TCJC Re-entry Project

Hi everyone, this is Ana Yáñez-Correa at the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition (TCJC). It’s our first guest blog post!

I’m not sure how many Grits readers know about a project we began about a year ago to help those exiting prisons and jails learn about available resources they can tap into in the community.Though we’re not a service organization, we receive over a hundred letters from inmates every month, and we average 40 calls per week from a wide range of individuals seeking help. After so many calls asking for information about resources in the community – and after conducting so much research on providers and programs in various regions – we decided to create the state’s first comprehensive directory of resources for returning individuals.

It doesn't always take money to make a difference in a person’s life. Some people just need help finding information about housing, health services, employment, benefits and assistance, education, or community involvement. And so we provided that (full PDF version here) for them. Although compiling the guide took many months (and was outside our usual scope of research for juvenile and criminal justice policy recommendations), the effort was well worth it and the guide has been distributed far and wide via our website.

Since it’s quite a large document, we recently decided to break out the resources by region and offer individualized PDFs (below). These will help re-entry specialists – as well as community supervision officers, treatment providers, and other groups – provide tailored assistance to those in need:

• Austin and Central Texas
• Dallas and Surrounding Area
• Fort Worth and Surrounding Area
• High Plains
• Houston and Surrounding Area
• Northeast and East Texas
• San Antonio and Surrounding Area
• South Texas
• West Texas

These documents are also available on our website. We hope they can help Grits readers identify re-entry services in their community, or use them to refer people they know to organizations who can help.

If any of you know of any additional resources you think we should include, please let us know! We will try to update the resources every six months.

Thanks, until we post again…

I'm Outta Here: Guest bloggers hold down fort while Grits takes a holiday

On the road again,
Going places that I've never been,
Seeing things that I may never see again,
I can't wait to get on the road again.

- Willie Nelson

I'm headed out of town for a long-awaited vacation this afternoon, and will be away from the blog until mid-September. The missus and I are headed on a European junket - to London, Berlin, and Barcelona - and also visiting my wife's best friend from college, who married a German forest ranger and lives in a national park outside of Hamburg.

I've invited Ana Yañez Correa, Jeff Blackburn, and a couple of other folks who haven't confirmed yet to guest blog in my absence. Be kind to them! They're doing all of us a favor providing content while I'm away, so please try to keep the comments constructive and hold off on abusive trolling until I return.

In the meantime, here are several blogs I read regularly on topics related to Grits' purview:

• Defending People
• Liberty and Justice for Y'all
• The Defense Rests
• DA Confidential
• Dallas News Crime Blog
• Women in Crime Ink
• Sentencing Law & Policy
• CrimProf Blog
• The Innocence Blog

So long until mid-September, and thanks for reading.

On the link (or lack thereof) between solving murders and reducing their number

An article in the Houston Chronicle today laments the declining clearance rate for homicides, which in many jurisdictions are below 50%. Reports Yang Wang (no really, that's the reporter's name):

Some Houston-area communities are among 120 cities and counties across the state where 63 percent of murders or fewer are solved — falling short of the national average — according to a Houston Chronicle analysis of the FBI Uniform Crime Reporting database. The findings are based on cases reported by local agencies from 2004 through 2009.

For some communities, the problem is sheer volume: Too many murders, too many culprits and too many places to hide in a massive metropolis of nearly 6 million people.

For others, a lack of manpower, forensic crime labs and simple clues reduce the odds of finding a killer. The city of Galveston, for example, had just 32 murders between 2004 and 2009, but solved only 17.

San Antonio's Bexar County Sheriff's Office cleared just 39 percent of its homicides, Waco 56 percent and Odessa 52 percent, based on numbers the police agencies provided to the FBI.

But while murder clearance rates in some cities lag behind the national average, nearly 70 percent of the slayings in Houston get solved. In fact Houston, considering its size, is on par or better than most cities of its size.

But how much is enough? A 70 percent success rate still leaves 30 percent without answers. And the numbers provide little comfort to the families of victims across the region where 850 deaths have yet to result in arrests.

Even with its greater ability to solve these violent crimes, the Houston Police Department still had 550 unsolved murders; Harris County had about 170. At the same time, both agencies reported more than 1,609 homicides with suspects identified.

It's a strange conundrum that homicide clearance rates are declining nationally at a time when the numbers of murders are also going down. That means that the efforts of police and prisons - catching killers and taking them off the street - likely isn't the reason for the declining number of murders, though that's the traditional cause-and-effect paradigm that's portrayed in the media. Instead the reasons for declining murder rates are more demographic, economic and cultural than they are a result of improved police work.

But what is the reason for declining clearance rates? My theory is that society has come to use police too frequently to address social problems like alcoholism, drug abuse, child support, truancy, etc., or for revenue enhancement in the case of writing traffic tickets, instead of focusing on traditional crimes with actual victims. (Clearance rates for burglary are much, much lower even than for murder.)

It's simple, really: If all your cops are writing tickets, combing the streets for DWIs, busting penny ante drug users, chasing down truants, compiling photographic catalogs of graffiti, etc., those same cops aren't spending their time helping solve homicides. And Texas voters' anti-taxation sentiments mean local governments couldn't hire enough police to perform all these tasks, even if they wanted to do so. So the stuff that generates revenue (like writing traffic tickets) or that lends itself to political demagoguery (like graffiti and DWI enforcement ) gets prioritized over catching killers or burglars.

What do readers think explains declining homicide clearance rates? And if homicides are declining at the same time police are solving a lesser percentage of murders, what do you think accounts for the overall decline in recent years of homicides nationwide?

Justice can't be quantified through conviction rates

In Dallas, District Attorney candidates are debating the proper method for calculating "conviction rates," but personally I agree with Harris County DA Pat Lykos who told the Dallas News:  "she doesn't even calculate the rates. 'We seek justice,' Lykos said. "Justice cannot be quantified in terms of wins and losses or batting averages.'"

A Song for You: Roundup

Here are several items I've been meaning to mention before I leave town, compiled in a song-title themed roundup:

Sympathy for the Devil
Just because he's a drunken, lecherous asshole, says one of his former clerks, doesn't mean defrocked federal Judge Samuel Kent should be mistreated in prison.

Self Inflicted
Weird, tumultuous news from Dallas DA Craig Watkins recently: The Dallas DA's office inexplicably opposes a GPS-based alternative sentencing program for low level offenders which has saved the county hundreds of thousands of dollars. Meanwhile, an appellate court said that county commissioners did indeed have the authority to hire their own legal counsel instead of using the DA's office for legal advice on civil matters, a move which subtly but significantly reduced the power of his office and opened the door for larger budget cuts which he's been adamantly fighting. Meanwhile, writes Tom McGregor at DallasBlog, "Watkins claims he’s “getting smart on crime,” but he’s not getting smart on paying his bills, which includes a monthly mortgage payment, his law license dues to the State Bar of Texas, advertising payments to the Southwestern Bell Yellow Pages, and income taxes." If his Republican opponent were running a stronger campaign, Watkins might be in trouble in the general election from all these self-inflicted wounds.

The Waiting is the Hardest Part
A shortage of state hospital beds is creating a backlog of mentally ill offenders in county jails awaiting competency restoration, as demonstrated in this compelling case study from Tanya Eiserer at the Dallas News. "The waiting time isn't likely to improve, as state officials have tentatively proposed cutting funding for state mental hospital beds by $44 million over two years."

Accentuate the Positive
In North Carolina, an audit found that everyone in the state's serology lab had been trained to leave out negative (i.e., exonerating) results from their forensic reports.

Valjean's Soliloquy (What Have I Done?)
A California appellate court compared a defendant sentenced under the state's three-strikes law to Jean Valjean, who in Victor Hugo's Les Miserables was sentenced to 19 years hard labor for stealing bread. Opines the LA Times, "L.A. County Dist. Atty. Steve Cooley, the Republican candidate for state attorney general, has opted to avoid pursuing third-strike convictions unless a suspect's third offense is serious or violent. That's an admirable stance but one that should be enshrined in state law, not left to the whim of individual county prosecutors." They add that the "central message of 'Les Miserables' still holds true for modern-day policymakers, prisoners and voters: Unjust laws demean those who make them more than those convicted under them."

