneurial skills they'll likely need to cope with their disabilities throughout their lives? We can't know for sure from these data, but the possibilities are intriguing:

Dyslexics make up 10% of Texans, but 30% of prisoners and up to 35% of entrepreneurs! Whatever else these data say, they tell me that what happens with dyslexic kids has a profound impact on the future of both the criminal justice system and the economy. Perhaps Texas policymakers should begin to pay closer attention to them.

No break for bad TYC news

Kiss the evening sky and say bye, bye bye,
Tomorrow knows no sorrow like today,
And should it come to pass the day's no better than the last,
We'll live it best we can, anyway.

- Terry Hendrix, "Hey Now," The Art of Removing Wallpaper

As is usual, the drumbeat of bad news about the Texas Youth Commission failed to cease just because of I was away from the blog for a few days.

Civil lawsuit filed against GEO Group for alleged Coke County abuses
The Brooklyn-based blog JuvieNation brings the word that:

Seven inmates who were held at the Coke County Juvenile Justice Center have filed a federal civil rights suit against the GEO Group, the AP reports. The Texas Youth Commission facility, which was handed over to the private prison behemoth GEO Group in 2003, was abruptly shut down in October after a surprise TYC audit found “unsafe conditions” at the facility. ...

According to the AP, the inmates allege “they were mentally, physically and sexually abused in 2006 and early 2007 by David Andrew Lewis, 24, who worked the night shift until he was fired in March.” Lewis, a registered sex offender, was dismissed after TYC officials learned he was on the public sex offender registry. Lewis claims he divulged his sex offender status when he applied for the position. A GEO spokesman had no comment.

See more from Texas Prison Bidness.

Mentally ill inmate molested by guard, but no clemency yet
Howard Witt at the Chicago Tribune brings news that a former JCO already accused of sexually molesting several youth has been indicted for allegedly assaulting a mentally disturbed girl at the Ron Jackson unit in Brownwood. However, "youth prison authorities have declined to grant clemency to the girl." The Paris News has more, including news that the Governor's office is reconsidering the case as of Friday. This girl was the same young arsonist whose story was paired by Witt in a feature last spring with Shaquanda Cotton, who was released after a much-celebrated media circus.

Though originally the story was framed to portray Cotton receiving a comparatively raw deal, possibly based on race, as Witt has followed up the story has shifted, demonstrating that the travails of the mentally ill in Texas youth prisons create their own types of discrimination and their own horror stories.

The question of clemency for this one girl, however compelling her individual case, symbolizes the plight of many more mentally ill youth in TYC, just like the adult prison system has become the de facto treatment of last resort (and sometimes first resort) for many mentally ill Texans. Hopefully this case will inspire not just new attention to the needs of this one teenager, but to the staggering human and monetary costs of underinvesting in mental health treatment before people wind up in prison. Particularly in the wake of draconian budget cuts in 2003, but really throughout its history, Texas has failed to provide sufficient mental health treatment in community settings, and instead simply criminalizes anti-social behaviors, somehow expecting punishment to send a rational message to an irrational mind.

NY Times: Feds should sue over "Spray First" force policy
Meanwhile, the New York Times published yet another staff editorial last week ("Harsh Treatment of Youthful Offenders," Dec. 8) criticizing TYC's proposed "Spray First" policy requiring officers to use pepper spray before manual restraints. The editorial follows a recent public hearing and a public policy report criticizing the practice from the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition. The Times suggested that if TYC enacts the new policy, the US Department of Justice should sue the agency and take matters into their own hands:

In a worrying sign that the right lessons have not been learned, the commission’s new leadership is proposing a rule change so it can make more frequent use of pepper spray against unruly detainees. Juvenile justice experts, the federal courts and the Justice Department have all condemned excessive use of pepper spray.

Pepper spray is a caustic substance that produces burning and respiratory distress and can also cause nerve damage. In addition to being inhumane, the policy is counterproductive. It undermines institutional discipline, further angering and alienating young detainees.

The agency claims that the new policy is necessary to help understaffed institutions maintain control. It also insists that the spray will be judiciously used. In a lawsuit filed earlier this year, however, Texas child welfare advocates charged that the system was using pepper spray excessively, including on mentally ill detainees who were supposed to be exempted. Among the cases cited in court documents was that of a mentally ill 15-year-old who was said to have been sprayed three times while attempting to harm himself.

These accounts are reminiscent of the heart-wrenching cases in Los Angeles County, Calif., where authorities were called to account for pepper-spraying pregnant girls, suicidal youth and detainees whom doctors had ordered exempted because of respiratory problems. Faced with the threat of a federal lawsuit, Los Angeles County reformed its disciplinary practices. According to a recent analysis by the Washington-based Center for Children’s Law and Policy, the county achieved its improvements by retraining its staff, improving mental health services and embracing less violent systems of crisis management.

Texas needs to follow the same course. If it will not, the Justice Department should ensure that it does.

Reader Poll on Future of TYC
At this point, given that TYC continues to insist on ignoring expert advice and plowing ahead with its pepper spray policy, not to mention driving away its core staff in droves, a DoJ lawsuit seems like a likely possible outcome; in fact, maybe it should have been one of the options on last week's reader poll, which posed the question:

Which will happen first at the Texas Youth Commission?

• The National Guard or state police are called in to guard TYC facilities because they're shortstaffed (9%)
• Acting Executive Director Dimitria Pope is relieved of her position (22%)
• A new conservator is appointed (11%)
• TYC announces more facility closures (34%)
• The 81st (2009) Texas Legislature convenes (22%)

The third of readers (150 voted, in addition to 106 comments on the post posing the question so far) who thought that more facility closures will be announced are probably betting with the odds - with staffing so low and the agency underbudgeted for the biennium, it's hard to imagine how the trends that would force further downsizing can be reversed without an infusion of both money and more importantly competent leadership. At the moment, neither appear to be forthcoming.

As for replacing Acting Executive Director Dimitria Pope, the 22% who thought she'd be removed next probably were engaging in wishful thinking. Supposedly candidates being asked to become TYC's next "conservator" have been told that Ms. Pope is a mandatory part of the package, a requirement that convinced a couple of good possible choices to turn the Governor down for the job.

