State revenue will plummet, says Comptroller

The state of Texas will have $9 billion less to spend than in the last biennium, reports the Dallas News ("Texas revenue estimate down by $9 billion," Jan. 12):

Comptroller Susan Combs today estimated that Texas has about $9 billion less to spend – $77 billion – than it did two years ago.

Combs called her revenue estimate, which caps how much lawmakers can spend in the legislative session that begins Tuesday, “decidedly cautious.”

While Texas dodged many bullets in a national economic slowdown that began just over a year ago, the Republican comptroller said the state’s prosperity has cooled because of raging turmoil in financial, housing and auto markets.

“The effects of what may become the worst national recession in many decades will be too large to avoid,” she said. “The state is not immune.”

Combs said the Legislature will have $77.1 billion in state revenue to spend in the next two-year budget cycle – $9.1 billion less than the $86.2 billion in the current cycle.

That's more than a 10% estimated decline from last biennium - a lot less than earlier predictions, which suggested Texas might have up to $2 billion over and above the last biennial budget to apply toward discretionary spending. The Comptroller's final, official estimate represents a whopping $15.7 billion swing from the Legislative Budget Board's estimates in November.

On the criminal justice front, this news comes as the Department of Criminal Justice is asking for a total $1.2 billion in new spending over the next two years, including a 20% pay hike for guards to reduce high turnover rates and corruption. That's definitely in jeopardy now, as is any new agenda item with a price tag attached to it.

Perhaps this unhappy fiscal news means it's now time to seriously examine more radical possibilities being discussed in other states for reducing corrections costs?

See related Grits posts:

• States reducing inmate numbers to save money: Should Texas?
• Tight budgets and corrections priorities

Obama's DOJ may refocus on prosecuting crime instead of immigration

I'll be pleased if the Obama Administration reverses recent trends at the Justice Department prioritizing prosecution of petty immigration crimes over more serious felonies, as predicted by members of his transition team. The New York Times' Solomon Moore lays out the issue in stark detail:

Federal prosecutions of immigration crimes nearly doubled in the last fiscal year, reaching more than 70,000 immigration cases in the 2008 fiscal year, according to federal data compiled by a Syracuse University research group. The emphasis, many federal judges and prosecutors say, has siphoned resources from other crimes, eroded morale among federal lawyers and overloaded the federal court system. Many of those other crimes, including gun trafficking, organized crime and the increasingly violent drug trade, are now routinely referred to state and county officials, who say they often lack the finances or authority to prosecute them effectively. ...

Immigration prosecutions have steeply risen over the last five years, while white-collar prosecutions have fallen by 18 percent, weapons prosecutions have dropped by 19 percent, organized crime prosecutions are down by 20 percent and public corruption prosecutions have dropped by 14 percent, according to the Syracuse group’s statistics. Drug prosecutions — the enforcement priority of the Reagan, first Bush and Clinton administrations — have declined by 20 percent since 2003.

“I have seen a national abdication by the Justice Department,” said Attorney General Terry Goddard of Arizona.

Texas' southern and western federal judicial districts have been the epicenter of expanded immigration prosecution, so it follows that Texas also suffered the most from a lessened focus on more traditional federal prosecutions.

Who among us thinks illegal immigration has done more harm to the economy than "white collar crime"? Hell, just one white collar defendant - Bernard Madoff - allegedly stole almost three times more from Wall Street investors by himself than was taken in 9.8 million property crimes in all of 2007! Given what's happened recently on Wall Street, I doubt the public would approve of DOJ's declining emphasis on white collar theft.

Indeed, it's hard to understand DOJ's priorities during the Bush Administration viewed through any but the most politicized lens. Otherwise, their decisions make little sense. Though Mexican drug cartels constitute by far the biggest border security threat, for example, DOJ's recent immigration focus has kept federal prosecutors from vigorously pursuing those cases. Reports Moore:

“They’ve pulled so many U.S. attorneys off drug crimes and organized crime caseloads that federal agents are trying to get help from local district attorneys because they can’t wait six weeks for a wiretap order,” Ms. Lofgren said. “By then it’s too late to catch the bad guys.”

Federal agents requested 457 wiretaps in 2007, a 14-year low. Meanwhile, state and local prosecutors requested 1,751 wiretaps, more than triple the number in 1993.

These priorities are unsustainable and must be reversed: I'm hopeful President-elect Obama's new Justice Department appointees will quickly plot a new course.

Tight state budget, minimal results may doom HS steroid testing

AP's Jim Vertuno says that de minimus results and the looming budget crisis may combine to eliminate Texas' $6 million per year steroid testing program for high school athletes:

The results so far have found little to confirm fears that steroid use is a rampant problem. When the first 10,000 tests found only four positive results, critics declared the two-year program a waste of time and money.

Now state lawmakers must decide whether to keep the $6 million program chugging along, scale it down or eliminate it. The 2009 legislative session starts Tuesday. ...

Critics rolled their eyes when the first results were released.

According to a University Interscholastic League report released Dec. 1, the first 10,117 tests produced only the four confirmed cases of steroid use. ...

Republican state Sen. Dan Patrick has been a vocal critic of the tests, calling them a "colossal waste of taxpayer money" that could be better spent battling recreational drug and alcohol use among teens.

Like Sen. Patrick, I've long thought these tests were a "colossal waste of money." I'd suggested testing police officers - for whom the issue is a more serious, documented problem - might get more bang for the public policy buck than going after high school students. When the budget is tight, though, there are many competing demands for that $6 million, nearly all of which would be more productive than this program turned out to be.

States reducing inmate numbers to save money: Should Texas?

AP reports that states are beginning to look at sacred budget cows because of the fiscal crisis and may actually reduce inmate populations to stave off rising costs. ("States look to prisons to save money, including letting some inmates go," Jan. 10):

"Prior to this fiscal crisis, legislators could tinker around the edges — but we're now well past the tinkering stage," said Marc Mauer, executive director of the Sentencing Project, which advocates alternatives to incarceration.

"Many political leaders who weren't comfortable enough, politically, to do it before can now — under the guise of fiscal responsibility — implement programs and policies that would be win/win situations, saving money and improving corrections," Mauer said

In California, faced with a projected $42 billion deficit and prison overcrowding that has triggered a federal lawsuit, Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger wants to eliminate parole for all offenders not convicted of violent or sex-related crimes, reducing the parole population by about 70,000. He also wants to divert more petty criminals to county jails and grant early release to more inmates — steps that could trim the prison population by 15,000 over the next 18 months.

In Kentucky, where the inmate population had been soaring, even some murderers and other violent offenders are benefiting from a temporary cost-saving program that has granted early release to nearly 2,000 inmates.

Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine is proposing early release of about 1,000 inmates. New York Gov. David Paterson wants early release for 1,600 inmates as well as an overhaul of the so-called Rockefeller Drug Laws that impose lengthy mandatory sentences on many nonviolent drug offenders.

"These laws have neither curbed drug use nor enhanced public safety," said Donna Lieberman of the New York Civil Liberties Union. "Instead, they have ruined thousands of lives and annually wasted millions of tax dollars in prison costs."

Policy-makers in Michigan, one of four states that spend more money on prisons than higher education, are awaiting a report later this month from the Council of State Governments' Justice Center on ways to trim fast-rising corrections costs, likely including sentencing and parole modifications.

"There's a new openness to taking a look," said state Sen. Alan Cropsey, a Republican who in the past has questioned some prison-reform proposals. "What we'll see are changes being made that will have a positive impact four, five, six years down the road."

Even before the recent financial meltdown, policy-makers in most states were wrestling with ways to contain corrections costs. The Pew Center's Public Safety Performance Project has projected that state and federal prison populations — under current policies — will grow by more than 190,000 by 2011, to about 1.7 million, at a cost to the states of $27.5 billion.