The Texas Forensic Science Seminar

The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals' Criminal Justice Integrity Unit is jointly sponsoring a conference/CLE event October 7-8 titled the "Texas Forensic Science Seminar" in the auditorium at the capitol in Austin. See their promotional flyer here (pdf). It looks like a substantive discussion, particularly the second day, so I signed up to attend the free event.

An interesting note, fwiw: Former Forensic Science Commission Chairman Sam Bassett is listed among the faculty, while current FSC Chair John Bradley apparently wasn't invited to present.

Topics covered include arson, digital media, trace evidence, firearms and toolmarks, DNA evidence and statistics, latent print evidence, toxicology, eyewitness identification and false confessions. There will also be discussions of the National Academy of Sciences report on forensic science, application of the scientific method to forensic fields, and the admissibility of forensic science testimony in Texas courts.

Promoting blog coverage of Harris judicial races

I don't usually openly shill for advertisers in blog posts but David Jennings of Big Jolly Politics purchased an ad in Grits' sidebar for the next few months promoting a series of Q&As he and Charles Kuffner are doing with Republican and Democratic judicial candidates respectively who will be on Harris County ballots. I've mentioned this two-man project before and really think it represents the best of what the blogosphere can be - collaboration by folks who likely disagree on a lot of particular issues to fill a niche that's under-reported by the mainstream media, providing a true public service by compiling information that's generally not available anywhere else. For the most part these down-ballot races are ignored, particularly in a town as large as Houston, so I'm glad to see them doing it and also that David is promoting it widely.

Invited murals as graffiti prophylactic

In Fort Worth, police are referring graffiti victims to an "urban art academy" whose students, who include some ex-taggers, paint murals as a prophylactic against unwanted tagging, reports the Fort Worth Star-Telegram ("Fort Worth group finds creative way to fight graffiti," Aug. 20):

Craig McClintock, director of Operation Stitches, said the nonprofit group had just moved into the small warehouse at Calvary Cathedral International church's complex when graffiti appeared in the spring.

Since the warehouse faces Interstate 35W near the Yucca Avenue/Northside Drive exit, he joked with police that he should leave a sketch of what artwork he wanted on the building so the taggers could do it when they returned.

That's when police connected him with the Fort Worth Urban Art Academy, a group of art teachers and students who have done murals for businesses plagued by graffiti.

"Instead of getting all mad and frustrated about what these taggers were doing, it was an opportunity for us," McClintock said. "Good things are happening where we can reach out to give these kids an avenue to express themselves."

The art academy is made up of students from Carter-Riverside, Diamond Hill-Jarvis and North Side high schools. The mural efforts are part of the academy's W.A.L. project, short for We Are Legal.

Carter-Riverside art teacher Mary Boswell said some students involved have done graffiti in the past and had to sign an oath to no longer deface property. The students have learned that there are legal ways to do their art, she said.

"This gives the students some ownership of their artwork and a sense of pride," she said.

Boswell said the murals help prevent graffiti problems because taggers respect the artwork.

A south Fort Worth convenience store tagged by dueling gangs hasn't had such graffiti since the student mural went up last summer, Boswell said.

RELATED: Texas program aims to use art to prevent graffiti

'Mineola Swingers Club': Emotion guides decisions when probative evidence excluded from jurors

At Texas Monthly, Michael Hall is continuing his excellent coverage of the so-called Mineola Swingers Club cases with a description of the most recent trial and conviction of another of the adults alleged to have sexually molested kids. The Fourteenth Court of Appeals in Houston recently threw out the two earlier convictions , reports Hall:

On June 17 the Fourteenth Court of Appeals, in Houston, overturned the convictions of Kelly and Jamie Pittman. Kelly, the judges said, deserved a new trial because he hadn’t been allowed to present a defense and because Judge Skeen had “adopted ad hoc evidentiary rules that operated to assist the state in proving its case, while impeding appellant’s ability to defend himself.” (Jamie Pittman’s conviction was overturned on different grounds; Mayo’s was upheld, likely because her appellate lawyer cited none of the evidentiary issues that Kelly’s lawyers had raised.)

The ruling was no surprise to local defense lawyers. Skeen is a legend in Smith County. He was the law-and-order DA there for 21 years, then was appointed judge in 2003; he’s been reelected twice. He also has a reputation for helping the state and hindering the defense. “He never stopped being the DA,” Kelly’s attorney, Thad Davidson, told me the day after the appellate decision was announced. “He just put on a robe.”

Hall reports that Skeen made essentially the same types of rulings in this case for which he was recently benchslapped by the appellate court, continuing to exclude obviously probative evidence:

Skeen struck another huge blow to the defense when he allowed Margie—the foster mother of three of the children, the interviewer of four of them, the person whose passion had driven the cases for more than five years—to invoke her right to refuse to testify on the grounds that she might incriminate herself, even though she had already testified in the first two trials. Cassel was able to question her but only after the jury had left the courtroom. The lawyer asked Margie more than 130 questions in thirty minutes. He asked her about the California decertification, about her habit of suggesting answers to the children, about her former career as an acting coach (“And you know how to teach [children] to remember lines?”). To each question, Margie answered, “I decline to answer based on my constitutional rights.” She slumped in her chair, staring down or into the middle distance, occasionally rolling her eyes and sighing loudly.

Skeen had forced Cassel to jettison much of the case he had planned to put before the jury. When Margie was finished, the defense rested.

That's straight-up sleazy, biased judging. The courtroom should be a place to doggedly seek the truth and Skeen's doing his best to distort and skew it from the bench.

Hall described how, even though much of the defense was excluded by the judge, major logical and factual holes were still poked in the case by the defense. His story closes:

After four decisive guilty verdicts, it’s likely that the next trial will have the same result, largely because it will be overseen by the same judge. “Due process demands that the defense gets to put on a case,” longtime Tyler defense attorney Bobby Mims told me. “Cassel was prevented by Skeen from doing that. Don’t get me wrong. Jack Skeen is a great guy. I love him. He’s one of my best friends. But he’s been a terrible judge on these cases.”

Mims went into his own soliloquy on the jury system. “Cassel proved that what these children say happened could not have happened. They were never in that swingers club. The problem is that juries don’t always make decisions based on logic. In this type of case they make them on their hearts or on fear. That’s a hazard of the jury system. Still, they should have all the evidence. If they then decide the defendant’s guilty, that’s fine.”

He paused. “But in these cases I don’t think they would have. I believe these people are innocent.”

I'd like to believe, as Mims said, that the jury would have concluded differently if the judge had allowed them to hear all the evidence, but you have to wonder. Attorney Paul Kennedy recently wrote about how "going for the gut" when addressing jurors often serves attorneys better than facts or logic. He mentions the work of "Dr. Jonathan Haidt, a psychologist at the University of Virginia, [who] proposes that what we pass off as moral judgments are really the result of "moral emotions" such as disgust, anger and compassion," which he argues stem from evolutionary reactions based on diet more than a well-thought out belief system. Kennedy considers the stunning (if somewhat humorous) implications of the hypothesis: "What if the development of that moral code had more to do with the evolution of our digestive tract?" (Mark Bennett followed up with a post fleshing out the implications of this line of thought.)

If one's "moral judgment" is really an emotionally based decision rooted in "disgust," then accusations of child molestation are situations where it's easy for prosecutors to invoke that reaction in jurors. So if it's really the case that emotion trumps facts among jurors - especially when the most probative facts are excluded, as in Judge Skeen's court - it's not surprising, if a little depressing, that emotion ruled the day.

'Rewarding Results: Measuring and Incentivizing Performance in Corrections'

Marc Levin from the Texas Public Policy Foundation has a new report out titled "Rewarding Results: Measuring and Incentivizing Performance in Corrections" (pdf, August 2010). Here's an excerpt from the executive summary:

In corrections, there is a strong public interest in producing the greatest reduction in crime—particularly the most serious crimes—for every dollar spent. Conversely, the criminal justice system should cost-effectively maximize positive outcomes such as victim restitution, victim satisfaction, and the employment of offenders as productive citizens.