Most readers don't appear to think that staffing problems would come to a head - only 9% thought outside agencies would have to be called in for emergency staffing of youth prisons. But readers were similarly pessimistic that a new conservator would be found who is willing to take the thankless job, with only 11% thinking a new conservator is coming soon, despite evidence the Guv's folks are prowling for candidates.

That pessimism may be well-founded if it's true the TDCJ transplants currently running TYC have been declared untouchable. Who would take the job under the condition that the people who've nearly wrecked the place and alienated most of their staff all must keep their jobs?

In any event, 22% of readers voted with me on this one, that the 81st Legislature occurs before any of those things. In other words, what will happen? Probably the worst possible outcome: Nothing. Things will just stay really screwed up, the people in charge won't be held accountable, legislators running for re-election will tell their constituents the agency is "fixed," and 2009 will roll around with little having changed from the status quo.

I hate to encourage such pessimism, but I fear state leaders have missed their most important opportunity to reform the agency, and that the malaise that's set in may become semi-permanent. After all, it's easier to do nothing than make any of the bold moves that would actually be required to pull the agency out of this quagmire.

Should the DoJ get involved? Probably. At this point I don't think they could mess things up any worse.

Reflections on drug policy reform conference in NOLA

Thanks to Bill Piper from the Drug Policy Alliance for making a scholarship available so I could attend the International Drug Policy Reform conference in New Orleans this week. Though I took my laptop, I'm afraid once I got there I was in more of a socializing than a blogging mood. With the exception of a couple of the breakout sessions, for me anyway, the event was more of a networking opportunity and less informative than frankly I might have hoped. But then, DPA's greatest importance over the last few years, to my mind, has been less as a source of information than as a professional environment where different constituencies that support drug policy reform, for a variety for different reasons, backing a variety of different solutions, can all cross-pollinate, a point made by DPA's Ethan Nadelman (pictured at left with Graham Boyd of the national ACLU Drug Law Reform Project) in his opening address. There were quite a few Texans at the event, but with a single exception (Hi, Debbie!) I didn't see much of them.

Though it's been quite a few years since I've made the trek, I love the drive to New Orleans from Texas. After you get past Houston, even well before you get to the Sabine River marking the border with Louisiana, it's easy to forget how much water gushes down toward the Gulf of Mexico in the stretch of country between Harris County and Baton Rouge, where you finally cross the Mississippi. I took a book on CD - Bob Dylan's autobiography read by Sean Penn (a beautifully and vividly written piece of prose, but with disappointingly vapid content) - and enjoyed the scenic if uneventful drive by myself, about nine hours each direction.

Though I didn't do any blogging from N'awlins, Pete Guither over at Drug War Rant, with whom I was pleased to get to finally meet and shake hands after reading his online work for years, has been writing like a fiend from the event, publishing notes from darn near everything he attended, so I'd refer you to his coverage for a substantive overview of the conference. Here's a pic of Pete and his conference entries so far:

• Thursday Morning - (Opening Plenary)
• Thursday Noon - (Costa)
• Thursday Evening - (Dream About a Reefer)
• Friday morning - (Building Momentum in Congress)
• Friday afternoon - (Elevator Arguments and other things)
• New Orleans Food Blogging
• Saturday Morning - (Europe)
• Saturday Noon - (Stop Snitching)
• Saturday Afternoon - (Beyond Prohibition)
• Closing Plenary

Pete was one of the earliest and most prolific drug war bloggers who was already well established by the time I launched Grits, so it was great to to finally put a bushy, red-bearded face to the name, and actually learn how to correctly pronounce it (G-eye-ther). He was one of many folks I got to visit there who made the trip a fun, much needed diversion. I was especially pleased to get to spend time with my pals Katy Schwartzmann and especially Tory Pegram from the Lousiana ACLU affiliate (pictured at left), who made sure I got to visit a bit outside the French Quarter where the conference was held. As with Tory and Katy, I've got a lot of admiration for Nsombi Lambright, the E.D. of the Mississippi ACLU, pictured here with one of her staffers. Those three (among many others, of course - these are just folks who I got to catch up with while I was in NOLA) really stepped up after Hurricane Katrina to earn reputations as some of the most effective young civil liberties advocates in the South.

I was also pleased meet and visit with a local NOLA community activist, Norris Henderson, who appears to be doing important work with a group called Safe Streets, Strong Communities. Though this blog focuses on crime and punishment issues in Texas, you could spend a lifetime writing about what's wrong with the justice system in our neighbor to the East. Couple existing, well-documented jail and police problems with the mass destruction of records and evidence in the floodwaters, combined with the decline in tax base to support adequate police, prosecution and especially public defender services. Mix in a corruption-riddled state and local governments, spice with indifferent federal support, and you get an ill-flavored gumbo of a criminal justice system, only made nastier after the floodwalls broke. Hearing war stories from folks in NOLA about police misconduct and prison conditions reminded me that, despite Texas' reputation, there are quite a few states who would look just as bad underneath the intense daily spotlight I try to put on Texas' system. Louisiana, California, Illinois, Alabama, Georgia, Florida - many of the critiques of Texas justice could just as easily be made in other arenas, and Louisiana is a prime candidate.

I met several folks who I only ever knew online, including Jeannette Irwin who blogs over at the Drug Policy Alliance's D'Alliance blog (which has also been featuring updates from the conference, though less prolifically than Pete). David Borden of DRCNet (at right) is another fellow I got to meet in person whose web work I've read and linked to throughout Grits' three-year existence. His weekly compilation of drug-related law enforcement corruption frequently includes Texas cases that relate to topics covered on this blog. Loretta Nall from Alabama (pictured with yours truly at left) is somebody else I've been in contact with for several years online but had never met face to face.

Having just blogged about Jason Zeidenberg's latest research project from the Justice Policy Institute, it was good to run into him (pictured at left). He encouraged me to dig deeper into the data in JPI's latest report, declaring there were a lot more Texas-specfic goodies there for a student of drug policy.

