TYC to Lege: Expect our policies to increase recidivism

If you like your youth prisons with high staff turnover, high recidivism, and poor educational outcomes, the Texas Youth Commission appears to be "fixed."

If not, you might be dismayed, as I was, to see these 2007 statistics from the financial section of TYC's Aug. 13 report to legislators:

• Annual turnover rate for Juvenile Correctional Officers: 46.7%
  

• Percent of youth at grade level upon release: 19%

• Percent of youth within one month reading gain for each month of instruction: 64%

• Percent of youth within one month math gain for each month of instruction: 57%

• One-year re-arrest rate: 55%

• One year re-arrest rate for a violent offense: 9%

• One-year re-incarceration rate: 22%
  

Strangely, the "targets" for TYC's one year re-incarceration rate are higher than at present - 26%, for 2008 and '09, compared to 22% in 2007. The documents provided gave no clue, but it'd be very interesting to know exactly what it is about either SB 103 or new agency policies that make TYC project more of the youth they release will be re-imprisoned within a year than in the past.

Chuck Rosenthal looks vulnerable in '08 Harris County DA race

After taking a closer look at this race, I think former Houston police chief C.O. Bradford has a great chance to knock off Harris County DA Chuck Rosenthal in the 2008 elections. Rosenthal looks quite vulnerable to me, both based on the numbers and on the issues. If I were still doing oppo work I'd have a field day on this one.

Assuming they're the nominees, the race between Bradford and Rosenthal will be a pure grudge match. The pair's last major public confrontation turned into one of Houston's biggest public clusterf&#ks in the new century. Revisiting that incident this morning via Kuff, I'm reminded that the whole mess turned out more embarrassing for the DA than the defendant, who walked away smelling like a rose.

Rosenthal's minions convinced a grand jury to indict their boss' political enemy for minor perjury allegations while he was police chief regarding whether or not Bradford used profanity to a subordinate. The case was basically laughed out of the courtroom in 2003 when the judge, himself a former Harris County prosecutor, embarrassingly directed an acquittal before testimony even concluded. According to the Houston Press, the case against Bradford was so shoddy, the directed acquittal was a blessing:

If Harris County District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal has a guardian angel, its earthly incarnation last week went by the name of state District Judge Brian Rains. Before the jurist mercifully pulled the plug on the trial of Houston Police Chief Clarence O. Bradford for aggravated perjury, the proceeding had produced an embarrassing swearathon with more potential to damage the D.A.'s future than that of his intended target.

Rains may be cut from the same prosecutorial cloth as Rosenthal, but the veteran criminal judge and Republican obviously has stayed closer to legal realities than his former colleagues in the district attorney's office. One prominent GOP courthouse source scoffed at what he called Rosenthal's "tunnel vision." "He looks and he doesn't really think about things. They got this thing called prosecutorial discretion, and you're not supposed to waste court time going after bullshit." The same source says he knows of no conservative Republicans of note who supported the flimsy case against Bradford.

University of Houston political scientist Richard Murray figures that Rosenthal owes Judge Rains a thank-you card for minimizing the damage to the prosecutor's reputation.

It wasn't just the judge and Republican pols who thought Rosenthal's case held no water, reported the Press' Tim Fleck, "After the dismissal, jurors indicated that all 12 on the panel would have voted to acquit Bradford had it gotten that far."

Even so, Kuff reminds us that this wasn't Rosenthals most embarrassing case, by a longshot. Social conservatives may still be grumpy that the DA's own, personal incompetent lawyering was a key reason the US Supreme Court shot down Texas' sodomy statute. The Houston Chronicle memorably reported at the time:

After watching the arguments, longtime court reporters wrote analyses comparing Rosenthal's performance unfavorably with that of his much more seasoned opponent, Paul Smith.

The New York Times' Linda Greenhouse wrote that the argument "proved to be a mismatch of advocates to a degree rarely seen at the court."

Stephen Henderson of Knight Ridder Newspapers listed among low points in Rosenthal's argument his response to a question from Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg about whether Texas bars gays from adopting children. (It does not.) "I don't know," Rosenthal replied.

Henderson wrote that Rosenthal's response "underscored how poorly his argument was going," and that the DA "had a difficult time articulating a rationale for the law."

USA Today's Joan Biskupic called the arguments "surprisingly lopsided," noting that Rosenthal "struggled" to defend the law and "had trouble answering questions about what harm the 30-year-old statute seeks to prevent."

Even Justice Antonin Scalia, who along with Chief Justice William Rehnquist made a mighty attempt to bolster Rosenthal's case, squinched up his face at one point and admitted, "I don't understand your argument."

Ouch! The Lawrence case cuts both ways against Mr. Rosenthal. Those who support gay rights will be offended by his animated, public opposition to legalized homosexuality, while homophobes may be angry that he's the guy whose blundering legal work shot down Texas' law.