It is often said that, if you don’t measure something, you won’t affect it. Similarly, if one incentivizes certain results, it may increase the odds of achieving those outcomes. Indeed, the two principles are linked—measuring performance is a prerequisite for developing a system of incentives, since there must be an ongoing, reliable means of determining whether the desired outcomes are being
achieved.

Just like retirees monitoring their investment portfolio, taxpayers deserve to know whether the system they are funding is achieving the intended results to the greatest degree possible with each dollar spent. Unfortunately, corrections systems have historically lacked clear, outcome-oriented performance measures.

Instead, they have tended to insufficiently measure performance or employ measures based on volume, such as how many offenders are convicted or incarcerated. This conflicts with the overriding public policy objective, which is not more criminals and a larger criminal justice system, but lower crime and lower costs. Longer sentences and more prisons may yield a smaller gain in public safety for each dollar spent when compared with a greater emphasis on strategies that prevent crime, reduce recidivism, and use the least restrictive and least costly sanction for an offender that is necessary to protect public safety.

As budgets tighten, it is particularly important to strengthen performance measures and reward results, ensuring taxpayers are kept safe and receive the greatest return on their investment. Means of accomplishing this in Texas include the following recommendations:

* Revise performance measures for adult and juvenile corrections agencies to deemphasize the current measures that focus on volume, such as the number of offenders incarcerated or in a program, and add measures that assess cost-benefit based on outcomes such as recidivism (re-offending), restitution, and the employment rate of ex-offenders.

* Change the adult probation funding formula so that it is based not solely on the number of individuals supervised, but also on outcomes such as recidivism, revocations to prison, and restitution collections, adjusted for the risk level of the caseload.

* Reduce current incentives for local communities to send nonviolent adult offenders into state lockups by implementing a version of the Commitment Reduction Program that was enacted in 2009 for Texas’ juvenile justice system. Develop a new approach to outsourcing and private correctional facilities that focuses not simply on funding the provider or program with the lowest cost, but on indicators of quality and benchmarks for outcomes such as recidivism.

Through these and other reforms that reward results, Texas can build on its recent progress in lowering crime and controlling cost.

Because all the other big problems have been solved ...

Obama's Justice Department today indicted Texas baseball legend "Rocket" Roger Clemens for perjury related to alleged steroid use, reports USA Today. See the indictment (pdf). The allegations rest primarily on the word of a snitch who turned on Clemens to avoid prosecution himself.

This seems to me like a massive waste of time and resources and an extremely poor exercise of prosecutorial discretion. Making the situation appear even more hypocritical, as I pointed out before Clemens' ill-advised testimony to Congress, "We couldn't get Condi Rice to testify under oath about 9/11, and myriad Bush administration officials under the GOP Congress were allowed to appear before Congress without risk of perjury charges if they lied," but the feds are using Clemens' Congressional testimony as a perjury trap to go after baseball's all-time strikeout leader Clemens for no good reason I can identify. Hell, even Henry Waxman who chaired the hearing where Clemens allegedly committed perjury later said he regretted staging the event. The whole fiasco was a bad idea from the get-go and this indictment just makes matters worse.

Perjury is a crime that's prosecuted very selectively, with many obvious instances routinely overlooked by prosecutors. Federal prosecutors are going after Clemens because of his star power, not because he poses some terrific threat to the public, or for that matter to anyone but a batter on the receiving end of a beanball.

UPDATE: Tom Kirkendall rightly delcares that "These witch hunts, investigations, criminal indictments, morality plays and public shaming episodes are not advancing a dispassionate and reasoned debate regarding the complex issues that are at the heart of the use of PED's [Performance Enhancing Drugs] in baseball and other sports. On a very basic level, it is not even clear that the controlled use of PED's to enhance athletic performance is as dangerous to health as many of the sports in which the users compete."

DA indicted over handouts from asset forfeiture fund

Texas Watchdog reports that a grand jury in Jim Wells County convened by the Attorney General has indicted the former District Attorney on first degree felony charges related to alleged misuse of asset forfeiture money. Writes Mark Lisheron, "while the indictment says he misused more than $200,000, an audit done by his successor found that [Joe Frank] Garza had paid $1.2 million in drug seizure forfeitures to his three staff members and another $81,000 to himself between January of 2002 through the end of 2008." That's pretty darn brazen.

Jim Wells is a tiny county population-wise but apparently generates significant asset forfeiture income, undoubtedly because state Highway 281 runs through it from Brownsville on the way to San Antonio. Perhaps the Legislature can stop bickering over Voter ID long enough next session to update the statutes related to asset forfeiture funds to prevent some of the abuses we've witnessed from ever happening in the first place.

Viaje de Graffiti?

Beginning next week, I'm headed to Europe for a long-awaited vacation, spending time in London, Berlin, and Barcelona and leaving y'all in the able hands of several guest bloggers until mid-September. Intriguingly (though the missus might kill me), after I mentioned where we were headed recently in the comments, a reader suggested I make it a working trip. Via email, I'm informed, "Dude, if you're going to London, Berlin and Barcelona those are all graffiti meccas! Take your camera and watch for graff."

So I did a quick search on "London graffiti" and found this recent Huffington Post item titled "12 Awesome Graffiti Trips Around the World," and my destinations were numbers 1, 2, and 4 on the list.

I knew, of course, about the famous graffiti on what's left of the Berlin Wall. And when one thinks of London graffiti one thinks of Banksy and Ben Eine, whose work the Prime Minister recently gave Barack Obama as a gift of state. Huffington Post suggests Brick Lane in East London for a graffiti tour, while another recent article directs us to an "outdoor gallery" of graff at an old ballcourt. Banksy's work in particular is an odd conundrum: Illegal, it also makes whatever he paints on much more valuable.

I was most interested, though, in the description via Huffington Post of the Galeria Oberta in Barcelona:

Open 365 days a year, this “exhibition space on the street” aims to make graffiti accessible to everyone, by giving artists the perfect spot to showcase their creations on the long brick wall of the Parc de les Aigües. Dangerously hypnotizing for those driving past, this wall literally jumps out at you, causing you to gaze in amazement at the sheer talent of the artists. Whether you are for or against graffiti, you cannot deny that the 34 creations of the Galeria Oberta  are far more interesting to look at than bricks. The artists use stencils, spray cans and paint brushes, and explore contemporary issues with irony, one of the most appropriate being a line of businessmen pointing accusingly at each other with the word “crisis.” We can only wait on tenterhooks for the next painting day to take place, and to find out what Barcelona’s eager graffiti artists have in store. Anyone can reserve a space on the wall by simply filling out a form, but if you do, make sure you don’t graffiti outside the border! 

See more on Galeria Oberta from Oh Trip!, as well as this post discussing street art throughout Barcelona. I'm especially intrigued with the idea of periodically changing public mural space that can be reserved, as I've suggested a more generalized version of that approach - connecting property owners and mural painters online for permission work - on this blog in the past. We'll see if I can resist the temptation to take a graff-related sidetrip or two while I'm abroad.

UPDATE/RELATED:

• Not in London, but the "Pretty Vacant" program in Newcastle strikes me as a constructive collaboration between graff writers and the community. With permission, they're painting windows of boarded up businesses on the grounds that "shops left empty give visitors a 'bad impression of the area' but by making these vacant spaces look vibrant, local entrepreneurs will be encouraged to rent the premises."
• Here in the states, Harry Jaffe discusses a D.C. program called "Keep Art in Schools" that lets kids hone their graffiti skills in a summer youth program but channels them into constructive, marketable endeavors. The title of the program reminds me that the rise of graffiti in the last decade in Texas has coincided with a decline in school arts programs as schools focused more on preparing kids for standardized tests. The result: in kids doing less art in school and more in the streets. That's a correlation, at this point, not proven causation, but it's a relationship that bears consideration.