It was great to see all these folks and many more at the conference, but part of the reason I'd prefer not to give a blow by blow is that some of what I heard was disheartening. As many people out there as are doing great work on drug policy, more than at any time in my adult lifetime, the movement still too often suffers from an odd tendency to embrace its fringe status rather than seriously try to change it. That's not universally true, by a longshot, and one of the reasons I have a lot of respect for DPA is that the group actually tries to win instead of reveling in a sense of moral superiority. They're out there trying to convince opponents and fence-sitters from across the ideological spectrum to support smarter, less expensive policies, a tactic that to me should be no-brainer. I often think that drug policy reformers frequently lose because they go into every battle assuming they'll lose, and more than a few of the folks I spoke to in New Orleans reinforced that sense.

Meanwhile, a lot of the professional class - public health officials, progressive DAs like Craig Watkins in Dallas, more than a few judges from both parties, and many from the defense bar - are pursuing ideas like drug courts and an array of other drug policy reforms. Those hands-on interests were underrepresented in a conference filled with breakout sessions on anti-racist organizing and drug policy reformers against the middle-east war. A disappointing breakout session on "snitching" treated as a great revelation that "snitch" is not a synonym for "witness," but offered no solutions to the problem, only complaints. How you could have such a panel without including any of the folks working on the issue from the Innocence Project angles who actually propose reforms to fix the problem is beyond me.

In any event, though I enjoyed visiting with a lot of folks and meeting some new people - I even enjoyed a few days' break from the blog - it was good to get home to see the missus and the dogs. Though I've enjoyed a few days respite, I'll get back into regular blogging habits, perhaps, beginning tomorrow.

UPDATE: See more on the conference from Thinking Outside the Cage, the Transform blog, and from Ethan Brown, whose new book "Snitch" I'll be reviewing on Grits soon. I'd hoped to get an interview with Ethan, but had an equipment malfunction then scheduling conflicts - his work was definitely the highlight of the panel on informant abuses, along with Regina Kelly who was a central victim of a mendacious informant in the scandal in Hearne, TX. I'm looking forward to reading Brown's new book.

I'm outta here: Off to NOLA

I'm out of here. If you're going to be at the Drug Policy Reform conference in NOLA and would like to say "howdy," shoot me an email at gritsforbreakfast[at]gmail.com. I always love to meet readers. Otherwise, expect light blogging from the conference the rest of the week before I return on Sunday.

Massive racial disparities documented in Texas counties incarceration rates for drug offenses

Doc Berman points to a new study from the Justice Policy Institute documenting racial disparities in incarceration trends for drug crimes, and the study contains plenty of localized county-level fact sheets that have already begun to result in localized MSM stories in various media outlets, though none yet in Texas.

Not only is the level of racial disaparity in drug-related incarceration by county surprising, but also the RANGE of variation between counties in how much more often black folks are arrested for drug offenses. Here's a chart excerpted from JPI data for Texas counties with the highest ratio of drug-related incarcerations per 100,000 by county.


Reporters especially should review this useful map for localized fact sheets for Texas Counties with populations above 250,000. In Travis County, for example, the drug imprisonment rate for white folks was less than 10 per 100,000, while just over 302 black folks per 100,000 were imprisoned for drugs. (The overall drug imprisonment rate was 49 per 100,000, but obviously within that stat tremendous disparities exist.

So Travis County sent 31 times as many black folks as white folks to prison for drugs, by comparison Dallas, with a much larger black population, the ratio was 9-1. In Harris and Bexar Counties, both, the ratio was 19-1.

These are fascinating data and I hope Texas reporters pick up on these localized data to launch local discussions over whether these results reflect the outcomes they think are best for the overall health of their cities and counties.

Congrats to JPI's Jason Zeidenberg on an outstanding (and provocative) research project.

New York Times focuses on "law of parties" that leads to frequent unjust outcomes at the ignominious Texas Court of Criminal Appeals

Evan Smith from Texas Monthly forwarded me a link to this NY Times article, which Doc Berman also points to, about a Florida man convicted of murder under the "law of parties" for providing a car for a burglary that ended in homicide. Smith asked if this wasn't similar to a recent high-profile Texas case?

I think he's referring to Kenneth Foster, the driver of a vehicle used in a getaway after a murder whose execution sentence Governor Perry recently commuted to life. (In all honesty, given the state of Texas' prisons, I'm not sure LWOP is a better deal.) But the same situation also explains quite a few of the "murderers" who got probation in the big Dallas News series on "probation for murder." The "law of parties" as practiced has been expansively broadened at the ignominious Texas Court of Criminal Appeals under Presiding Judge Sharon Keller and Co.. By contrast:

India and other common law countries have followed England in abolishing the doctrine. In 1990, the Canadian Supreme Court did away with felony murder liability for accomplices, saying it violated “the principle that punishment must be proportionate to the moral blameworthiness of the offender.”

That approach, to me, seems more just.Here's another great example why Democrats need some horses, er ... candidates, to step up and run for the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, not just for Democrats to appear competitive in every seat, a laudable but not necessarily strategic goal, but just in case Democrats get lucky and experience a Dallas-style Democratic sweep because of national electoral trends. If that happens, failure to field candidates in these three statewide seats will appear, in retrospect, like leaving money on the table. If there's a chance to improve this egregious court in the least and Texans don't take it, it would be a tremendous waste.

There's only a short time left to get the necessary signatures from around the state, although I'll bet some of our friends in the netroots could help accomplish that quicker than might otherwise be possible. So if you're planning to throw your hat in the ring, shoot me an email to let me know and I'll help you tap into several other folks who are desperately looking for horses ... er, candidates, to run for these three seats.

Before a long drive, a news roundup

I'm leaving in just a bit to drive to New Orleans for the International Drug Policy Reform Conference, so it seems like a good time for a roundup of items for which I don't have time to generate individual blog posts:

Covering the drug cartels
Ace reporter Sam Logan now has a blog which I'd recommend to anyone interested in Latin America. He presently features a fascinating story on Blackwater Corp positioning itself to capture some of the proposed contracts to assist Mexico fighting drug runners.