"Prisons are becoming less and less of a sacred cow," said Adam Gelb, the Pew project's director. "The budget crisis is giving leaders on both sides of the aisle political cover they need to tackle issues that would be too tough to tackle when budgets are flush."

This development is long overdue. I think most people are unaware of how rapidly prison spending has grown in the last few years. (See good data on the subject from the Council on State Government's Justice Center.) Texas finds itself in a relatively unique position among states, both because our economic base has been hit less hard by the national financial crisis and because the state had already begun significant reforms to stem overcrowding.

Not long ago, Texas' Legislative Budget Board estimated Texas would need 17,000 adult prison beds and at least three new medium security prisons by 2012. But probation revocations declined in most large counties (Bexar is the notable exception, but their probation director has other worries) thanks in part to $237 million in new probation grants aimed at implementing intermediate sanctions regimens and reducing probation officer caseloads.

So in many ways, thanks to truly visionary work by Sen. John Whitmire and Rep. Jerry Madden, Texas is a lot better off than other states struggling with high prison costs. Even so, the Department of Criminal Justice will ask the Legislature for a more than $1 billion increase in its biennial budget, including for pay hikes designed to stem high turnover and deter corruption among prison staff. That's $1 billion extra just to manage the same number of prisoners. This in part is because Texas' prison costs historically have been artificially low and we've reached the point where it's time for our politicians to pay the piper, having already relished the dance.

One suggestion I've not heard publicly would be to follow the lead of these other states and at least debate whether to reduce TDCJ inmate populations instead of spending $1 billion more to house the same number. After all, roughly two-thirds of TDCJ inmates are already parole eligible.

How many fewer inmates would TDCJ need, one wonders, to give officers raises, spend what they need to in order to keep prisons secure, and still operate under its current budget?

TDCJ operates about 112 units statewide, but some are much more expensive to operate than others. Though I've not seen it, at a committee hearing last year the legislature was given a list of the 20 most expensive TDCJ units in terms of per-inmate cost, and the differences were quite staggering. How many inmates would we be talking about to close the most expensive ones? It's worth asking the question.

In Dallas and Sugar Land, local development interests want the agency to close existing units. Talk so far has been about finding another spot for those units, but what if we just closed them (along with the most expensive facilities) and managed more low-level offenders in the community?

How could that be done? Shortening probation and parole lengths is part of it, since that reduces revocations and focuses more supervision resources on the most likely offenders. Schwarzenegger's proposal to eliminate parole is too radical, but reducing its length and making it easier for offenders to earn their way off supervision makes lots of sense from both fiscal and safety perspectives. On the front end, Texas' ten-year probation terms are among the longest in the nation, while most people who re-offend do so in the first 2-3 years (if not the first six months).

Another idea comes from State Rep. Harold Dutton, who filed a bill that would significantly depopulate state jails (like the one in the way of Dallas' Trinity development) within a two year stretch: HB 287 would reduce the penalty for possession of less than a gram of illegal drugs from a state jail felony to a Class A misdemeanor.

There are lots of other ways to skin that cat.

In other states these decisions are being forced down officials' throats because reduced tax revenues are pitting prison expenses directly against schools, health care, and other societal priorities. It looks like Texas may be buttressed temporarily from the harshest of those economic winds, however with oil prices declining, it's likely the gale will be blowing full force by the time the 82nd Legislature meets in 2011.

I'd rather see legislators pick and choose their policies thoughtfully based on economic and public safety priorities than get backed into a corner as has happened in California and now many other states. Perhaps the debate should start now about what it would take for TDCJ to live within its budget instead of only debating how much more to spend every time the Legislature is in town?

Levin: Juvie probation grants proposed by Sunset deserve equal attention to merging agencies

As news of more youth on youth sex assaults at the Texas Youth Commission spawns reclassification and segmentation of inmates and more calls to merge the agency with the Juvenile Probation Commission, Marc Levin of the Texas Public Policy Foundation rightly argues in a Houston Chronicle column ("Consider competition in efforts to reform juvenile justice system," Jan. 10) that the debate over merging agencies has obscured a perhaps more important recommendation from the Sunset Advisory Commission:

Although the consolidation recommendation has attracted the most attention, Sunset's proposed pilot program represents the most fundamental and welcome shift in juvenile justice policy.

The recommended pilot program would allow county probation departments to keep some of the funds that now go to incarcerate that county's youths at TYC. In Ohio and Illinois, this approach has proven to save money and reduce recidivism. Youths benefit from being closer to their families and communities, while taxpayers save because local solutions cost less than TYC. In this scenario, TYC would compete on recidivism and cost with local lockups called post-adjudication facilities run by counties and private operators, as well as non-residential alternatives such as day reporting centers. It would also eliminate the fiscal incentive to unnecessarily refer youths to TYC in order to preserve county funds.

In Ohio, this remittal of funding to counties reduced commitments to state lockups by 36 percent and cut recidivism from 54 to 22 percent. (TYC's recidivism rate is 52 percent.) Under Ohio's Reasoned and Equitable Community and Local Alternative to Incarceration of Minors (RECLAIM) funding system, judges may use the same pool of funds allocated to committing non-violent youth to state lockups for community-based options. The RECLAIM model does not cover youth convicted of the most serious violent offenses. These are actually the youths with whom TYC is best equipped and most effective to deal through its Capital Offenders Program. Ohio's success with pooling funds is not unique. A similar pilot program in Illinois called REDEPLOY reduced youths sent to state lockups by 44 percent and saved $11 million over two years.

The savings in Texas from this pilot program could be much greater. The Sunset Commission identified three TYC facilities that should be closed, each of which holds fewer than 100 youths. Shutting these units down would save taxpayers $25.4 million per year. Texas already has 32 post-adjudication facilities at the county level, costing $90 a day per youth compared to TYC's $153 per youth. In the major urban counties that account for 80 percent of TYC commitments, post-adjudication facilities could compete with TYC to attract placements.

Transparency and performance measures are critical to effective competition. Armed with information including recidivism benchmarks on each TYC and local facility, judges would be empowered to choose the best option based on outcome data for similarly situated youths.

With this pilot program, counties will be incentivized to carefully evaluate youths currently being sent to post-adjudication facilities to identify those that would be appropriate for day reporting centers. Over time, high-performing local facilities may expand to meet demand if TYC continues to produce poor results.

Levin is letting the horse back in front of the cart by emphasizing building up local capacity first, since that's really a prerequisite to downsizing TYC - or whatever you call state-run youth prisons - in the long term. Merger may or may not be a good idea, but downsizing capacity without financing upgrades for locals to manage problem kids is a recipe for internecine rebellion by a variety of local systemic actors - most prominently judges, juvenile probation directors and county commissioners courts.

I don't agree with Marc that this strategy will save money in the short term and I think it's a mistake to sell the idea on cost arguments, particularly at a time when special education in youth prisons, mental health treatment and a suggested, renewed focus on re-entry/anti-recidivism programs all will require greater investment, not less.

Overall, though, I think Levin and the Sunset Commission are onto something with the pilot grant program idea for juvie probation departments. The notion is similar to the grants in the adult system that have re-invigorated probation and reduced the number of incoming prisoners. If the idea works the way they hope, it has the potential for achieving in the long term - further depopulating youth prisons - what in the short term risks creating confusion, unfunded mandates, and an unnecessary backlash.

TV show depicts deception detection science as too exact

FOX TV is heavily running previews for a new mid-season drama called "Lie to Me" that purports to portray a scientist with perpetual five o'clock shadow and his hotter-than-thou research team who are experts in the "science of deception detection" - i.e., telling whether someone is lying.