If they wanted to, parole board could cut TDCJ spending easier than legislators

Far and away the biggest cost to Texas taxpayers from illegal immigrants - nearly double the amount spent on health and human services - is $171 million per year spent to house people in Texas state prisons who are eligible for deportation, the House State Affairs Committee was told yesterday. Reports Julian Aguilar at the Texas Tribune:

As of last July 2010, about 11,760 of the offenders incarcerated in the Texas State prison system, or 7.5 percent of the total prison population, claimed foreign residency, according to testimony from Jerry McGinty, the budget director for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
 
Through current agreements with the federal government, specifically Immigration and Customs Enforcement, or ICE, the state can identify prisoners eligible for deportation at the end of their sentences. Roughly 9,800 of the foreigners incarcerated had ICE detainers placed on them. Though not all entered the country illegally, McGinty estimated that the state pays at least $171 million annually to detain prisoners who could be deported. The remaining inmates with foreigner status, McGinty said, are currently being processed to determine if they, too, qualify for deportation.

A competitive federal grant program known as the Criminal Alien Assistance Program partially reimburses state governments for those costs. For Texas, however, that hardly settles the score. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice received $17.9 million in fiscal year 2010 — just 10 percent of the costs of incarceration.

Since about 56% of Texas prison inmates are eligible for parole, according to TDCJ's most recent statistical report (pdf, p. 15), there's a good chance that many of those eligible for deportation have also finished their minimum sentence. In those instances, particularly when the risk factors for recidivism are minimal, exactly what is the parole board waiting for?

In case you're keeping track, Texas is spending $171 million to house offenders eligible for deportation, and another $320 million on medical care alone for frail elderly prisoners. At a recent House Corrections Committee meeting, the chairman revealed that "40% of TDCJ's $800 million healthcare budget was going to pay to care for frail, elderly inmates" at a time when the number of medical paroles is declining. Add to that the fact that the parole board is less likely to follow its own release guidelines for low-risk inmates compared to high-risk ones, and the parole board is at the center of a lot of TDCJ's overspending problems.

Not all of those inmates should be released, but if inmates in these categories were evaluated based on less fearful, more evidence-based risk-assessment criteria, the state could save hundreds of millions and likely close multiple prison units just from focusing on how to safely release those prisoners. In the case of medical releases, likely either Medicare or Medicaid will pay the bills on the outside, with state government picking up none of the costs for the former and a little more than 1/3 of the latter. So it shifts costs, but from a state government perspective, in the context of current rules and programs, it makes tons of budget sense sense to offload healthcare costs to the feds.

These are policy decisions so they weren't suggested by TDCJ in its recent Legislative Appropriations Request. But for those at the capitol and the Governor's office seriously considering how to cut unnecessary state spending, there'd be a lot of benefit from somehow requiring the parole board to more closely vet such release candidates based on less restrictive criteria. The parole board could do more to cut the state corrections budget - especially if the state ups its investment in reentry, community supervision and intermediate sanctions - than any legislative committee will likely be able to accomplish without their assistance.

Mid-Week Linkfest

These items caught my eye this week but since I don't have time to blog about each of them, I'll just share the links for anyone interested:

• AP: DNA test may cast doubt on executed Texan's guilt
• Fortune Magazine: What's costlier than a government run prison? A private one.
• Seattle Times: America Behind Bars: The time is ripe for prison reform
• BBC: Can community sentences replace jail?
• Courtex: Future Trends in State Courts, 2010
• Courtex: DOJ letter on protecting court interpreters from budget cuts
• Corpus Christi Caller Times: Mentors give youths a second shot
• San Antonio Express-News: Preventing Graffiti Through Art
• BBC News: The plan to 'leglaise' graffiti
• Paul Kennedy: An outsider's perspective on drunk driving

Jail main driver of higher taxes, budget stress in Dallas County

If it weren't for its massive, jam-packed jail, Dallas County wouldn't have raised taxes in recent years and wouldn't be making deep budget cuts now.

According to Commissioner John Wiley Price, Dallas County "has only raised the tax rate in recent years to pay for jail improvements required by state and federal authorities." This week a sharply divided commissioners court declined to raise taxes, which will likely require slashing budgets of local criminal justice agencies. Reports the Dallas News, "The court can't say it supports public safety and still make deep budget cuts, Price said, because about 80 percent of the county budget involves the local criminal justice system." Further, "The bitter debate also turned to the district attorney's office, which [some commissioners] accused of deliberately slowing down cases as punishment for having been subjected to budget cuts."

Setting aside the longstanding personality conflicts that exacerbate Dallas' budget woes, the county's example provides a lesson. Bottom line, those concerned about tax burdens at the county level must concern themselves with reining in runaway costs in the criminal justice system. There comes a moment where you can't both be for "no new taxes" and also advocate a "lock 'em up" mentality. The cognitive dissonance becomes too much to bear and those who tout lower taxes must ultimately choose among their priorities. At least at the local government level, we've seemingly, finally reached that tipping point during the current recession, certainly in Dallas.

Charting new paths to reduce DWI

The Dallas News yesterday completed its series (discussed earlier here) on drunk driving deaths with a discussion of possible legislative actions to address the problem, declaring that

lawmakers are scrambling over what other steps to take:

•The old path: Pass stricter laws to keep drunken drivers off the streets. Critics say they haven't been effective enough in lowering the death toll.

•The new path: Loosen financial penalties for some drunken drivers. Prosecutors say the fines are so burdensome that many choose time behind bars rather than probation, which gives more access to treatment.

•The forgotten path: Lawmakers, attorneys and judges say substance abuse treatment is the best way to ensure drivers don't reoffend. But because of tight budgets, there's little chance the Legislature will increase such programs for those incarcerated for DWI offenses.

In the past, "doing something" about drunken driving mostly meant imposing more prison time and higher fines. But Texas still leads the nation in alcohol-related fatalities with 1,269 in 2008, the latest year for complete data.

Legislators will reconvene in January, and several ideas already have been bandied about, from sobriety checkpoints to requiring more use of restrictive car devices.

State Sen. Jane Nelson is proposing permanent license suspensions for drunk drivers on the second offense, seemingly ignoring testimony by Texas judges at recent legislative hearing arguing that threat of license suspensions do not increase compliance with the law. MADD is pushing sobriety checkpoints and mandatory ignition interlocks for first-time offenders. (I support making interlocks mandatory on the second offense, but 80% of first time DWIs don't recidivate, the Senate Criminal Justice Committee was told last month, and in that context interlocks aren't worth the bang for the buck on first timers and dilute focus on supervising more dangerous repeaters.)

Indeed, it would be foolish to spend vastly more resources on first offenders when Texas isn't putting enough resources into repeat offenders. The News reported that "Among the 5,159 DWI offenders with three or more DWI convictions released last year, more than half did not receive treatment in prison." Funding in-prison treatment for those with three or more DWIs to me should be a bigger priority that maximizing strict supervision of first offenders, most of whom won't recidivate anyway.

Yesterday's story also finally addressed the problem of drunk drivers choosing incarceration instead of probation because ever-tougher laws have made it untenable for average people. "Roger Bridgwater, assistant district attorney in Harris County, is alarmed by the number of drivers who choose a DWI conviction rather than probation. Ten years ago, 45 percent of drunken drivers in that county chose probation. By 2009, that dropped to 23 percent." (Then they wonder why Harris County's jail is always full.)

It's depressing to me that the political class, including the media, so exclusively focuses on criminal justice solutions to social problems like alcoholism, drug abuse, family violence, etc.. Nowhere is there a discussion of whether expanded public transport might reduce DWIs, or other structural solutions that don't rely exclusively on police and jails. Other than to disingenuously use them as a foil to imply more jail sentences should be handed out, the issue of public education and advertising wasn't even addressed in any depth. As the News says, "doing something" about DWI for legislators usually means "imposing more prison time and higher fines," even when practitioners say tougher approaches are counterproductive. And unfortunately most media coverage on the subject isn't much better about thinking outside the box on this hot-button issue.

Overincarceration at local jail responsible for Wichita County tax hike

Higher county property taxes in Wichita Falls are entirely attributable to rising jail costs, the Times Record News reports today; their county commissioners court this week approved an 8% tax hike:

County Judge Woody Gossom said the extra revenue will all go to the county jail, with about half the increase dedicated to additional jail staffing and the rest toward the expense of housing inmates out of county due to overcrowding.