That's not the only reason conservatives might be angry at Rosenthal. When the Texas Legislature passed a law in 2005 allowing law abiding Texans to carry a handgun in their car, the Harris DA was the first to defy them, announcing he'd continue to prosecute gun owners under the old standard. The Lege came back in 2007 and trumped him with stronger protections for gun owners in their cars.

Then of course, there's the HPD crime lab debacle, which was discovered on Bradford's watch. Kuff suggests Bradford should call for a "special master" for the crime lab, which Rosenthal opposes, and that would certainly position him nicely.

Either way, though, Rosenthal doesn't approach the crime lab debate with clean hands. He pretty much placed responsibility on his own shoulders in 2003 when, "The county's criminal district judges ... asked Rosenthal to recuse himself from investigating the matter, since it involves cases that were prosecuted by the D.A.'s office. He's refused to do so, generating howls of protest," reported the Houston Press. The same article noted that Rosenthal:

angered another minority group, the county's Hispanics, when he threatened criminal action against hospitals who were treating indigent illegal immigrants. And he failed to get convictions in one of the more high-profile police misconduct cases in recent years, the Kmart mass-arrest incident.

Chuck Rosenthal's biggest claim to fame might be that Harris County is the nation's primary source of death penalty cases. I don't know Bradford's position on capital punishment; I'd guess he's probably for it, so it could just be a wash. Even some death penalty supporters, though, think the incumbent's arrogance in capital cases merits criticism for refusing to admit even obvious errors.

A prime example came when Rosenthal refused to certify Josiah Sutton to be compensated for his wrongful conviction, even though DNA evidence proved they'd convicted the wrong man. Compare that to how the new Democratic DA in Dallas has handled wrongful convictions discovered through DNA.

Most Harris County voters support the death penalty, I believe, but few outside the DA's office (and perhaps some former crime lab workers) believe prosecutors should pursue the sanction 'by any means necessary,' even in the face of mitigating our countervailing evidence.

Most pols predict Democrat have the edge nationally in 2008 thanks to a mobilized base and a demoralized conservative movement. With Rosenthal atop the local ticket in Harris County, such a GOP slip might make it farther downstream than anyone imagined a short while ago.

If Harris Dems are smart they'll make sure there's a warm body running in every lower level race in the county. Giving voters a serious, well-funded alternative to Rosenthal should boost chances for judicial candidates and others down the ballot. Indeed it could pave the way, as BigJolly at the Lone Star Times dourly predicts, for a Dallas-style Democratic sweep in Harris County next year.

I predict Bradford's going to smoke Chuck Rosenthal at the polls in 2008. Maybe local Rs need to start looking for a primary opponent; if he's atop the Harris GOP ticket next year, things could get really ugly for them.

TYC Aug. 13 report to Lege online

Finally, I've got the initial results from a recent open records request to the Texas Youth Commission online. The format isn't ideal, but thanks to Kathy's patient assistance, we've been able to upload most of the Aug. 13 Texas Youth Commission report to state legislators and put it online. Even the broken up files are large, so be forewarned if you're using dialup.

The documents are on a free service called Rapidshare (see here for a good description). The links don't go directly to the files, there are a couple of steps, so pay attention!

You can download a file by clicking on the link, then scroll down to "download type" and click "Free." N.b., You do not have to pay, and should not do so! One of the restrictions on the free service is that you can only download a given document once per hour, so you may want to save a document to your hard drive. If there's a problem downloading, just wait an hour and try again.

A couple of things aren't here. First, half the file was a copy of SB 103 and Jay Kimbrough's May 2 conservator's report, which I cut since they're available elsewhere. Also, in hard copy I was given resumes of executive staff, results of an OIG investigation into who leaked information to Statesman reporter Mike Ward (answer: no one at TYC), daily TYC population charts going back several months, and preliminary data on pepper spray use (20-50 sprays per week system-wide since the practice began). Otherwise, here are the goodies you've been waiting for:

Accountability

Financial

Progress Overview

Security

Youth Rights

Transparency

Governance Part 1

Governance Part 2

Possibly innocent defendants languish for lack of state Innocence Commission

Today's Sunday papers include two articles that, taken together, cast a dark shadow of shame over the Texas Legislature's failure to pass significant bills in 2007 to reduce or remedy wrongful convictions.

From the Houston Chronicle, Roma Khanna and Steve McVicker report "Legal help scarce in HPD crime lab cases." Disgracefully, "nearly two-thirds of defendants convicted with faulty evidence have received little help in determining how, or if, their convictions could be affected." Many people convicted with shabby crime lab analyses were never notified that evidence in their case had been invalidated.

Uh ... why?

The short answer may be found in another item today from Max Baker at the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, "Former inmates seek innocence commission": The Legislature and most DAs have failed to establish mechanisms to review possible innocence cases.