Says a promo: "Dr. Cal Lightman and his team are effectively human polygraph machines, and no truth can be concealed from them." Of course, as human "polygraph" machines that would make their work discredited, pseudoscientific and too unreliable to use in court, but I'm sure that's not what the producers meant by that line.

The lead character is based on the work of behavioral scientist Paul Ekman whose landmark research cataloging and interpreting facial expressions has led him to create a lucrative consulting business teaching lie detection techniques to various official and corporate entities. FOX TV, naturally, has turned Ekman into a crime fighting detective type. Even more of a stretch, the show takes to absurdist extremes a concept from Ekman and Maureen O'Sullivan's work hypothesizing a small number of people are "truth wizards" who are exceptionally accurate at deciphering lies. In fact, the story goes so far as to pretend the lead character, Dr. Cal Lightman, himself enjoys such abilities.

Inarguably, deception detection using "microexpressions" is a big part of how humans identify deception in an interactive environment. But it can never be 100% accurate, or even close. In practice it's more art than science.

To use a Shakespearean analogy from Ekman himself at a recent MIT conference on security and human behavior, Othello’s error was to read Desdemona’s fear correctly but to misunderstand its cause. We may indeed pick up on these cues, but that doesn't mean they will be interpreted correctly.

Reading micro-facial expressions to identify deception is a core method used in the "Reid technique" of police interrogtion, an approach that provides the basis for most police interrogation training in America. But with the possible exception of a handful of "wizards," there's little evidence police are better at detecting deception than the rest of us. According to the (highly recommended) recent book by Richard Leo, Police Interrogations and American Justice (pp. 98-99):

Numerous controlled studies have shown that people are not good intuitive judges of truth and deception, typically performing at no better than chance levels of accuracy. Controlled studies have also shown that even investigators and other supposed experts who routinely evaluate deceptive behavior are highly prone to error. Moreover, Kassin and Fong have shown that police interrogators and others specifically trained in the [Reid technique] not only fail to discriminate accurately between true and false statements much of th time, but also that behavior analysis training actually lowers the ability of police interrogators to discriminate accurately between true and false denials. Further, such training inflates their confidence in their judgments. (citations omitted)

Indeed, researcher Aldert Vrij thinks overreliance on Ekman-esque micro-expressions ignores more probative cues to deception and may lead to false accusations. According to this abstract from a recent paper:

deception research has revealed that many verbal cues are more diagnostic cues to deceit than nonverbal cues. Paying attention to nonverbal cues results in being less accurate in truth/lie discrimination, particularly when only visual nonverbal cues are taken into account. Also, paying attention to visual nonverbal cues leads to a stronger lie bias (i.e., indicating that someone is lying). The author recommends a change in police practice and argues that for lie detection purposes it may be better to listen carefully to what suspects say

"Lie to Me" premiers on Jan. 14 in FOX's sweet spot right after American Idol, and I'll be watching with interest if also a slightly jaundiced eye. Until then, for those interested in the actual science of deception detection, the always excellent (when the author gets around to posting!) Deception Blog supplied a superb end of the year roundup of deception-related research:

• Part 1: Catching liars
• Part 2: New technologies
• Part 3: Magic
• Part 4: When people lie
• Part 5: Polygraphy
• Part 6: Kids' lies
  

Some judge somewhere declared this guy competent to stand trial

Andre Thomas, condemned to death row after he killed his wife and children and carved their hearts out, in 2004, then plucked out his own eye while he was awaiting his own capital murder trial. Even so, the judge declared him competent and this fall the Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed his death sentence. But before the state could carry it out, while alone in his cell, last month Thomas plucked out the other eye and, apparently, ate it - I kid you not!

I've known for some time that the standards for both competency to stand trial and competency to be executed can be shockingly low, though I've never completely understood the ins and outs of what goes into either determination. Indeed, I know so little about the legal and psychological debates swirling around such issues I hardly know where to begin analyzing such an astonishing story. I'd like to hear more knowledgeable folks - Dr. Lucy Puryear comes to mind - to understand how somebody like this could ever be deemed competent to stand trial in the first place.

RELATED: See this revealing string from the prosecutors' association user forum in which we find speculation that Thomas' self-mutiliation and cannibalism are part of a ruse to avoid the death penalty: "is he truly a whack job, or has he discovered a new dodge?" asks one forum participant. We're treated to a "tastes like chicken" joke, while another poster suggested Thomas was looking for a missing cell phone, to which Williamson County DA John Bradley replied, "Then I would agree he is insane. Because everyone knows you keep those in your rectum." Classy stuff, that.

MORE: For a more thoughtful discussion of the case, including whether Thomas might qualify for the legally anachronistic "wild beast" defense, see RickG's post at the Lone Star Times and the excellent comments in response.

Senate should question Obama's DOJ appointees about using anonymous witnesses

While President-elect Barack Obama's initial picks for key Justice Department posts indicate a likely departure from the more radical counterterrorism tactics undertaken in recent years by the Bush Administration, one recent Texas case raises an issue I'd like to see his nominees questioned about during Senate confirmation hearings: Do they support the use of anonymous expert witnesses in criminal court cases?

That's what happened during the prosecution of five fundraisers for the Richardson-based Holy Land Foundation who were convicted last fall based largely on critical evidence given by an anonymous Israeli intelligence officer. Reported Texas Lawyer:

Defense lawyers for all five men say they will appeal the verdict to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. They will argue, among other things, that Solis should not have allowed prosecutors to call an anonymous expert witness to the stand at trial. Although the defense lawyers objected and asked the court to require the prosecutors to identify the witness, he was only identified at trial as "Avi," a representative of the Israeli government. In his testimony in court, Avi made allegations crucial to the government's case about a link between the Hamas leadership and zakat committees in the West Bank and Gaza that allegedly received HLF funds. "Zakat" in Arabic means the religious obligation to give alms. On appeal, the defense lawyers say they will argue that Avi's testimony violated the HLF defendants' Sixth Amendment due-process rights, because the defense lawyers did not have an opportunity to question the witness' credibility.

"This is the first trial in the history of the United States where that has been allowed to happen," says Joshua Dratel of the Law Offices of Joshua Dratel in New York City who represents El-Mezain.

Even Jacks says the unprecedented victory his team achieved was due, in part, to the unprecedented use of an anonymous expert witness, a point he expects to play a starring role in any defense appeal.

Anonymous Israeli spooks as witnesses? Next will we accept testimony in court from The Zohan? Or perhaps it will be okay for the defense to put on anonymous, exculpatory witnesses whose background prosecutors cannot know?

I definitely hope some senator asks Obama's Justice Department appointees whether they think that kind of evidence is appropriate and whether they'll pursue more cases using secret, anonymous experts.

I stopped watching the HLF case closely after I left ACLU of Texas and had missed this whole issue of anonymous testimony. (An earlier, first run at prosecution stalled out in a mistrial thanks to a deadlocked jury.) Especially given the Supreme Court's recent emphasis on re-sharpening the teeth of the Constitution's Confrontation Clause, this is a tactic I think should be abandoned by DOJ and will likely (rightly) be benchslapped out of existence by the appellate courts.

The outgoing US Attorney in Texas' Northern District hopes the Holy Land Foundation case becomes a model for pursuing terrorist financing. There may be other aspects of the case that deserve copying in other contexts, but the use of secret, unaccountable witnesses to make criminal cases is a tactic that should have been rung out with the new year.

RELATED: Jeralyn at Talk Left suggests an immigration related question for Obama DOJ chief-designate Eric Holder.