Just Visitin'
The Mexia Daily News features a new book describing old Texas jails that have been transformed into modern uses. "Just Visitin’ tells the story of more than fifty jails which have survived to serve as museums, libraries, restaurants, hotels, and even a home or two. Dating back as far as 1850, each jail has its own style."

The Hidden Costs of Jury Duty
The Cameron Herald says that in Milam County someone perpetrated an identity theft scam by posing as the county jury coordinator.

Here's the scenario: The County Jury Coordinator, supposedly, calls you on the phone. The target is told that a warrant has been issued for his arrest. Why? Is the obvious question. The reason you are going to jail is because you failed to appear for jury duty.

Of course, the victim never received such a notice, but he is anxious to solve this problem and solve it quick. The caller is sympathetic with the victim's predicament assures him that the matter can be resolved. Some information is needed to prove they are residents. Give you social security number, bank account number and your mother's middle name. Verification of date of birth is required too.

Eager to get this problem fixed, the victim gives the con artist the requested data. The caller asks that you be placed on hold for a minute. He comes back on line with good news. All has been taken care of. You may get an apology for any inconvenience you were caused and hangs up the phone

Immigration Detention Boom Not Over
Here's another example why I don't think we're finished yet with the immigration detention boom, even though capacity in current facilities is already maxxed out.

New Dallas Repeat Offender Policy Due to Overcrowding
With new checks and balances, the Dallas DA has reinstated a program to move repeat offenders more quickly out of the county jail and into prison.

Look West for Advice on Needle Exchange
As Bexar County prepares to begin Texas' first pilot needle exchange program, officials should be sure to look at the successful New Mexico needle exchange operation which has now been in operation for ten years.

Article on parole inflames without fully informing

Here's a news article spinning a story along the traditional, tough/soft on crime axis, when really, to me, the implications are much more profound.

The Houston Chronicle ("Early release, deportation of inmate cause criticism," Dec. 4) points to a case where an inmate convicted of murder (he was the driver, not the shooter, in a drive-by shooting) who was sentenced to 70 years was paroled at the earliest opportunity and deported back to Ecuador. Always looking to grab headlines, City of Houston victim rights coordinator Andy Kahan pounced on the incident to claim the Texas prison system was too soft, that 16 years incarceration amounted to a "sweetheart deal."

Focusing the story on Kahan and the victim's family demanding longer sentences, though, overlooks the big-picture problem that's causing killers to be released earlier than they otherwise might: Texas is filling up the majority of its prison space with non-violent offenders, so when we prosecute more of those, the only way to incarcerate them is to build more prisons or let violent offenders go. Since Texas can't adequately staff prisons and jails now, building more makes little sense, so officials have little option but to parole long-time offenders with good behavior.

Two other points come to mind. First, murderers have among the lowest recidivism rates of all prisoners, so it may well be that this decision won't particularly harm public safety. Second, I'd bet that if the reporter were to check, she''d find the parole board deporting most foreign nationals as soon as they're able, often, as in this case, at 1/4 of their stated sentence.

Again, that's because with prisons overcrowded and understaffed; if you're a prison bureaucrat (or married to one, like the parole board chair when her panel made the decision to parole this offender) it makes a lot of sense from a purely pragmatic perspective to have them deported and make them somebody else's problem. Kahan says this is a "sweetheart deal" since the offender doesn't have to comply with parole conditions. But I'm sure many such prisoners would prefer to stay in the United States under parole instead of be deported.

The range of sources in the Chronicle article were extremely narrow: Kahan, the victim's family, and Board of Pardons and Parole Chair Rissie Owens. That amounts to asking three people with the same opinion, generating false controversy while framing the debate as whether the parole board should be "tuffer." Viewing the story from a systems perspective, though, instead of letting Mr. Kahan spin the story, we must ask the question, as I did in another case nearly two years ago:

in this "tough on crime" state, why would such a person have been paroled in the first place? Because Texas prisons are full, and we have to have someplace to put the thousands of nonviolent offenders sent to prison each year -- often with sentences that will last decades. So the state has to let people like [Eduardo Blondett] out to make room, or spend billions on new prison beds over the next few years. Similarly, the parole system can't chase down violent absconders because it's overwhelmed hunting five times the number of nonviolent ones.

That leaves the state of Texas with three choices: 1) process more nonviolent offenders through probation and community-based sanctions instead of prison, 2) build more prisons at a cost of several billion dollars instead of spending the money on schools and roads, or 3) keep releasing dangerous offenders to make room for new non-violent ones, which is what's happening now.

This reporter let Mr. Kahan divert her focus to a single tree and thus failed to notice the forest around her. But these flame-fanning accusations of lenience amount to only part of the story - in the bigger picture, overcriminalization and policy decisions by elected officials have created the situation where Texas houses so many prisoners, murderers must be let free to make room for petty drug offenders and small-time thieves.

So when you see a news story like this, with "victim-friendly" sources aghast at why a violent offender would be released from prison without serving their full sentence, as Paul Harvey said, now you know the rest of the story.

Meeting Expectations: TYC holds public hearing on use of force

A Travis County judge said holding a public hearing is the least the Texas Youth Commission could do before changing its use of force policy, and since they finally held that hearing yesterday, apparently blogging about it is the least I can do here on Grits.

A regular reader emails today to demand, "Don't even think about leaving town without posting on the use of force hearing yesterday. You are LATE as it is."

So it's not just TYC which must meet expectations, apparently, but me, as well! I couldn't make it to the hearing; I'd already said my piece when I submitted written comments, and was waiting till I had a little more information. But now I feel obligated (since I'm "LATE," after all!) to go ahead and link to MSM coverage of TYC's hearing yesterday to evaluate its proposed use of force policy. Here's the coverage I saw:

• Critics: TYC pepper spray policy is vague, The Daily Texan
• TYC urged to limit pepper spray, AP
• Teen inmates pepper sprayed on videotape, The Austin Statesman

I have no idea what the agency will do here: I hope they go back to the old policy, which was based in a court settlement and didn't need changing, but they could easily approve the same one Acting Executive Director Dimitria Pope first proposed on August 2. At this point, you never know.