The 2011 budget contains no pay raises for county employees, except for hikes for two district court reporters, which commissioners are required by law to pass.

Gossom said the budget is designed to meet the requirements of the jail and the demands of the Texas Commission on Jail Standards.

He said a “great deal” of effort has gone in to dealing with issues that plague both the jail in the courthouse and at the Sprague Annex, including leaking roofs. Gossom also said a committee of county officials and others will be formed to “look into things we can do to reduce the number of people in jail.” (emphasis added)

“We have to look at ways to reduce expenses,” he said.

Gossom said the county is paying nearly $750,000 a year to transfer inmates to jails in nearby counties because of overcrowding here.

The tax rate increase approved Monday is just below the level that could by law allow taxpayers to petition for a rollback..

Politicians in Wichita County aren't looking to "reduce the number of people in jail" because they're suddenly soft on crime. They face stark budget choices just like the Legislature does next year, and unlike the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, they recognize it isn't possible to put off forever policy changes that reduce incarceration rates instead of endlessly indulging the system's carceral appetites.

TDCJ budget would lay off 7,300 employees before closing a single prison unit

Why am I not surprised? The Texas Department of Criminal Justice yesterday came out with its Legislative Appropriations Request (LAR) purporting to comply with budget cuts demanded by legislative leaders. Rumors were flying last week that TDCJ would suggest closing two units as part of a broader array of cuts, but that notion clearly didn't make it into the final draft, which mostly slashes staffing, community supervision, and mental health treatment. Here are the details from TDCJ's website:

• FY 2012-2013 Legislative Appropriations Request (LAR) (brief two-page synopsis of major budget issues)
• Fiscal Year 2011 Operating Budget and Fiscal Years 2012-2013 Legislative Appropriations Request (summary with additional detail)

At 5% below their current budget, TDCJ suggests closing no prisons but somehow believes they can safely cut 1,700 staff, including 1,200 at correctional facilities. If required to cut their budget by 10%, says the LAR, they'll eliminate 4,700 staff (mostly prison guards and parole officers) and still not close any prisons, while cutting mental health services by $88.8 million! If required to cut 15%, reports the Statesman's Mike Ward, TDCJ might close one private facility and would lay off 7,300 people. The only reduction in capacity suggested in the LAR are Intermediate Sanctions Facilities (prison alternatives that by all account have worked well) and the elimination of 471 beds at unspecified private units.

These frankly aren't serious proposals. Indeed, nearly every cut proposed by the agency - to probation, to parole, to treatment, to mental health - seems targeted not to best serve the public interest but to maximize the future inflow of prisoners to ensure that all 112 Texas prison units remain full, no matter what. This is classic bureaucratic self-interest at work from an agency that perceives itself first and foremost as a prison operator and thinks of community supervision as frills. Likely TDCJ officials are hoping against hope that Sen. Whitmire will prevail in his effort to have criminal justice agencies exempted from budget cuts.

In any event, this LAR confirms my fears that TDCJ will never go along willingly with shuttering any prison unit, even ones like the Central Unit in Sugarland which are inappropriately located and rife with security problems. As I've editorialized repeatedly, legislators will have to do the fine cutting themselves. It's possible to identify cuts and policy changes that would allow TDCJ to safely close 4-6 prison units while retaining or even expanding community supervision and diversion programming. Getting to 10% or 15% becomes more difficult, but cutting 5% shouldn't be remotely as hard as TDCJ's LAR makes it out to be.

Louie Gohmert and judicial temperament

I try to steer this blog away from straight-up culture war debates and onto more constructive terrain, so I resisted commenting when state Rep. Debbie Riddle went on national TV to say that "terror babies" were being birthed in the United States by extremist Muslims in preparation for future attacks. Though we disagree on many things, I like Riddle personally and thought perhaps she'd merely been confused by a trailer for the Angelina Jolie movie Salt. (Those were Russians, Debbie!) But then Congressman Louie Gohmert from my hometown followed up by repeating the accusation on the House floor, afterward going on Anderson Cooper and yelling at him for 10 minutes in a truly bizarre rant of the type you might expect right before somebody goes out to shoot up a post office or fly a plane into an IRS building. His originating source for the accusation is an unnamed woman (perhaps Riddle?) he spoke to on an airplane! No, really! Radley Balko provided this clip of the remarkable exchange (no need to watch all of it, since it becomes repetitive after Gohmert begins yelling and refusing to answer any direct questions):

I hardly know how to react to such a display from a former judge. It's one thing to be conservative but do you have to be an asshole? I've had far more polite disagreements with white supremacists and John Birch Society members. What can you say? My homies voted for him. I wonder what it was like to practice law in the man's courtroom?

Writ Denied: Judge Keller frustrated from futility of frivolous filings

The Supreme Court of Texas denied Court of Criminal Appeals Presiding Judge Sharon Keller's writ asking that they vacate the public warning lodged against her by the State Judicial Conduct Commission. See the Austin Statesman and Jeff Gamso for more. Then on the last possible day (yesterday) Keller requested that the SCOT appoint three judge to hear her appeal of the Commission's warning. Gamso remarks that the whole affair is:

kind of like how she describes those death penalty appeals of which she's so derisive.  You know, frivolous filing after frivolous filing after frivolous filing. There are two differences, though.

1. Keller's filings now really are frivolous.
2. There's essentially nothing at stake here.

Here's Keller's letter (pdf, via the Texas Tribune) requesting either a trial de novo or an "appellate-like review based on the the trial record," declaring that "Judge Keller wishes to avail herself of her right to oppose the Commission's unconstitutional behavior in whatever forum you deem appropriate. She frankly does not know what that is, and is frustrated by the fact that it is the Commission's unconstitutional Order which has created this conundrum."

What in the world is an "appellate-like review"? Who knows? At this point, everyone seems to be just making it up as they go along. The whole episode has long ago descended from tragedy to farce. I don't know what Judge Keller thinks she gains by dragging this out, much less going through another public trial to protest what amounts to a meaningless wrist slap, but she's either suffering from extreme hubris or receiving really terrible advice. Most likely both.

Reportage hyping DWI sidesteps biggest enforcement issues

The Dallas News is running a series of stories about criminal prosecutions in DWI death cases, the first article of which opened with this provocative but misleading statement:

You drink. You drive. You go to jail.

That's what the billboards say.

But in Dallas County, a leader in alcohol-fueled traffic deaths, you may spend little or no time behind bars – even if you kill someone. 

Note, the ads don't say, "You drink, you drive, you go to prison," so from the get-go it's clear that whoever wrote the lede was stretching to find (or generate) controversy. The News provides no evidence that police don't arrest drivers for intoxication manslaughter, so the claim that they spend "little or no time behind bars" is blatantly misleading. Indeed, further down in the story we learn that for "those drivers who are prosecuted and get probation, the only time they will spend behind bars is between 120 and 180 days in county jail."

The ads referenced neither say nor imply that every defendant will go to prison, and they refer to routine DWIs, not only death cases. Their message is the same one as the adage under Grits' title at the top of this page: "You might beat the rap but you won't beat the ride" for the Class B misdemeanor of driving while intoxicated. The billboards are NOT claiming everyone arrested for DWI will be convicted, nor that every alcohol related auto death will generate a prison sentences, particularly when there are mitigating factors or the harsher sentence is opposed by the victims' family.

By framing the issue this way, the writers set themselves up to supposedly uncover government hypocrisy or wrongdoing, but so far the articles haven't made that case persuasively. Instead, reporters found local prosecutors and judges defending their decisions on the grounds that they improve public safety.

Backers of tougher sentencing often are frustrated by the emphasis on treatment. Rehabilitation is laudable, they say, but offenders also should lose their liberty. Doing so might deter other drunken drivers.

Prosecutors, defense attorneys and judges say probation makes sense because intoxication manslaughter cases are incredibly difficult to prosecute.

Also, probationers are forced to get treatment they probably wouldn't receive in prison, and rehabilitation is less costly to taxpayers than punishment.

Most important, they say, a combination of treatment and probation-ordered rehabilitation makes the public safer.

"The reason it doesn't work to lock them up is, eventually they get out, and most times sooner rather than later," state District Judge Tracy Holmes said. "And when they get out, their addiction has progressed, and so they are more dangerous."