El Paso city council says Juarez violence argues for national conversation about pot legalization

No American city has a closer front-row seat to the bloodshed in the Mexican drug cartel wars than El Paso, which sits across the Rio Grande from the Mexican city of Juarez, where more than 1,600 people died in drug-related violence last year. So it comes as little surprise that the birthplace of marijuana prohibition in America wants to start a national conversation on whether to legalize pot as a mean to de-fund the gangsters who've all but taken over their sister city across the river.

The El Paso city council thinks legalization would downsize cartel profits and reduce the edge in resources and personnel they enjoy over Mexican and US law enforcement, reported KDBC-TV:

On Tuesday afternoon El Paso Mayor John Cook vetoed a resolution unanimously passed by city council that would have asked the U.S. government to begin a serious debate on legalizing narcotics.

Earlier in the day city council passed a resolution, rationalizing that the best way to stop the drug wars in Juarez may be to legalize the drugs here in the United States. It was part of a larger resolution outlining several steps for the United States and Mexico to take in order to cut down on the number of murders between rival drug cartels. Last year more than 1,600 people were murdered in Juarez.

"We know that this drug war and this prohibition on drugs is enriching criminals to traffic in narcotics to these communities, which costs the narcotics teams in the U.S. and Mexico billions of dollars," said Councilman Beto O'Rourke, who added the "legalize drug debate" amendment to the already established resolution.

City council members realize it may be extreme to legalize drugs like heroin, but others like marijuana could make sense. Currently, marijuana accounts for 70 percent of the drugs coming across the border. "Any business will tell you, you take a 70 percent hit to your pocket book, you're going out of business," said Councilman Steve Ortega.

Cook says he understands where the council members are coming from, but he's afraid El Paso would become a national laughing stock if he went to Washington and asked people like Senator Kay Bailey Hutchison to look into legalizing drugs.

Scott Morgan at Stop the Drug War poses a simple question in light of the Mayor's veto: If the Drug War is so great, how come you con't want to talk about it?

If I were the Mayor, I wouldn't worry that anybody might laugh given what's happening in Juarez. When they start, he can respond by handing them photo after photo of murdered cops, journalists, narcos and bystanders until they wipe the dumb-ass grin off their faces and begin to take the subject as seriously as it deserves. Or else let them pay El Paso's growing hospital bill from drug-related violence in Juarez.

See related Grits posts:

• El Paso flooded with drugs for five years while authorities watched
• Better border strategies needed for journalist, witness protection, unmasking corruption
• America's Hour For Not Comprehending
• Time for new Mexican anti-drug strategies
• Elected sheriff receiving Governor's border security funds allegedly worked for Gulf cartel
• Cartel violence so far stays in Mexico, but corruption crosses the river
• Plane used for CIA renditions also smuggled drugs
• Prosecuting 'replaceable' cartel smugglers
• Assassination of Mexican prison warden highlights out of control border security crisis
• FBI: Border corruption increasing on the US side
• Cartel corrupted top FBI official in El Paso
  
• Border corruption run amok: New cash for border cops should go first to Internal Affairs
  
• Did Los Zetas infiltrate Collin County law enforcement?
• American guns fueling Mexican cartel violence
• Drug cartels targeting Mexican police
• Cartels openly recruiting military, courting public opinion
• Cartel charity secures goodwill among Mexican public
• Mexican cartels still supplying illegal drugs despite massive numbers of deaths and arrests
• Calderon and the drug cartels: Who's intimidating who?
• Mexican drug gangs hiring teenage assassins in Texas
• Teen hitmen do Gulf Cartel dirty work on US side of the border
• Bazookas, grenades, corrupt police and the worsening border crisis
• What do we know about US-side cartel infrastructure?

Mental health court primer

Just as a newly reconstituted Harris County judiciary approved a new felony mental health court, the Council on State Government's Justice Center has produced a series of public policy primers on creating and operating mental health courts, which are an increasingly common approach in Texas toward a difficult-to-manage population of defendants:

Mental Health Courts: A Primer for Policymakers and Practitioners
Provides a general overview of this program model and discusses the emergence of mental health courts, their objectives and procedures, how they differ from drug courts, and a number of other key issues.

Guide to the Role of Crime Victims in Mental Health Courts
This guide describes how the rights due victims in criminal court proceedings are not always made available to individuals who are victimized by people accepted into mental health courts, largely due to confusion about how to involve victims at various points in the mental health court process without compromising adherence to medical privacy regulations. The guide includes examples of how some mental health and other specialty courts have successfully addressed these challenges.

The Essential Elements of a Mental Health Court
As the commonalities among mental health courts begin to emerge, practitioners, policymakers, researchers, and others have become interested in developing consensus not only on what a mental health court is, but on what a mental health court should be. This document articulates this consensus in the form of ten essential elements.

A Guide to Mental Health Court Design and Implementation
Addresses issues such as identifying stakeholders to plan and administer court, screening defendants to participate in the court, and sustaining a court's operation and enables new and existing courts to benefit from some of the lessons learned from the BJA grantee courts and some of the many other courts that have sprouted across the country in recent years.

A Guide to Collecting Mental Health Court Outcome Data
Provides practical strategies for deciding which data to collect, for obtaining, evaluating, and comparing the data. Identifies challenges that typically discourage courts from collecting and analyzing data and explains how to clear these hurdles. Positions courts to demonstrate the value of their initiatives and to improve the broader understanding of the effectiveness of mental health courts.

Navigating the Mental Health Maze
Intended for criminal justice practitioners who know little about mental illness or the mental health system, but now must take a "crash course" because they are part of an initiative that serves people with mental illness involved in the justice system. Offers a basic overview of mental illnesses, including symptoms, diagnoses, and treatment and discusses the coordination of treatment provided by community-based systems of care and court-based services.

Opportunities arise when tight budgets run up against campaign promises

New Harris County Democratic Sheriff Adrian Garcia is looking for ways to make good on his promise to boost the number of deputies on patrol while safely running an already understaffed jail during an economic downturn. The Houston Chronicle reports ("Sheriff is facing complex recruiting, staffing issues," Jan. 7) that while "his first priority will be filling about 60 vacant positions in the patrol division," Garcia:

said he would like to move some or all of the 425 deputies assigned to the jail to patrol jobs, but they would have to be replaced by civilian jailers.

The Sheriff's Department historically has struggled to find people willing to take that job, though nearly all of the approximately 630 civilian positions in the jail currently are filled.

Commissioner Steve Radack said the economic slump may help the county lure new recruits without spending more money on salaries or benefits.

"There's some tough times ahead, so let's not just say, 'OK, we're increasing pay here; we're increasing pay there,' " Radack said.

Finally,

Garcia said he also is evaluating the impact of the department's contract deputy program, which allows civic associations, school districts and municipal utility districts to pay the county to assign deputies to specific areas or neighborhoods.

Supporters of the program say it has helped the sheriff's department put more deputies on the street. But opponents say it allows more well-off neighborhoods to buy deluxe protection.

A Houston Chronicle investigation last summer found contract positions were being filled immediately while dozens of regular patrol jobs sat vacant.

With the economy tanking and the Harris commissioners court dominated by Republicans who backed his predecessor, Sheriff Garcia can't count on new money from the county to fulfill his campaign promises. Instead, he must use existing resources more wisely.

Grits has recently suggested other ways to boost patrol coverage, including allowing deputies to utilize new discretion given them by the 80th Texas Legislature to give citations instead of making an arrest on certain low-level, nonviolent misdemeanors. That can happen a lot more quickly than Garcia is likely to get new money for more patrols or civilian jailers.

With money tight, for the moment law enforcement needs to focus on stretching existing resources further, if only as an argument against making significant cuts.