SEE ALSO: Public policy report from Texas Criminal Justice Coalition (pdf) on TYC Pepper Spray Policy.

RELATED: For the period I'll be in N'awlins, I've put up a reader poll asking, which will happen first at the Texas Youth Commission:

• The National Guard or state police are called in to guard TYC facilities because they're shortstaffed
• Acting Executive Director Dimitria Pope is relieved of her position
• A new conservator is appointed
• TYC announces more facility closures
• The 81st (2009) Texas Legislature convenes

Let me know your opinion in the sidebar poll and in the comments. And play nice, while I'm away, folks! Please? :)

Open Thread: Stuff to Read While I'm Out

I'm out to run a few errands today before leaving tomorrow for a long drive to the International Drug Policy Reform Conference in New Orleans. While I'm otherwise occupied, check out these Texas blogs, all with interesting, recent criminal justice posts:

• Prevention not Punishment
• I Was the State
• Dallas Sidebar
• The Defense Perspective

Consider this an open thread; what's on your mind?

Readers: Say 'No' to Unmanned Police Spy Planes

To recap last week's reader poll question, 217 readers responded to the question:

Should the Houston Police Department use unmanned surveillance aircraft for traffic enforcement and covert operations?

Of those, 72 percent opposed use of unmanned spy planes in urban Houston, while 28% favored the idea.

A couple of the readers who favored the idea left comments in this post saying the use of unmanned spy drones is no different from current police use of helicopters, but I don't think that's entirely accurate. For starters, it begs the argument, if it's the "same" as a helicopter, and HPD has helicopters, why buy this new gadget?

The most important service of a helicopter is transporting people, getting to the scene of an emergency despite traffic at any time of day, but this plane won't do that. As for aerial surveillance, the noisy helicopter gives automatic notice when it's around, while the spy plane is designed for covert viewing. Indeed, the amount of visual intrusion from humans in a helicopter is advanced by a magnitude of scale with an unmanned spy drone, which will have long-range cameras in all directions, constantly recording for future analysis.

From a constitutional perspective, this bizarrely would not violate any Fourth Amendment rights under current Supreme Court standards, for reasons I've criticized at length in the past. It's the same legal standard that has occasionally protected shopping mall voyeurs taking upskirt photos on escalators. Basically the law says it's not an invasion of privacy to take your picture if someone is in a place they have the legal right to be and takes a line of sight shot, even if they use intense magnification from a distance. While this protects paparazzi who want to shoot pics of naked movie stars suntanning in their backyards, the precedents establishing this standard have for the most part been set in law enforcement cases.

So if they're "just looking" (after all, as Houston PD Chief Harold Hurtt says, if you're not doing anything wrong, what do you have to hide?), police can fly their toy camera plane around town and peek into backyards all day, under this theory, without violating our rights as currently formulated by SCOTUS.

One commenter envisioned a use that would violate current Supreme Court standards, "If they put IR [infrared] on it and start randomly looking for hot spots where people are growing pot it might" violate Fourth Amendment rights. That's exactly correct, at least under under current Supreme Court rulings, if you agree with the Court's limited interpretation of the Fourth Amendment.

Myself, I believe that radical technological innovations (like quiet spy planes with 360-degree cameras rigged with powerful telephoto lenses) require a reworking of these old standards of privacy which have rapidly become inadequate to handle invasive technology. I don't know exactly where that line should be drawn, but I know when this type of invasive technology is legal for use by domestic police, a new line needs to be drawn.

Others questioned whether it's appropriate for police departments to purchase military equipment for use against their own citizens. That already happens, of course, with SWAT and other specialized units, and even to some extent with average cops. Today's officers are often so larded down with equipment on their utility belts they can hardly run. (At the Austin PD, IMO, this trend has reached a point of absurdity.) But using military spy equipment against your own people takes that concept to a new level, and makes us wonder how far police departments will go mimicking police tactics more commonly used in Iraq and Afghanistan against our military enemies.

Someone else said simply, "it's not how I want my tax dollars spent," and given the decrepit state of the Fourth Amendment, I think that's the bottom line. Houston PD can't put enough officers on the street, but they're going to spend millions on expensive toys and gadgets. That spy plane won't make one more arrest, won't write one more traffic ticket, and it won't quell a single domestic disturbance. All it will do is take pictures of from the sky, for as long as HPD is willing to pay the gasoline bill. I think most people in Houston would prefer they pay a few more officer salaries with that money, instead.

This was just a demonstration of the technology, HPD said, they haven't purchased it yet. Let's hope they pass; it would be a big waste of time and money and set a bad precedent.

SCOTUS to decide in Texas case when right to counsel attaches

SCOTUSBlog brings word that a case brought by the Texas Fair Defense Project in Fredericksburg has been granted cert, meaning the case will be decide by the highest court in the land. According to Lyle Denniston,

The Supreme Court agreed on Monday to further clarify when a suspect taken into custody by police has a right to a lawyer. The question is whether that right sets in when an individual has been taken before a magistrate, who finds reason to believe a crime has been committed and sends the individual to jail, or whether it only ataches when a prosecutor prepares to or makes a charge. ...

The new right-to-counsel case the Justices will hear, with oral argument likely in March, involves a Fredericksburg, Texas, man, Walter Allen Rothgery, who sought but was denied the aid of an attorney when he appeared before a magistrate at a probable cause hearing. The magistrate found probable cause to support a charge that Rothgery was a felon who had a gun; Rothgery was sent to jail. He was released on bond, but rearrested later after a grand jury indicted him. Once he obtained a lawyer, the charges were dismissed; the felony allegation against him turned out to have been an error because charges against him in California had been dismissed.

Rothgery sued the county in a civil rights lawsuit over the denial of a lawyer at the first hearing. The County opposed the lawsuit, contending that the right to counsel did not attach until he actually had been indicted — a claim ultimately upheld by the Fifth Circuit Court. Rothgery’s appeal was supported by 22 law professors urging the Justices to clarify when the right to counsel attaches.