Prosecutors would like to send more intoxication manslaughter defendants to prison, but say the lack of substance abuse programs in Texas prisons forces them to pick between punishment and probation with rehabilitation. 

If harsh sentences "might deter" drunk drivers, why haven't they already done so for those with multiple past arrests? More than 5,500 prisoners are incarcerated at TDCJ right now for their third DWI or more. Not infrequently one even sees life sentences imposed for repeat DWI offenders. When somebody is arrested for the ninth time for DWI, that means the justice system has miserably failed the first eight times it intervened. Because of the volume of DWI cases, incapacitation is not a cost-effective, long-term means to solve the problem and it usually fails to address underlying risk factors before releasing the offender back to the streets.

Strangely, so far the series has failed to address the most serious crisis facing DWI enforcement in Texas today: Laws have become so tough that many defendants in non-death cases will no longer subject themselves to probation - which requires taking drug tests, participating in treatment and changing their lifestyle - instead choosing to sit out their time in jail to avoid changing their behavior. That's ironic because all the "tuff on crime" buffs  quoted in these articles bellyache constantly that more people don't do enough "hard" jail time, while many offenders would prefer that to strong probation that these articles portray as potentially too soft.

I'm also surprised not to see the Driver Responsibility surcharge featured prominently in these discussions. At a hearing of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee last month, David Hodges, Judicial Liaison for the Texas Center for the Judiciary, testified that the Driver Responsibility surcharge had caused DWI conviction rates to decline statewide in recent years relative to the number arrests. Citing Department of Public Safety data, Hodges said that in 2005 roughly 2/3 of DWI arrests resulted in conviction, but by 2009 that number had declined to 44%. Over the same period (2005-2009), he said, according to the Office of Court Administration, the number of pending, undisposed DWI cases increased from 100,000 to 125,000.

Most of that increase he attributed to more defendants taking cases to trial and more prosecutors, whose duty is to seek justice, not convictions, agreeing to plea down to lesser charges in order to avoid imposition of the unjust surcharge, which many defendants simply couldn't afford.

Bottom line, said Hodges, since the Driver Responsibility surcharge was implemented, DWI conviction rates have decreased every year, dismissal rates have increased every year, and the backlog of pending, undisposed cases has gone up 25%. Further, Hodges said that “tens of thousands of cases” per year were being informally reduced from DWI to lesser charges like reckless driving, public intoxication, blocking the highway, etc., to avoid having to apply the surcharge. The News stories mention with derision the practice of plea bargaining to these lesser charges, but failed to discuss the Driver Responsibility surcharge as a causal factor.

A staff editorial laments that "the cycle of blame, overreaction and unintended consequences keeps spinning," but this series' main purpose so far seems to be to contribute to that cycle by fomenting outrage where it's undeserved. From my perspective, anyway, so far I'm afraid these stories have merely elaborated rather than enlightened.

Prison dog training programs deserve results-based evaluation

Having recently mentioned the new dog-training program at TYC's girls' unit in Brownwood, I should point out this article in the Houston Chronicle about a similar program for women offenders at TDCJ in Gatesville that trains dogs for disabled veterans. The story opens:

Sharon Cooper, a Houston woman serving 30 years in prison for embezzlement, wasn't quite sure what she was getting into when she signed up to train dogs with Patriot Paws. Maybe it was all about sitting up, rolling over and doing cute puppy tricks.

She quickly learned, though, that it was about much more: changing lives — her own and others'.

Cooper, 49, is one of 13 female inmates at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's Crain Unit devoting their full time to training dogs to aid disabled military veterans. Ten more at the nearby Murray Unit also work in the program.

"I was in awe when I saw what these dogs did," Cooper said, adding that the training experience has given direction to her own life. "I never really had a passion in life. This could be my passion. This could be my career."

Many might be surprised at what Patriot Paws dogs, most of whom pretty much appear to be run-of-the-mill Rovers, can do.

These dogs — Barney, Parole, Memphis and the rest — are super-valets who can drop your dirty socks in the washer, fetch cold drinks from the fridge, bring your medicine or your trousers, open doors, gallop for help in emergencies and keep you steady on your feet and in your mind.

To the those who rely on them, they're best buddies, canine soulmates. To women such as Cooper, they're a heart-lifting chance to give back to society.

Former TDCJ board chair Christina Crain deserves credit for bringing the program to TDCJ:

[Lori] Stevens, 52, who has trained dogs for more than two decades, launched Patriot Paws in an effort to help Dallas-area disabled vets. The program expanded to the Gatesville prison units through the interest of former TDCJ Chairwoman Christina Crain, a Dallas lawyer for whom the prison was named. Crain, Stevens said, was familiar with similar programs outside Texas.

At first, Stevens was nervous.

"I didn't know what to expect," she said. "You get goose bumps just walking in the gate. ...The first time we came down, we spent two weeks training the trainers. They were just a bunch of people who had made stupid mistakes. I met some amazing women. They're just like sponges soaking up knowledge."

Stevens said positive reinforcement is used to train the dogs to respond to voice and visual commands.

Once the dogs master dozens of basic skills, they are "customized" to care for their new owners. Ninety percent of the veterans who receive dogs suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder; some are amputees, others victims of head trauma.

"The dogs can open and close doors; get help in emergencies; pick up dropped items," Stevens said. "They do the laundry. They retrieve phones and medicine. They push emergency light switches. Now we have dogs who pull down zippers and pull off shoes and socks."

Patriot Paws, largely supported through donations, provides the dogs free. Close to 70 percent go to veterans.

I notice that in both the adult and youth systems these dog training programs are operated and presumably funded as nonprofits. But I'm willing to bet - and it's certainly worth gathering data and testing - that the experience of successfully participating in such programs has more therapeutic and/or rehabilitative value than many of the treatment and counseling programs TDCJ offenders go through now.

There doesn't seem to be much research I could locate on recidivism rates or related outcomes for offenders who participate in these programs, though they've been implemented here and there around the country. A search on the Social Science Research Network on the keywords "prison, training, dog" revealed nothing. Via Google Scholar I found a study showing the programs reduce depression and boost self-esteem among women inmate trainers, but didn't focus on recidivism. Most research on the topic, like this 2007 Master's thesis focused on a program in Ohio (pdf), is more descriptive than analytical. An article from 2006 said the field of criminology "has failed to systematically study the phenomenon."

Relatedly, last night on PBS there was a documentary titled "Through a Dog's Eyes" that told the story of end-users of service dogs like those being trained in the Patriot Paws program. Clearly the demand for such animals is greater than the supply. If the programs could be shown to reduce recidivism and/or improve inmate behavior, perhaps it'd be worth the state paying to scale up operations - in the case of juveniles perhaps financing it by jettisoning things that don't work, like TYC's failed drug treatment program.

Trying innovative strategies is great, but I'd prefer that when corrections officials do so that there's an evaluation component so it's possible to determine whether the program is working as intended (or at all). I consider the missing evaluation component a major shortcoming of Texas' 2007 probation reforms, so that criticism isn't specific to dog training. But in this case there are so many positive anecdotal accolades for such programs it'd be nice to get some evidence-driven analysis of what happens with inmates who participate after they leave custody. If the results are positive, who knows? Maybe a generation from now instead of being renowned for making license plates and furniture, prisons could become known as first-rate dog-training academies for people with special needs. That'd certainly change the culture of the institutions.

Backlash against new prisoner reentry housing

Mike Ward at the Austin Statesman reports on the allegedly muddled implementation and backlash against a new program to provide housing for long-time inmates who are eligible for parole but had no place to go ("Housing program for ex-cons not working as intended, some lawmakers say," Aug. 15). The story opens:

As Texas prison programs go, this one was tiny. Just a few hundred ex-cons would be eligible for housing vouchers those who had been approved for parole but were stuck behind bars because they had no place to live, either because their families didn't want them or they had no place to go.

It was also supposed to save taxpayers money, since the housing would cost less than a $47-a-day prison bed.

Instead, state records show, the 8-month-old Temporary Housing Assistance Program appears to have accomplished just the opposite. In some cases, parolees have been moved into state-rented homes from less expensive halfway houses. ...