A Suggestion for Reducing Life Threatening Risks to Officers

Over the holidays came the good news that the number of police officer deaths in the line of duty declined last year, both in Texas and nationally (though Texas still led all states with 14 deaths). So I was interested to see the Senate Criminal Justice Committee Report's Fifth Interim Charge articulate the problem in more detail. See the report (large pdf)

Nationally, 68% of officers killed on the job die in car accidents; in Texas that number is 65% (15 of 23 officers killed between 2005-2007). Another 2 Texas officers (8.6%) during that period were struck by a vehicle while outside their vehicles, two officers died in drowning deaths, and three accidental deaths occurred while training.

These numbers are fairly consistent with national data, the committee found. The part of policing that causes the most on-the-job deaths are high-speed chases and driving to and from each incident - particularly with lights and sirens running when officers can disregard traffic laws, depending on their local policy, and are much more likely to get in a fatal accident.

So perhaps it was that context stirring in my brain that helps explain why I took a decidedly different view than my friend BigJolly at the Lone Star Times of the actions of a woman described by WFAA-TV("Dallas woman fined for misusing panic button," Jan. 6) who's complaining about a $100 fine for using her "panic button" to bring police to her house with lights and sirens running for no good reason just once too often:

Jill Frederick lives alone. She's been burglarized twice. So when a stranger banged on her door at 11 p.m., she hit the panic button on her alarm.

"I thought if I wait one more second, then this guy is coming in. I just did the thing I thought would make them respond fastest," she said.

The panic button triggered what police call a "code 3 call." Officers use their lights and sirens. They got there in six minutes. The man was still there and was drunk so they arrested him.

"To me, that's what a panic button is for," said Frederick.

But a few weeks later, Frederick got a $100 fine for a false alarm.

Jill Frederick said she would do the same thing next time.

Police told her there wasn't really an offense, since the man didn't actually try to break in.

"I think that's not right and I don't think anyone should have to pay a $100 to have the police come out and arrest somebody," said Frederick.

Dallas police say there's a city ordinance that allows them to fine people who use their panic buttons in non-emergency situations.

"We encourage people to use their panic alarm where there really is an emergency when there is an offense going down when someone is kicking in, coming in or trying to get into the house," said Lt. Chris Aulbaugh from Dallas police.

This fine probably isn't coming from out of the blue for Ms. Fredereick; more likely, she's been crying "wolf" before this episode. The Dallas News Crime Blog reported last year that "Currently, a location can have three false alarms during a 12-month-period before the city can impose a fine."

So Ms. Frederick has hit her "panic button" at least three times in the last year if she's starting to receive fines. Each time police officers came with lights and sirens running, putting themselves in the statistically riskiest situation they face on the job, all because the woman is afraid to answer her door. The city should fine her. In fact, they should be reimbursed for the last three incidents, too.

Dallas PD tried to implement "verified response" for commercial alarms awhile back, and while it was operating it reduced this problem dramatically, the Dallas News reported in 2007:

"It's about the utilization of a scarce resource," District 5 council member Vonciel Jones Hill said. "Verified response has worked the way it was intended to work. It does not make sense to continue to send a scarce resource to false alarms when we have higher priorities."

District 14 council member Angela Hunt said: "Our police chief helped us use our scarce resources ... to their highest and best use. Why are we taking them off the street? Why are we taking them out of our neighborhoods to cater to false alarms? We should listen to [Chief Kunkle's] guidance and not be swayed by politics."

Between February 2006 and March 2007, Dallas experienced a 45 percent reduction in burglar alarm calls and redirected $1.56 million in manpower costs previously spent on responding to false alarms to other work, according to the city staff's briefing to the council. It also noted that fees charged for false alarms decreased by $1.19 million.

Business burglaries declined by 0.6 percent during a one-year period that ended Feb. 28, according to the presentation to the council.

Ending alarm company subsidies entirely and requiring verified response for all home alarms would be the best public policy approach, but I doubt there's a chance in the world the Lege would ever do it. As evidenced by Dallas' experiment with commercial alarms, verified response puts more officers on the street and reduces fines for false alarms, but it also forces the alarm company to pay the full freight for the service they provide. Right now it's a heavily subsidized business model.

The Senate Committee's interim charge on officer deaths was particularly light on specific recommendations, but perhaps this Dallas case study offers an example of how they could reduce risks to officers by reducing the number of times officers are needlessly placed in harm's way. Either the state should embrace the City of Dallas' proposal to authorize cities to fine on the first false alarm, or else disallow commercial "panic button" services at residences from bringing "lights and sirens" responses.

Either of those reforms would reduce the number of times officers put themselves and the public at risk by speeding and violating traffic rules, and would also reduce the subsidy non-alarm company clients pay in taxes to cater to people who call the police instead of answering the door when somebody knocks.

RELATED: A commenter brings sad news that "The first Texas peace officer officer death [of 2009] occurred Tuesday in Dallas. DPD Sr. Corporal Norman Smith and other officers were attempting to serve a felony warrant when he was shot." See the Dallas News coverage. My heartfelt condolences go out to Cpl. Smith's family, friends and colleagues.

Tight budgets and corrections priorities

Federal budget numbers are always flabbergasting to me and I can only react with awe to the news that the 2009 federal deficit totaled $1.2 TRILLION, with a big, fat, capital "T."

Most state budgets including Texas, OTOH, must balance themselves or else request specific debt approval from voters in bond elections, so state budgets by far are hit harder when tax revenues level off or decline in tough times. The Houston Chronicle's April Castro had a good piece yesterday what Texas' state budget picture might look like ("Lawmakers await comptrollers revenue announcement," Jan.6), predicting a modest $2 billion surplus over the last biennium:

Texas will likely have to pay up to $2 billion for its share of costs from Hurricane Ike, rapid growth in Medicaid costs and enrollment, lower oil prices that might mean less income in the state's Rainy Day Fund, slowed consumer spending and lower-than-projected revenues from the state's new business tax in the fund intended to pay for public schools.

The Ike and Medicaid enrollment growth could cost together as much as $3.2 billion in the 2008-2009 budget before lawmakers even get started on the 2010-2011 budget, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and current House Speaker Tom Craddick have estimated.

The so-called surplus is made up of three parts:

_ $5.7 billion in the Rainy Day Fund from taxes that companies pay for producing oil and gas. That fund can only be tapped with the approval of a super-majority of the Legislature.

_ $3 billion set aside two years ago to give to schools to make up for property tax cuts.

_ $2 billion left over for lawmakers' discretionary spending.

Further exacerbating budget uncertainties, health care costs are rapidly rising and enrollment in entitlement programs is expected to grow with the economic slowdown.

Even with $3 billion stashed away for schools, a fund used to replace some school property tax money will fall at least $5 billion short of the $14 billion hole lawmakers created two years ago when they lowered school property tax rates by a third. That's mostly because revenues from the new business tax — revamped to replace some school property taxes in education funding — aren't as much as expected.

This year, it appears that money will be available without having to cut from other state spending. But it will take a bite out the state's economic growth that would have otherwise padded the surplus.

That's better than most states who're in the red, but a lot less to work with than had been suggested in previous official estimates. If these data are accurate they'll pit other areas of government against the criminal justice system, which faces some big ticket items on its plate, some of which are necessary to prevent even greater costs:

Increased pay for prison guards: Approximately $460 million to raise pay at TDCJ by 20%. The agency is currently around 3,000 guards short with high turnover rates and major problems at some units with guards making extra money on the side smuggling contraband. TDCJ shut down wings at two units (in Dalhart and Fort Stockton) last year in response to critical understaffing. For all exceptional items including the proposed pay hikes, TDCJ's legislative appropriations request (pdf) projects more than $1 billion in increased costs for the biennium just to keep inmate numbers at current levels.

Outpatient competency restoration: The Department of State Health Services last year funded five pilot programs aimed at providing outpatient competency restoration using "emergency" money given it by the Legislature in 2007. These pilots have been highly successful in reducing needless, costly state hospital commitments which often took up beds needed by regular, non-offender taxpayers with mental health needs.