Congrats to TFDP head honcho Andrea Marsh and Chief Counsel Harry Williams on getting this major opportunity. When an advocacy group sets out to file impact litigation in federal court to change local practices, this is exactly where they hope to end up: with an opportunity to set new precedent on behalf of defendants. Good luck, folks!

Here's a little more on the case from TFDP's newly upgraded website:

Rothgery v. Gillespie County

In Rothgery v. Gillespie County, TFDP represents an individual who was denied counsel for over six months while free on bond. Mr. Rothgery was arrested for being a felon in possession of a gun when he was not, in fact, a felon. Although Mr. Rothgery repeatedly asked for a court-appointed lawyer, it was not until Mr. Rothgery was re-arrested and spent time in jail that the county gave him an attorney. Once appointed counsel, Mr. Rothgery‘s lawyer was quickly able to obtain paperwork that showed Mr. Rothgery was not a felon, and the charges were dismissed.

In June 2007, the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans upheld the dismissal of Mr. Rothgery‘s claims, finding that Mr. Rothgery‘s right to counsel did not attach until a prosecutor became involved in the case, which did not occur until months after Mr. Rothgery had been committed on charges filed by law enforcement shortly after his arrest. In reaching this disposition, the Fifth Circuit employed a test that has not been used either in Texas courts or in other federal courts and created a split with other federal courts of appeal. TFDP is seeking Supreme Court review of the case.

Rothgery v. Gillespie County case documents:

• Mr. Rothgery‘s Original Complaint
• Mr. Rothgery‘s Appeal Brief to the Fifth Circuit
• Fifth Circuit's Decision
  
• Mr. Rothgery‘s Petition for Writ of Certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court

UPDATE: At the TDCAA message board they've labeled this a case to watch, with a commenter adding that the Texas courts have failed to clarify the question. MORE: See coverage from the Austin Statesman.

Will Democrats Field ANYONE for the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals?

Texas Monthly may think they're "Texas' Worst Court," and that Presiding Judge Sharon Keller should be impeached, but with one month left to go, no Democrat has yet signed up to run against any of the incumbents up for re-election next year on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. This potentially leaves the same nine members on the court for the next biennium who Presiding Judge Sharon Keller bullied into repeated outrageous decisions over the last several years.

Of the incumbents who're up next go-round, at least Tom Price has the good sense to call a spade a spade, vocally declaring some time ago that the court's radical pro-prosecution precedents made them a "laughingtsock" around the nation's legal community. And Cathy Cochran finally came out to publicly criticize the Presiding Judge over the recent "We close at 5" debacle. The other judge up next year, Paul Womack, probably should be targeted before those two, but really IMO it's time to begin a comprehensive infusion of fresh blood.

I'm worried nobody will run for any of these slots, even though arguably these three may be the most vulnerable incumbents on the statewide ballot. Every potential candidate I've spoken to has said "no" or decided to run for something else, but I'm still hoping somebody - preferably three somebodies - will decide to step up and run on the Democratic ticket for the Texas CCA.

Informants, shoddy counsel, and the death penalty

"Houston has 1.3 per cent of America's population but carries out 10 per cent of its executions," reports the UK Guardian, but many of those executed have something in common: Their lawyer. See the Dec. 2 Guardian profile of Houston defense attorney Jerry Guerinot, who the Guardian calls "Lethal Counsel," who represented a DEA informant in a death penalty case without ever speaking with her law enforcement handler. Her appellate lawyers are claiming incompetent representation, but Guerinot insists his representation was "aggressive." Via CrimProf Blog.

Rolling Stone: Colombian Drug War Offers Preview of US-Funded Mexican Surge

Those who don't learn from the history of the Drug War in Colombia are failed to repeat it in Mexico. For a preview of what another $1.4 billion may buy in a Mexican edition of "Plan Colombia," see the article from Rolling Stone, "How America Lost the War on Drugs," Nov. 27, on how we spent the last half-trillion (via Strange Attractor):

All told, the United States has spent an estimated $500 billion to fight drugs - with very little to show for it. Cocaine is now as cheap as it was when Escobar died and more heavily used. Methamphetamine, barely a presence in 1993, is now used by 1.5 million Americans and may be more addictive than crack. We have nearly 500,000 people behind bars for drug crimes - a twelvefold increase since 1980 - with no discernible effect on the drug traffic. Virtually the only success the government can claim is the decline in the number of Americans who smoke marijuana - and even on that count, it is not clear that federal prevention programs are responsible. In the course of fighting this war, we have allowed our military to become pawns in a civil war in Colombia and our drug agents to be used by the cartels for their own ends. Those we are paying to wage the drug war have been accused of ­human-rights abuses in Peru, Bolivia and Colombia. In Mexico, we are now ­repeating many of the same mistakes we have made in the Andes. (emphasis added)

The whole article is worth a read, particularly for those who haven't been following the foreign policy component of the War on Drugs. The piece confirms my impression, as I've maintained previously that Mexican drug cartels arguably constitute the greatest overall public safety threat from the drug war. I'm increasingly convinced that current proposals for anti-drug collaborations with Mexico precisely risk repeating the mistake of allowing "our drug agents to be used by the cartels for their own ends."

House Corrections Faces Full Plate of Interim Studies

The Texas House Corrections Committee, which already had a lot going on with oversight functions at the Youth Commission, was handed a full plate, indeed, by Speaker Tom Craddick with the announcement of its "interim charges." (See here, p. 5-6) Since the Texas Legislature only meets 140 days every two years, interim charges are topics that standing committees study in between to prepare to address more complex issues in a short time frame, meaning it's highly likely these subjects will be the topic of substantive legislation in 2009. Here are the highlights:

Study Technocorrections
This should please Michael over at Corrections Sentencing: The first charge instructs the committee to:

Explore the use of technology practices that improve efficiency, safety, and coordination of criminal justice activities on the state, local, and county levels.