Earlier this month, 98 parolees were living in taxpayer-paid housing across the state — most of them in Dallas, Houston, San Antonio and Austin. Their crimes included homicide, aggravated robbery, failure to register as a sex offender, driving while intoxicated, drug possession and escape.

One home in Dallas housed eight paroled felons — six from halfway houses, two just out of prison — until the author of the law demanded they be removed, officials said. In Houston, plans to house several felons at a site just a few blocks from an elementary school were scratched after neighbors complained.

"This program was not being operated as I intended, not even close," said an angry state Rep. Jerry Madden, R-Richardson, the author of the law. "I've told them to get it fixed, and get it fixed now.

Certainly nobody intended this statute to authorized essentially unsupervised halfway houses, but it was probably inevitable there'd be some NIMBY backlash when it was implemented, no matter what. Humorously (to me, anyway - I'm sure not to them), Ward's story also includes grumbling from prison officials who defended the program and think legislators are butting into their business:

The controversy is the latest of a string in which legislators have publicly challenged how the state corrections system is being operated — including lingering questions about lax security and an abrupt, and later canceled, downsizing of a drug treatment program.

That has left some corrections officials insisting privately that they are being unfairly micromanaged, a complaint that highlights simmering tensions between the agency and lawmakers.

Prison officials defend the housing voucher program and seem somewhat surprised at the criticism. They say the parolees who are being assigned to the homes are screened. Most are getting out of prison anyway and could live wherever they choose since they have no restrictions to stay away from schools or children.

"This is a program that's working," said Stuart Jenkins, the state parole director whose division oversees the housing vouchers. "As we're growing with the program, we're making some changes, as you would with any program. We haven't had any significant issues so far."

Even so, after complaints from Madden and others, parole officials ordered nearly a dozen felons removed from several residential homes where the state had been paying to rent rooms — including the Dallas house — and mandated that no more than two felons can live at any one location until further notice. Jenkins said officials are also reviewing the payment rates in the program and whether felons should be moved from cheaper halfway houses into more expensive housing assistance sites.

Texas releases more than 70,000 prisoners per year, so this squabbling over a few dozen at the margins hardly merits sounding the alarm too loudly. Ward notes that:

At the time Texas lawmakers approved the law in 2009, more than 300 parole-ready convicts were sitting in cells with no place to go.

Under the law, the state can pay for housing for those new parolees for up to 90 days at a price not to exceed the daily cost of a prison bunk. In some cases, officials said, they can extend the housing payments up to 180 days.

Since their sentences are up and the alternative is to cut the offender loose to live wherever they want, this doesn't seem like a bad solution to transition folks out of prison and reduce the pre-parole population at the margins. If they're placing 6-8 people at the same address, I've no doubt neighbors will complain. But as long as it's happening at an individual level and the living quarters don't violate conditions of parole (prohibitions against living near schools, etc.), I tend to agree with Jenkins the agency out to be given enough leash to implement the brand spanking new program and work out the kinks.

Geo Group's purchase of Houston private prison company leaves it highly leveraged

I noticed recent news that the Geo Group (formerly Wackenhut), a private prison company which has been expanding aggressively in Texas, saw its earnings increase last quarter not because its operations became more profitable but because they purchased yet another competitor, this time the Houston-based Cornell Group.

Geo's boosted earnings, though, also bring with them nine figures in additional debt for a company already leveraged to the hilt. In 2007, I'd quoted from their 10-K (which is an annual report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission) which informed us that:

the company has a "significant level of indebtedness that could adversely affect our financial position," mostly spent to buy competing private prison companies. And how might this debt "adversely" affect Geo? First and foremost, the company says, it could "require us to dedicate a substantial portion of our cash flow from operations to payments on our indebtedness." Translated, that means they've got so much debt they're going to have to divert funds from their facilities they're operating to help pay it off!

The same warning was included in Geo's most recent 10K, but after the purchase of Cornell it deserves to be amplified. The more debt the company has, the greater risk they must "dedicate a substantial portion of our cash flow from operations to payments on our indebtedness." (They'll also be dedicating a portion of their revenue, btw, to pay the board chairman's son-in-law a fat $144K salary plus stock options, which is the kind of executive hire that to me raises a red flag.)

According to Texas Prison Bidness, Cornell operated 10 facilities around the state, many of them housing juveniles and/or focused on treatment programming. The acquisition beefs up Geo's Texas portfolio considerably after a spate of lost contracts around the state. Texas Prison Bidness recently observed that:

GEO has lost at least 5 contracts in Texas in the past several years.  GEO lost its Bridgeport TDCJ contract earlier this summer and the 2008 re-contracting of the Estes unit to MTC.  In 2007, the state of Idaho pulled its inmates from the Dickens County Correctional Center in the wake of the suicide of inmate Scot Noble Payne and a subsequent investigation into "squalid" conditions at the lock-up.  Idaho also cut its contract the Bill Clayton Detention Center in Littlefield, Texas after the 2008 suicide of Randy McCullough.  And, as the the article indicates, the Coke County Juvenile Justice Center was shuttered in October 2007 by the Texas Youth Commission after a damning investigation into conditions at the youth detention center.

Geo has six contracts up for renewal this year, according to its 10K, and at four are in Texas (Mineral Wells, North Texas ISF, South Texas ISF, and Bridgeport, which they already lost). About 1/3 of GEO's contracts end by 2012 and must be renewed or re-bid. Five customers including the State of Texas account for most of Geo's revenue:

We have provided correctional and detention management services to the United States Federal Government for 23 years, the State of California for 22 years, the State of Texas for approximately 22 years, various Australian state government entities for 18 years and the State of Florida for approximately 16 years. These customers accounted for 63.5% of our consolidated revenues for the fiscal year ended January 3, 2010.

The lull in the immigration detention market that's left competitor CCA with 12,500 empty beds is also affecting Geo on a couple of speculative construction projects, says their 10-K:

We are currently in the process of expanding two facilities to add additional beds that we do not yet have corresponding management contracts to operate. While we are working diligently with a number of different customers for the use of these remaining beds, we cannot in fact assure you that contracts for the beds will be secured on a timely basis, or at all. While these facilities are vacant, we estimate that we will incur carrying costs ranging from approximately $1.0 million to $1.5 million per facility, per fiscal quarter. Failure to secure management contracts for these projects could have a material adverse impact on our financial condition, results of operations and/or cash flows. In addition, in order to secure management contracts for these expanded beds, we may need to incur significant capital expenditures to renovate or further expand these facilities to meet potential clients’ needs.

I'd also pointed out back in 2007 that GEO making its debt payments required the company to rely on payments from subsidiaries that it could not guarantee:

The 10-K declares that Geo relies on "distributions" (i.e., "profits") from its subsidiaries to pay its increasingly large debt. Profits from subsidiaries made up more than 28% of Geo revenue last year, but the 10-K cautions that "Our subsidiaries are separate and distinct legal entities and are not obligated to make funds available for payment of our other indebtedness in the form of loans, distributions or otherwise."

In other words, we're not solvent without payments we can't ensure will keep coming, and our subsidiaries are "separate and distinct legal entities" who we don't control. That works out nicely for Geo if they go bankrupt, doesn't it?

That was written when subsidiaries made up 28% of Geo's revenue. Today, according to Geo's 10K, "For the fiscal year ended January 3, 2010, our subsidiaries accounted for 50.1% of our consolidated revenue, and, as of January 3, 2010, our subsidiaries accounted for 59.0% of our total segment assets." If the Cornell acquisitions are treated as subsidiaries, that risk will be even further magnified. The Geo Group is a heavily leveraged company.

In closing, here are a few more Texas-specific tidbits culled from Geo's 10-K:

"On May 4, 2009, we announced that we executed a contract with Bexar County, Texas Commissioners’ Court for the continued operation of the 688-bed Central Texas Detention Facility located in San Antonio, Texas. This facility, which is owned by Bexar County, houses detainees predominately for the U.S. Marshals Service. We have managed this facility since 1988. The new contract will have a term of ten years, effective April 29, 2009."