While the Department of State Health Services' LAR (see page 53 of the pdf) contemplates keeping funding near current levels for these programs (actually cutting it slightly now that initial startup costs are complete), truly it's penny wise and pound foolish if these pilots aren't fully funded and expanded to every urban center. Such a move which would reduce pressure to build even more expensive state hospital beds - a likely outcome of pending litigation before DSHS rolled out this new initiative - and relieve pressure on county jails who must house the inmates until a state hospital bed comes open. This really is a pay me now or pay (more) later kind of deal.

Expanding Governor Perry's Border Initiative: At Gov. Perry's insistence, in 2007 the Legislature spent $140 million over the biennium on "border security" in the 16 Texas counties along the Rio Grande - mostly for overtime and equipment at those 16 county sheriff's departments. This year he wants to continue that funding and expand the grants to include grants to urban areas, an idea that seems to me similar to Bill Clinton's federal COPS program.

Paying for TYC Improvements: While the Sunset Advisory Commission suggested it might be possible to save money by merging the Texas Youth Commission and the Juvenile Probation Commission, there are many problems at both agencies that can only be addressed by expanding services - particularly special ed and mental health services, along with moving to smaller, rehab-oriented facilities and improving reentry programming.

In addition, if counties must pay private vendors to house commitments TYC previously took, the cost of those grants - including adequate state oversight - will not be significantly less than if a state agency does the job. Breaking even would be getting off cheap at TYC. In fact, given the agency's current, barely out of crisis status, reducing spending risks underinvesting in critical educational and anti-recidivism components that, from a public safety perspective, deserve more attention in Appropriations, not less.

Will UTMB move their prison hospital in the wake of Hurricane Ike? If so the state must pay to reconstruct a new facility elsewhere while suffering serious medium-term dislocations in what was already a poorly functioning care-delivery system. Relatedly, no word on how the hurricane and massive layoffs affected UTMB's telemedicine program, which provides much inmate of the specialty and psychiatric care both at TYC and TDCJ. How much new investment will be required to get everything back up to speed?

Funding "Innocence" Work: The Fort Worth Star Telegram said on Sunday that post-conviction work Texas law shool innocence clinics should receive a modest budget boost to help finish vetting outstanding DNA claims - in part to offset the effects of the Madoff scandal on my employers at the Innocence Project of Texas. The Startlegram emphasized out that boosting funding for innocence work by $1 million would cost just more than 1/500 of the proposed pay hike for guards.

These costs overall seem ominously high if the numbers reported by the Chronicle are accurate. That's perhaps $1.5 billion or more in "exceptional" criminal justice related budget items on the table right off the bat, when predictions call for perhaps $2 billion in total discretionary spending across the entire state budget- a figure which could be swallowed up in a heartbeat by a $5 billion hole in school finance.

More on this when we get official numbers from the Comptroller next week.

RELATED: From Talk Left, "Will the Recession Mean More Traffic Tickets?"

Stealing pets a felony? Must we?

Valley Democrat Eddie Lucio filed HB 435 which proposes making it a state jail felony to steal a "pet."

Must we, really? Is this a big problem? Has there been a rash of pet-nappings and I wasn't informed?

I can think of two incidents in my adult personal life involving allegations of "stolen pets." Both were essentially pet custody disputes, which makes me think such a law could be easily mis-applied. Pinning a felony tag on somebody - even the lowest level felony - places a scarlet letter on the offender's back potentially for life. We ought to be more cautious about putting more and more petty crimes in that category.

RELATED: From Jamie Spencer, we learn why, in Texas, one pet = nine cows = ninety nine goats. Robert Guest offers a quote from Einstein he hopes will inspire the Lege to oppose overcriminalization.

AND MORE: In the comments, the Houston attorney blogging as Rage Judicata suggests that "this one is easy. This bill was sponsored by the State Rep. for Jim Wells County, which includes Alice, Texas, where the mayor was asked to keep a friend's dog while they were out of town, which she did, but told them the dog died and never gave it back." That certainly did happen: See this account. Pretty darn funny stuff. Still a bad idea.

RAGE WAS RIGHT: Capitol Annex reported on this bill in December and confirmed that the story about the Alice Mayor is the source of the legislation.

Suggestive ID practices hard to exclude in court

Houston criminal defense lawyer and blogger John T. Floyd has an excellent piece up on DNA exonerations and eyewitness identification in which he lays out in detail the almost impossible burden of proof required in Texas to exclude eyewitness identifications based on suggestive photo lineups.

DOJ: Austin PD should improve use-of-force oversight

While Austin police chief Art Acevedo has been downplaying a new report on APD use of force by the US Department of Justice, the 50 page document (pdf) identifies many shortcomings in both the department's use of force policies and its systems for supervisory review. Reports the Austin Statesman ("Chief forming team to put suggestions in place," Jan. 6):

The Justice Department report praises Acevedo, who became chief in 2007, for the changes he has brought to the department, which at times were met with resistance among the rank-and-file.

For instance, Acevedo in May revised the department's use-of-force policy to begin requiring officers to document more actions, including when they point their weapons at suspects, and making front-line supervisors do a more immediate, thorough investigation in nearly all cases when force is used.

"We have been looking at all of these issues," Acevedo said. "As a team, we came in and made a lot of changes. We made these changes because we recognized the need for process improvement. We did not wait for the Department of Justice to tell us what to do."

However, the Justice Department recommendations make more suggestions and point out gaps in some of Acevedo's policies. For instance, federal officials said they noticed "a general lack of consistency" among supervisors on use-of-force reporting and review.

"We were also informed that some of these supervisors (who are to review use of force reports) are not themselves trained in up-to-date, uniform tactics or use of force," the report said. "If these line-level and mid-level supervisors are not trained in use of force themselves, then they are not equipped to assess or counsel on their subordinates' use of force."

The report also gave suggestions to improve the department's internal affairs division, which investigates some use-of-force incidents.

According to the report, the department should develop selection criteria for officers who want to be in the division, including an evaluation of their performance. The document also suggested that the department develop formal policies for how internal affairs investigators interview subjects, for instance.

I'm glad to see the chief say he intends to implement all of DOJ's recommendations, but doing so leaves APD facing a significant, short-term revamp of its policies and training. Let's run through a few highlights:

On use of force policies, in particular, DOJ said, "several of the APD's policies and procedures are inconsistent with generally accepted police practices and are insufficiently detailed to provide appropriate guidance for officer conduct." What's more, department rules "omit any mention of the necessity for use of force" and fail to base definitions of "reasonableness" of use of force on Supreme Court precedents.

Some techniques like chokeholds are typically considered "deadly force" in other departments, according to DOJ, but APD's policies allow the tactic in a broader array of circumstances that the Justice Department said should be restricted to situations when deadly force is justified.

DOJ called APD's reporting form that officers fill out after use of force incidents "inadequate" and said there's a "general lack of consistency" among supervisors regarding use of force review.

The Justice Department report also criticized the department's policy of allowing officers to carry "secondary weapons" without informing their supervisors, and recommended forbidding the practice without documented approval.

The report chided APD for failing to create "specific guidance and restrictions on all intermediate force weapos used, including straight and expandable batons, PR24s, Orcutt Nunchakus, chemical weapons, CEDs ["conductive energy devices," i.e., Tasers], impact munitions, and canines." Indeed, "We received ... a number of allegations that APD officers had used [Tasers] on subjects who were already restrained. Even more troubling, neither the APD's revised duty weapons policy, nor the revised Response to Resistance policy contains such a prohibition on use of [Tasers] against a restrained suspect."