My guess is the intent of this item is to focus on GPS solutions, but I can actually think of many technology practices (or the lack thereof) that could be improved to benefit efficiency, safety and coordination. For starters, an array of silo'ed bureaucracies house a variety of different databases and information streams on related topics that are seldom cross-checked. E.g., pretrial services divisions prepare much of the same information as do probation officers' reports but frequently do not share it, requiring longer waits and redundant work.

Similarly, documentation generated by county probation departments typically does not inform decisions by state parole officers, even though they're frequently supervising the exact same offenders at different stages of the process. That's especially problematic for youth sent to TYC, most of whom were on probation before imprisonment, who may not stay incarcerated long, and who return to the same community supervised by a different bureaucracy. Better coordination between juvenile probation and parole should lead to both stronger supervision and better outcomes for the offender.

What to Do With Drug Offenders?
Two charges deal directly and indirectly with how the state should handle drug offenders. One charge directs the Committee to propose improvements to the state jail felony system (about half of state jail felons are drug offenders), evaluating "original intent for use, sentencing guidelines, and effectiveness." Another joint charge with the Appropriations Committee will have Corrections:

Review and research the availability, coordination, efficiency, and allocation of substance abuse treatment resources for probationers, pretrial defendants, people in the custody of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ), and parolees. This review should include methods to reduce and improve current assessments, training, and referring protocols and the identification of any barriers that may be impeding all of the above.

The results of this study will be especially interesting in light of recently expanded treatment funding from the Legislature; it's always been an open question whether sufficient capacity exists in every jurisdiction to make full use of new treatment dollars.

Re-entry Focus
The next charge focuses on prisoner re-entry:

Consider new strategies for meeting prisoner reentry challenges in Texas, including the evaluation of programs with documented success. This review should include the availability of housing and occupational barriers.

Given that as many as one in eleven Texas adults has a felony conviction, the need here is enormous. Housing and occupational barriers reduce the chances for successful reform and increase recidivism on their face. (Marc Levin at the Texas Public Policy Foundation recently published a white paper on the subject, arguing for ramping down occupational restrictions (pdf) on ex-felons, and you can also listen to a podcast from a recent public forum on the subject.)

Narrow Immigration Focus
In a joint charge with the Committee on County Affairs, House Corrections will focus on immigration matters, particularly:

Study policies and procedures related to illegal immigration and border security
of the TDCJ, county probation departments, and local and county jail facilities,
and make recommendations to improve coordination with international, federal,
state, and local authorities.

All sorts of crazy anti-immigrant proposals have been made over the last couple of years so this interim charge could be a minefield, but it sounds like Chairman Madden intends to limit its scope. According to Quorum Report's Daily Buzz:

Knowing that Chair Rep. Jerry Madden (R-Plano) is from North Texas makes it difficult not to think immediately of the current controversies in Farmers Branch and Irving. In Farmers Branch, voters passed an ordinance in May that would require landlords to check for citizenship status. And in Irving, Council voted to begin turning over all names of those arrested by Irving Police to the Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) service, with the intention of deporting those in the country illegally.

Those were not the motivating factor in this charge, Madden said. Instead, the committee wants to make sure the state has consistency in it its policies on illegal immigrants with felony convictions, from the probation departments to the local jails to the prison system.

“We’re interested in specifically looking at what’s being done to check citizenship, and to make sure that uniform steps are being taken,” Madden said. “We shouldn’t be treating illegal immigrants any differently than we would treat legal immigrants.”

Mental Illness and Crime
Finally, I was pleased to see the committee has a substantial joint interim charge with the Appropriations Committee concerning mental illness and crime. The charge directs the committee to:

Assess the relationship between mental illness and criminal behavior and offer reforms needed to address the proliferation of mental illness in the adult and juvenile criminal justice systems. This review should include an examination of data sharing between criminal justice and health and human services agencies, proper screening, assessments, treatment, discharge planning, post-release supervision, and community services.

Given that fully thirty percent of adult Texas prison inmates are former clients of the state's indigent mental health system, arguably this (and the quite-related "re-entry" topic) may be the most important of these interim charges from a public safety perspective.

This is a busy interim agenda for the House Corrections Committee considering the Lege is a little late this time around getting to interim charges in the first place. Good luck, folks - you've got a lot of important stuff on your plate.

Oral histories allege abusive TYC practices

The Dallas News today has a feature by Gregg Jones entitled "The Faces of TYC" (Dec. 2). They've also published an interactive website featuring video interviews with inmates, parents, staff, whistleblowers and watchdogs.

Jones' piece today tracks the case of former TYC inmate Chris Gann. As in other such stories, TYC staff were prohibited by confidentiality laws from addressing specifics about the youth's behavior, so the tale is largely told from the ex-inmate's point of view, for good or ill. But in particular I wanted to ask current and past Youth Commission employees about two practices described by Mr. Gann that were allegedly used at the now-closed Marlin unit. Read this, TYC'ers, and tell me if you've ever witnessed these tactics in action:

The staff at the TYC prison in Marlin called it "discipline training."

Every afternoon, for an hour or longer in the summer heat, Mr. Gann and other Marlin inmates were forced to run laps around a dirt track inside the compound, he said. On a staff member's command, the inmates would throw themselves to the ground for push-ups, then scramble to their feet for more laps.

Anyone who stopped without permission was slammed to the ground, handcuffed and left to lie in the blazing sun, he said.

"We were all just falling over and throwing up," said Mr. Gann, by then 14. When it was all over, "we would all be laying there, crying, sore, all scraped up and bleeding."

Young inmates who got sick or hurt found little sympathy, he said.

"When you would go to the infirmary, all they would tell you was to drink water and you'd be OK," he said.

Inmates also performed a drill known as "55-5," he said, in which they would stand at attention for 55 minutes at their bunks, then sit for five minutes. They did this about six times a day, he said.

Does the description of "discipline training" accurately describe how youth were treated at Marlin or at other TYC facilities? Are kids made to run or exercise to exhaustion? Has anyone ever witnessed a youth handcuffed out in the sun for ceasing rigorous exercise without staff permission?