Some of the company's gains were "offset by a decrease in revenues of $20.6 million due to the termination of our management contract at the Sanders Estes Unit in Venus, Texas, Newton County Correctional Center in Newton, Texas, Jefferson County Downtown Jail in Beaumont, Texas, Fort Worth Community Corrections Facility in Fort Worth, Texas, and the Tri-County Justice & Detention Center in Ullin, Illinois."

"Effective June 15, 2009, our management contract with Fort Worth Community Corrections Facility located in Fort Worth, Texas was assigned to another party. Prior to this termination, we leased this facility (lease was due to expire August 2009) and the customer was the Texas Department of Criminal Justice."

"On September 8, 2009, we exercised our contractual right to terminate our contracts for the operation and management of the Newton County Correctional Center, referred to as Newton County, located in Newton, Texas and the Jefferson County Downtown Jail, referred to as Jefferson County, located in Beaumont, Texas."

"[R]evenues increased $24.1 million in total due to the activation of three new contracts in Third and Fourth Quarter 2008 for the management of Joe Corley Detention Facility in Conroe, Texas, Northeast New Mexico Detention Facility in Clayton, New Mexico and Maverick County Detention Facility in Maverick, Texas ... [and] revenues increased $24.6 million in 2009 as a result of our opening of our Rio Grande Detention Center in Laredo, Texas in Fourth Quarter 2008."

"On September 15, 2006, a jury in an inmate wrongful death lawsuit in a Texas state court awarded a $47.5 million verdict against us. In October 2006, the verdict was entered as a judgment against us in the amount of $51.7 million. The lawsuit, captioned Gregorio de la Rosa, Sr., et al., v. Wackenhut Corrections Corporation, (cause no. 02-110)  in the District Court, 404th Judicial District, Willacy County, Texas, is being administered under the insurance program established by The Wackenhut Corporation, our former parent company, in which we participated until October 2002. Policies secured by us under that program provide $55.0 million in aggregate annual coverage. In October 2009, this case was settled in an amount within the insurance coverage limits and the insurer has now paid the settlement amount. On February 8, 2010, the Court of Appeals, 13th  District of Texas, entered judgment dismissing the appeal and the case has been concluded."

Red-light cameras make intersections near my home more dangerous

I've lived in central East Austin for the past 20 years, so when the City of Austin installed red-light cameras the two closest to me (and through which I frequently pass) were at MLK/I-35 and 15th/I-35. And at both those intersections, it turns out, traffic accidents increased significantly after red-light cameras were installed. Reports News-8 Austin:

Austin public safety commissioners say there have been mixed results at intersections where red light traffic cameras were installed.

At seven of those intersections, the number of accidents has dropped. But at two intersections, authorities have actually seen a significant increase in crashes.

The intersection of MLK and I-35 has seen a 33 percent jump in the last year. The intersection of 15th Street and I-35 has had a 64 percent increase in crashes in nearly two years.

Safety leaders are looking at possible causes for the increases at those intersections, but they do say both are high traffic areas near the interstate.

Thanks for nothing, Austin City Council.

Is it any surprise that the intersection with a 64% increase in crashes was also one of the City's highest revenue generators? Somebody needs to check the yellow-light times at that intersection, which clearly need to be lengthened if it's getting so many tickets AND crashes.

Cameras at intersections where the number of accidents increased should be removed yesterday. What's more, the City should compile a list of everyone who had accidents at those intersections and send them an apology letter. I don't care if they were supposedly installed "to save lives," it was evident before the cameras went in they were mainly moneymakers that were likely to cause more accidents. The road to hell is paved with good intentions, and in this case lined with government surveillance cameras.

See related Grits posts:

• Houston accidents increased after installing red-light cameras
• Lubbock discontinues red-light cameras after accidents increase 52% at intersections with cameras
• All Virginia red-light camera studies show increased injury accidents
• Red light cameras cause rear end accidents

Exoneree's choice: Take state compensation or roll the dice in court

The New York Times has a feature on the dilemma facing Michael A. Green, a recent exoneree out of Harris County who "whether to take a $2.2 million compensation payment from the State of Texas or file a civil lawsuit in the hope of exposing the truth about the investigation that led to his incarceration. To receive the compensation, he must waive the right to sue."

The decision is entirely Mr. Green's, but the much-more generous compensation statute now in place in Texas would get him his money quicker and the lifetime annuity associated with it would make sure he's taken care of going forward.

Just like anybody else who first gets out of prison after a long stretch, a lot of exonerees have great difficulty adjusting when they first reenter the free world, which in Green's case is a radically different than when he went in 27 years ago during Ronald Reagan's first term. If he sues, Green may have to wait years before seeing a dime, and for each dime he wins, of course, he'd likely share 4 cents with his attorney before cutting in Uncle Sam. At the old, lower compensation levels many exonerees felt like the state didn't pay enough money to preclude suing; lately most have been taking the state compensation. OTOH, some folks who sue win more, while for others it doesn't work out so well It's a personal decision that has to be made by each, individual. I wish Mr. Green all the luck in the world in making the right choice for him.

The Times portrays Green's case as a classic example of faulty eyewitness identification overturned by DNA evidence:

Mr. Green, 45, was set free by a state judge two weeks ago after DNA tests on the rape victim’s clothing proved that he could not have been responsible for the crime. His exoneration was the work of a new unit in the Harris County district attorney’s office dedicated to reviewing claims of innocence.

The story of Mr. Green’s nightmarish imprisonment — and how a prosecutor, Alicia O’Neill, eventually unearthed biological evidence that led to the real culprits — throws a harsh spotlight on an uncomfortable reality in American justice: the identification of a suspect in a lineup or in an array of photos is not always reliable.

More than three-quarters of the 258 people exonerated by DNA tests in the last decade were convicted on the strength of eyewitness identifications, according to the Innocence Project, the Manhattan-based organization dedicated to freeing innocent prisoners.

In Texas, the problem is even more acute: identifications by eyewitnesses played a pivotal role in 80 percent of the 40 people who have been exonerated with DNA evidence.

Stories like this only make me angrier still that Texas' eyewitness ID legislation got mowed down last session thanks to the ignominious Voter ID debate.

I am glad to see the Harris DA's Office getting credit in the national press for her office's recent work on the subject, and glad to see that some DA's office insiders are developing some personal and institutional stakes in making exonerating innocents as important a priority as convicting the guilty. “'It’s what you go to law school for,' Ms. O’Neill said of the moment Mr. Green walked out of jail."

Graffiti Abatement: Murals target tagging hotspots

Denver is experimenting with grants to local arts programs to create murals at graffiti hotspots, reports the Denver Post ("Programs give graffiti arts a legitimate outlet," Aug. 13):

Aimed at reclaiming graffiti hot spots from taggers, these urban-arts programs are among 12 that have just received grants, ranging from $500 to $7,500, from the Denver Office of Urban Affairs.

The program started in 2009, one of the recommendations of the Graffiti Task Force.

"We looked at where murals were put up, and the radius around them, to see if graffiti increased or decreased," said Regina Huerter, co-coordinator of the Graffiti Task Force and executive director of the Denver Commission on Crime Prevention and Control.

There was a noticeable decrease — enough to spur creation of a program that in 2009 yielded nine projects that attracted 300 kids, about 80 percent of whom stuck with the programs.

Many of the programs asked for signed anti-graffiti pledges and recruited professional urban artists to mentor the participants.

The programs grew out of ideas developed in a set of 2007 recommendations (pdf) from a "Graffiti Task Force" in the Mile High City.

See related Grits posts:

• Toward a restorative graffiti policy
• Graffiti solutions: A cost-benefit analysis
• Kids do less art in school, more in street, Lege reacts with hammer
• Creating public spaces for invited art adds carrot to stick of banning uninvited graff
• Invited graffiti: Solution or enabling for unwanted tags?
• Paint responsibly: Museum offers hands-on graffiti exhibit
• Allowing invited graff best way to reduce unwanted graffiti
• Austin lags on important third component of graffiti policy
• Mexico prevents graffiti by encouraging it at El Azteca Stadium
• Moscow turns to invited graffiti to liven up Soviet era buildings