What's more, APD policy specifically allows use of pepper spray against restrained suspects who continue to be "aggressive," but DOJ said the definition of "aggressive" is vague and undefined. They recommended banning this practice and suggested a variety of restraint methods used in other departments that could substitute for macing restrained suspects. The report also faults APD for failing to weigh chemical spray cannisters to monitor their use.

DOJ says many examples of APD use of force go undocumented. For example, "an arm bar takedown [is] not use of force under the policy ... unless there was a complaint of recurrent pain or injury. An average citizen would not know that he or she must consistently or repetitively report pain in order for a use of force against them to be documented."

DOJ also said APD isn't following its own policy of requiring every employee to accept citizen complaints on use of force and other misconduct allegations, and alarmingly reported that "911 operators, on many occasions may have discouraged complainants from filing complaints, faild to contact supervisors regarding complaints, and failed to document the calls and complaints." That's pretty brazen, huh?

The report criticized APD for playing around with complaint classifications to create "'escape valves' that can minimize officers' misconduct."

Finally, DOJ offered a suggestion I've been calling for at APD since at least the mid-90s: The creation of a functioning "Early Warning System" (EWS) to pro-actively identify misconduct problems. Said DOJ, "APD command staff should examine and review officer conduct on a regular basis as a proactive measure to minimize and detect misconduct and to identify training and policy issues." An existing EWS system was seldom used, "did not serve as an effective risk management tool," and was "ineffective" at "predictive modeling."

DOJ emphasized that its report contained recommendations, not mandates, but Chief Acevedo was wrong to portray that distinction as particularly meaningful. After all, this is a public policy report not the result of litigation, so the lack of the mandate would be expected.

What wasn't expected was that DOJ's report would essentially confirm what activists in this city have been saying for years: Citizen complaints about use of force are too often ignored and officers who abuse their positions have been too often tolerated.

Chief Acevedo deserves credit for focusing on supervision and misconduct much more than his predecessor, and for embracing the recommendations in this report. If he follows through on his pledge to implement all its recommendations, Austinites will be better off for it.

Peace treaty among Mexican cartels?

Two articles by Albert Corchada published yesterday in the Dallas News provide contradictory predictions regarding drug violence in Mexico in 2009:

• Mexican drug cartels negotiating a peace agreement
• Mexico's drug violence expected to intensify in '09

The news of a possible peace treaty between warring drug cartels is particularly welcome because I seriously doubt whether either the Mexican or US governments can stop the violence on their own.

Justice-related interim committee reports begin to arrive

Two interim committee reports are out related to topics covered on this blog (warning - large pdf files):

• Senate Criminal Justice Committee Interim Report
• Senate Transportation and Homeland Security Committee Interim Report

I've not had a chance yet to read these documents - I'll be examining bits and pieces of both on Grits over the next couple of weeks - but they should give us a sense of what topics these committees will focus on during the 81st session and the legislative solutions committee members are currently inclined to embrace.

Breaking News: Craddick is out

It looks like Tom Craddick has stepped down and San Antonio's Joe Straus will be the next Speaker of the Texas House. Straus today released a list of 85 House members supporting his candidacy.

No telling what this will mean in terms of committee chairmanships, Calendars and Appropriations Committee membership, and other key leadership positions, but one thing's for sure: Change is afoot.

Alonzo bill would let judges pare sex offender rolls

Reacting to concerns that the sex offender registry includes too many low-level offenders and may increase recidivism, a Dallas state rep wants to give judges discretion to shorten sex offender registration periods for certain first-time offenders.

Declaring "Some offenses don't rise to the level" of needing registration, Rep. Roberto Alonzo, D-Dallas, has filed HB 190, reports the Houston Chronicle's Texas Politics blog, which:

would give certain first-time sex offenders the ability to petition the courts to shorter their registration periods, or to have their registration completely waived . The vast majority of sex offenders in Texas must register on the state's Department of Public Safety website for life.

Alonzo "filed his bill at the request of a Dallas judge who was fed up with low-risk offenders brought in on technical violations tying up the court's docket," said the Texas Politics blog, which quoted the new group Texas Voices praising the legislation. Via Kuff.

RELATED: From Doc Berman:

For anyone trying to keep track of what's going on state-by-state, the Vera Institute of Justice recently published these two essential documents for policy-makers: The Pursuit of Safety: Sex Offender Policy in the United States (available here) and Treatment and Reentry Practices for Sex Offenders: An Overview of States (available here). In addition, academics should remember that the latest issue of the Ohio State Journal of Criminal Law includes a symposium on sex offender law and policy.

Montague jail flooded with contraband, closed after FBI raid

Yikes! And we thought there was a contraband problem on Texas' death row!

AP reports that in Montague County, the brand spanking new Sheriff's first official act was to move out all the inmates and close down the county jail in the wake of an FBI raid and apparent, rampant misconduct under his predecessor:

A jail in northern Texas has been closed and its nearly 60 inmates transferred as authorities investigate what they call dangerous conditions for jailers and those behind bars — including cells that locked from the inside or contained recliners. Five inmates had already been moved from the Montague County jail to one in a nearby county this month after an FBI raid, said Jack McGaughey, district attorney for Montague, Clay and Archer counties.

McGaughey declined to say what prompted the investigation, also being conducted by the Texas Rangers. But he said authorities found contraband in the jail. New Sheriff Paul Cunningham moved the inmates to the Wise County jail on Thursday a few hours after he was sworn in.

McGaughey said some surveillance cameras' cords had been disconnected; recliners were in cells; some bathrooms and cells could be locked from the inside; and inmates had made partitions out of paper towels to block jailers' views inside their cells. One alarming discovery was a type of rack made of nails, he said. ...

Some inmates had apparently used extension cords to lock deputies out, and unidentified pills were strewn about other jail cells, Dallas-Fort Worth television station WFAA reported.

Recliners?! Surely that requires ongoing complicity by virtually everybody at the jail - from the folks checking the entrances to all the guards and supervisors. That's not an item like a cell phone that's getting hidden when the guards walk by.

One wonders how long this has been going on and why the Texas Commission on Jail Standards inspectors didn't catch it.

One also wonders precisely what inmates were doing, and for whom, in return for these kinds of extras? Clearly, the FBI is wondering the same thing.

MORE: From the Bowie News.

Poll: Tough on crime messages don't resonate with critical swing voters

Last month Hill Research Consultants, a GOP polling firm based in the Woodlands, issued a public poll aimed at demonstrating to decisionmakers and the Republican base the need for the GOP in Texas to change tactics or risk a near-term toppling by Democrats in statewide elections within just a few cycles. (See the report.)

Without going into the details, which are well worth a read, to judge by these data, the GOP in Texas faces a tough row to hoe rebuilding its post-Bush image. The number that stunned me, in particular, was the answer to the question of which party "cares about the concerns and problems of people like me." Nineteen percent said Republicans while a whopping 50% - of Texans - answered Democrats. As HRC said, "Long term, this is simply untenable."

David Benizon at the Lone Star Times has already admirably adumbrated the poll's main details, but I wanted to point readers to a couple of tidbits related to criminal justice policy:

HRC segmented the electorate into groups based on their relative commitment to the major parties and discovered surprising trends. Among "enduring GOP" voters, 38% considered themselves "law and order conservatives," while just 17% of "emerging conservatives" thought thusly. That's a big dropoff in intensity. I take from this that those not already firmly ensconced in the GOP base aren't as attached to tuff on crime messages as their more hard-core brethren among "enduring" Republicans. Crime was not mentioned as a significant concern of "critical middle" voters.

Asked which party was "committed to fair and impartial justice for all," the GOP trailed Democrats 42-32 among all voters.