And is the "drill" (not much of a drill, really) that Gann refers to as "55-5" still used at TYC, and if so what is it's purpose? The claim that up to six hours of a 24-hour day were spent on 55-5 drills, seems outrageous: Can this be corroborated?

The videos are compelling. While administrators claim abuse of youth has been 98% reduced, I wonder whether all the agency's abusive practices have even been identified? The DMN website along with Gann's story makes me think that a pure oral history project interviewing inmates and staff, in particular, would substantially enlighten debates over what's wrong at TYC and what should be done.

Mexican cartels continue supplying illegal drugs despite massive numbers of arrests and deaths

The total number of people employed in aggregate by Mexican drug cartels must be just massive.

According to the Washington Post ("Mexico launches 8th offensive in drive against drug cartels," Dec. 1), 14,000 cartel-related suspects have been arrested in Mexico in the last year, while 4,000 more people died in the intra-cartel feuds over favored supply routes in the last 18 months. Some of those 4,000 were police or elected officials who opposed illegal drug trafficking, but most deaths were from rival cartel members killing each other.

So assuming these data are accurate, that's a total 18,000+ recent cartel-related arrests and deaths. Dozens of tons of cocaine and marijuana have been captured over the same time frame, each with its own, jubilant, self-congratulatory press release. But nobody thinks any of this has done more than, at most, slightly raise the price of some drugs in some areas of the United States, and even those claims' veracity is disputable.

“What worries us as a society is that even if this year nearly 50 tons of cocaine have been seized, most of the traffic of narcotics is not detected, so the perception of impunity and corruption continues to be very high,” María Elena Morera, president of Mexico United Against Crime, an advocacy group, told the New York Times.

So if fifty tons of cocaine seizures, 4,000 deaths and 14,000 arrests weren't enough to reduce drug trafficking in Mexico, how many people must be arrested or killed before the problem is under control? There must be many, many more people smuggling drugs through Mexico if reducing the cartels' workforce by that amount hasn't made a major dent.

These are not just 18,000 criminals, they're 18,000 people who worked in one of the more lucrative Mexican industries, meaning that, en masse, the drug war has a negative effect on Mexican domestic demand the same way 18,000 middle-class layoffs in a major industry might effect the US economy. That's a lot of folks.

That large number of arrests must also mean they're mainly catching "little fish" with little tangible effect on overall drug supplies. Most of the bigger fish captured, with one or two high-profile exceptions, have come from the Gulf Cartel, which has led me to wonder if the overall strategy of the Mexican government might not be to pick a side in the cartel wars instead of to stop all illegal drugs. The quickest way to reduce violence in Mexico, which after all stems mainly from competition among rival illegal businesses - would be for the government to enforce an informal monopoly for one side or the other, probably the Sinaloa drug syndicate. By comparison, the Sysiphian task of halting all illegal drugs likely cannot be accomplished any time soon, even if it's what the US might prefer.

Time will tell which way Mexican President Felipe Calderon is headed.

Looking for leadership: Meurer turns down TYC slot running agency mired in crisis

I heard a rumor last night from a reliable source that the Governor offered retiring Democratic Travis County District Judge Jeanne Meurer a job "running" the Texas Youth Commission (my snitch didn't know if it was the commissioner or the conservator's slot), but she turned it down because she would not have the authority or budget to fix the agency's problems. The source speculated Meurer may instead run for Travis County District Attorney instead when long-time incumbent Ronnie Earle steps down from the post.

I have to say, if the rumor's true, at this point it's hard to blame Judge Meurer for passing up TYC. Without significant resources and enough clout to reverse many bad decisions and hires from the last nine months, the job would be an endlessly ungratifying headache. (Maybe they'll ask Michael Griffiths next - they really need to find somebody with real-world juvie experience, and give them enough power to fix things.)

The biggest problem facing the TYC administration and any future commissioner is the system-wide understaffing crisis, the gravity of which is highlighted in a story today coming out of the Ron Jackson unit in Brownwood.

Sixteen juvenile correctional officers resigned from the STAR unit at Brownwood, supposedly over disputed overtime. But once the overtime question was resolved, none of the 16 agreed to return to the STAR team, which makes me think their concerns were more substantive than media reports let on. Reported AP:

Their departure last week leaves 10 members on the STAR team at the Ron Jackson Unit in Brownwood. If a disturbance or other emergency occurs, off-duty corrections officers or law enforcement agencies will be called, [TYC spokesman Jim] Hurley said.

A couple of questions about this immediately come to mind: First, Hurley is wrong to downplay the Brownwood STAR team losing 60% of its members at a whack. If this begins a trend, it spells trouble. Hurley said the agency just needs to "replenish the ranks," but the whole agency is understaffed, so that's much easier said than done.

Also, outside law enforcement agencies aren't trained to deal with TYC youth, and off-duty correctional officers may not have received necessary training to participate in the STAR team.

In any event, relying on off-duty employees or outside agencies to respond to emergencies lengthens the potential time a crisis must be left swirling at the facility before the STAR team can get there, worsening safety for youth and staff on the ground.

(UPDATE/CORRECTION: Contrary to the AP report, all 16 Brownwood STAR team officers in question have re-applied for their jobs, but have not been reinstated because TYC CO insists they re-submit to testing and PT. See the comments for more detail.)

If TYC cannot reverse understaffing trends, it won't be long - perhaps sometime next year - before the only option left will be to bring in the National Guard or state police to keep staffing levels at statutorily mandated 12-1 ratios. Already caseworkers are serving as guards, necessarily shortchanging their regular duties. The fact that the agency is now cannibalizing unfilled positions to pay for overtime shows the Legislature simply did not budget enough money to increase staffing to mandated levels.

At some point, pay needs to be increased - if a dangerous job guarding criminal youth pays comparable wages to the WalMart, who wouldn't choose to work at WalMart? But more importantly, the agency's employment culture must improve to reverse mounting losses among critical workers. The current management crew can't accomplish that, IMO, so I'm glad to hear Gov. Perry's people are out beating the bushes for better leadership. It'd be a great Christmas gift for TYC employees if they could get a new boss before the holiday along with their belated overtime checks.