Asked to list their "top of the mind," biggest issues, just 2% of the electorate offered answers related to "crime, drugs, gangs and prisons," compared to 10% who answered healthcare and 29% who answered the economy. Illegal immigration also came in at 10%, with 6 of the top 9 self-offered issues related to pocketbook economic concerns.

Speaking of which, said HRC, "Like it or not, [critical middle] voters don’t care about illegal immigration or traditional values with the same intensity as our [GOP] base." HRC estimates the GOP must win 80% of so-called critical middle and all the "emerging GOP" voters to retain control of the state in the medium term.

Many have wondered why crime did not become an issue in the 2008 presidential elections, and perhaps the answer is that crime has become a much less dominant issue among voters - especially centrist swing voters - than has been the case for the last couple of decades. Even in Texas.

No Christmas truce in Mexican cartel wars

For those keeping track of the Mexican cartel wars, the new year brings with it several must-read items:

• Fort Wort Weekly: Border Under Seige

• Drug War Chronicle: Top Ten 2008 drug policy stories (see the final three items on Latin American cartel wars)

• The Narcosphere: Mexico's Drug Death Toll: 8,463 and counting

• The New Criminologist: Are Mexican drug cartels the #1 organized crime threat in America?

• Time: Confessions of a Mexican narco-foot soldier

RELATED: See also the Austin Chronicle's Top Ten marijuana-related stories.

What happens with prison healthcare if UTMB fails to rebuild?

According to an article titled "Emergency!" by Mimi Swartz at Texas Monthly, the University of Texas System may decide not to rebuild the UT Medical Branch at Galveston after Hurricane Ike, facilities which include the hospital responsible for most of the state prison system and "telemedicine" infrastructure that serves 80% of Texas prisoners.

Cheering state Sen. Steve Ogden's efforts to insist UTMB be rebuilt, Swartz predicts that:

unless Ogden prevails, UTMB will face inevitable death. Ogden is keenly aware that as an Aggie challenging the most powerful teasips, he’s vulnerable to criticism that he has it in for A&M’s longtime rival. Even so, he’s persisted. He understands that the proposed reduction in the number of hospital beds means a reduction in the number of patients needed to support a viable medical school; in order to become the best doctors, students need patients with a variety of illnesses and injuries. Victims of local emergencies, from car accidents to refinery explosions, would no longer have a Level I trauma center at their disposal; they’d have to depend on an ambulance or a helicopter to get them to Houston. Certainly Galveston’s residents would suffer financially and medically with a reduced UTMB, but so too would all the overcrowded public hospitals in Texas that would then have to take in more uninsured patients, or simply turn them away without treatment. “The longer the hospital stays out of commission the more people forget,” one longtime Island resident told me.

Maybe that’s just what the regents are hoping for.

To be fair, Swartz's article and Sen. Ogden understate the enormous problems with investing so much in infrastructure on a hurricane-prone barrier island. It's possible that's just an untenable idea that must be fundamentally reconsidered. But if UTMB isn't going to rebuild its medical infrastructure in Galveston, that leaves as an open question what happens to prison health care UTMB was previously providing through that facility.

Houston accidents increased after installing red light cameras

There are two kinds of stories routinely published by the MSM around the New Year that both annoy me: Fluffy pieces written weeks earlier for publication while the reporter is gone, and stories that officialdom wants buried and thus releases around the slowest newsday of the year.

An excellent example of the latter may be found in a Houston Chronicle story published yesterday revealing that traffic accidents in Houston increased after the installation of red light cameras ("Was red light camera study flawed?," Jan 1).

While not long ago, the Chronicle touted the results of a much less rigorous study uncritically, in this case, where the results do not support red light cameras, the whole story was centered around claiming the research methodology was flawed. Writes Bradley Olson:

Because red-light cameras are known to have a spillover effect — meaning that they have been shown to impact the number of accidents at intersections where there are no cameras — robust examinations of camera programs always compare crash data with that in other cities.

It's what statisticians call a control group. Unless the study authors compare crashes at the 50 intersections where red-light cameras have been installed with other intersections in which they have not been — preferably in other cities — no conclusions can be drawn from it.

This is utter gobbledy gook, not a legitimate statistical analysis! Red light cameras create their OWN control group when researchers monitor accidents at the intersection BEFORE and AFTER enforcement begins.

That was the flaw I identified in the Texas Department of Transportation study published in December - in the vast majority of intersections they studied, data was not gathered before cameras were installed to compare them. In the Houston study, they had that data going back several years, so IMO the results are actually much more robust and probative than TXDOT's.

Olson writes that, "One specialist from a renowned traffic research organization who reviewed the study for the Houston Chronicle said the methodology was "flawed" and has serious "limitations." But it turns out the "renowned" research group was the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, which is an arm of the insurance industry, not a neutral source of research.

The reporter also claims, bizarrely, that, "At a ratio of 10 to 1, study after study on the effect of red-light cameras ... have found that they drastically reduce crashes." That's simply false on its face, which further leads me to think Olson's sources were feeding him a line of bull. As I wrote in reaction to the TXDOT study:

in Lubbock red light cameras were discontinued after accidents overall increased 52% at intersections with cameras. Similarly, the state of Virginia eliminated their use after studies in every city using the devices found the number of accidents increased. In other jurisdictions, studies have found reductions in right-angle accidents but nearly equal increases in rear-end collisions, including in injury accidents.

The Houston figures jibe closely with those results, so I don't see why Olson or Mayor White are so surprised that accidents increased in Houston, too. That's what happens when officials prioritize revenue generation over public safety.

Here are the bottom line results:


See more from BlogHouston and Off the Kuff.

New Year Open Thread

So long, 2008: At a minimum you gave us no shortage of blogging material and for that I am grateful.

I'm going to take another day off and climb back into the blogging saddle tomorrow. Until then, use this as an open thread to discuss the most important criminal justice topics of the past year. Here's my ad hoc stab at a top ten list of the year's most important criminal justice stories:

1. Historic malfeasance: The Charles Dean Hood case exposed a judge-DA tryst from a 1991 capital murder trial. The judge, Verla Sue Holland, was later appointed by Gov. Bush to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals.
   
2. The cartel wars in Juarez (El Paso's sister city) claimed more than 1,500 victims while corruption increased on the US side and a Texas Sheriff who received millions in drug-war grants was discovered on a cartel's payroll.
   
3. The Great Eldorado Polygamist Roundup
4. TYC Turmoil: Conservators come and go, then finally a new commissioner
   
5. Harris County DA Chuck Rosenthal's unlikely fall from grace
6. Commissary corruption among Sheriffs
7. Prison staff shortages force closure of wings on two units and contribute to contraband smuggling, including more than 20 different cell phones found on death row
8. Hurricane Ike destroyed Galveston including the state's main prison hospital which has not been re-opened. UTMB, which ran the hospital, laid off thousands of employees.
9. DNA-based exonerations continue in Dallas and elsewhere, though the Innocence Project of Texas which provided attorneys in many of these cases was hit hard in the pocketbook by Wall Street fraud.
10. Big cities going D: Harris County judicial races flip Democratic following a similar shift in Dallas County in 2006, which solidified this year with Sheriff Lupe Valdez's re-election.

The order here is decidedly arbitrary, but those, I think are certainly among the biggest Texas criminal justice stories from 2008. Let me know what you think is missing from the list.

Also, what will be the big issues in 2009? A couple of big ones at the Legislature will surely be:

• The Sunset Commission's proposal to merge TYC and the Juvenile Probation Commission
• Prison security: Contraband smuggling, staffing shortages and guard pay.

Perhaps readers can suggest other important issues and trends to watch.

I'm spending the rest of the day with family and friends, so y'all talk among yourselves, thanks for stopping by, and have a happy and fulfilling New Year.

RELATED: See the Austin Chronicle's top ten public safety stories.