Except in Dallas, where the new DA has partnered with the Texas Tech innocence project to systematically review DNA evidence, there is no structural way for authorities to review these old cases once a conviction is final. Anthony Robinson, who spent ten years in TDCJ wrongfully convicted of rape, told innocence project volunteers at a training in Fort Worth that

six other states have established innocence commissions. Since Texas has one of the nation's largest prison systems and routinely puts inmates to death, Robinson said he doesn't understand why Texas doesn't have a similar agency. ...

"If Texas is to remain great, we need to step up and fight the good fight," Robinson said. "This is not a set of isolated incidents. There have been a lot of bitter tears shed."

The state bears responsibility for wrongful convictions, and rooting them out should be a state function, not left to volunteers and happenstance. The failure of revelations from the Houston crime lab to result in affected cases being re-examined, in my mind, can only stem from utter incompetence or a profound indifference. Sadly, I don't think the Harris County DA is incompetent.

With the Texas Legislature, of course, the question of incompetence vs. indifference isn't as clear - indeed, it could always be both.

Legislation to create an "innocence commission" in Texas to do just that died in the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee this spring, even though all but two of the nine committee members claimed to support it. As we discussed ad nauseum during session, Chairman Aaron Peña held the bill till the committee's final meeting, then brought it up for a vote when supporters were out of the room.

Peña has said that failure was unintentional, and maybe so. But compared to the way he hustled through bills expanding local wiretap authority and making it easier to convict innocent people of sex crimes, not to mention the fact that as chairman Peña authored no innocence-related bills of his own, one may certainly conclude the Democrat failed to prioritize the problem of wrongful convictions, an omission that threatens to undermine the integrity of the whole system in the eyes of the public.

I'm glad to see innocence commission supporters beginning their efforts now to promote this critical reform. In addition, something needs to happen to mandate improving eyewitness identification procedures used by police - hopefully starting with a legislative interim study.

In days past, American jurisprudence prided itself on the notion that it was better to let ten guilty men go free than to incarcerate an innocent one. The idea that the legal system hasn't examined 2/3 of the faulty Houston crime lab cases ... indeed, that prosecutors didn't even notify the defendants! ... tells me those values in practice are disdained or defenestrated.

Bexar bribery allegations over jail commissary widen to other counties

The bribery scandal that took down the Bexar County Sheriff may be just the beginning.

Other shoes have begun to drop as reporters and investigators track other Texas counties where a Louisana company that allegedly bribed Bexar County officials won contracts to run jail commissaries. In Kleberg County (Kingsville), reported the SA Express News' Todd Bensman ("Premier's benefits didn't stop in Bexar,") former Kleberg Sheriff Tony Gonzales

approved giving Premier a food commissary contract for his jail during his final weeks in office. At some point either before or after Gonzalez left office in late 2004, he accepted private consulting work from Premier's owners, he and a company official acknowledged.

Gonzales also made the original connections that helped Premier get a commissary contract in Nueces County (Corpus Christi), where

one associate of former Sheriff Larry Olivarez, another Lopez friend, reaped rewards after helping Premier win a jail commissary contract there in 2005.

The associate, a commercial real estate broker who was appointed by the sheriff to an ad hoc committee that awarded the contract, later earned a commission from the sale of 56 acres where LCS Corrections Services Inc., another company owned in part by Premier's principals, is building a private detention center, the Express-News has learned.

In addition, the former sheriff's chief deputy won political backing from LCS when he ran as a candidate to replace Olivarez, who had stepped down to run for county judge.

Premier, which has come up repeatedly in an ongoing public corruption investigation in Bexar County for doing favors for influential people in a position to help the company, has denied any wrongdoing.

The Texas Rangers are investigating the connections and meanwhile, just to add to the irony, Premier's co-owner Patrick LeBlanc announced his candidacy for the Louisiana state legislature last week on an anti-corruption platform.

Once again I find myself as interested in the pattern of prosecution as the alleged crimes themselves. Search warrants were executed at high-profile pols' homes in San Antonio, but NOT at the offices of the company alleged to have bribed them.

Why, if DA Susan Reed had enough evidence to charge alleged RECIPIENTS of bribes, hasn't the company or any of its employees also faced indictment?

RELATED:

• San Antonio bribery scandal widens
• Will Lopez be 6th South Texas Sheriff convicted in office?
• What is the appropriate punishment for bribery?
• Results of Grits corporate bribery survey
  

San Angelo to vote on fate of elected police chief

At ConchoInfo we get the inside scoop on why the city of San Angelo once again has placed a charter amendment on the ballot to make the police chief an appointed rather than an elected position. If I'm not mistaken, I think San Angelo is the largest Texas town that still elects its police chief. Writes charter commission member Jim Ryan:

By the end of our meetings, we had been presented with a petition signed by a majority of serving officers, top to bottom ranks, insisting that the quadrennial election resulted in inevitable factions, with officers feeling pressured to sign on to one or another electoral candidate. While the petition was not unanimous, I have yet to hear from a single officer, current candidates included, who prefers the current elected system for the long run.

Tulia movie scrapped?

Via Pete at Drug War Rant:

This is a major downer. We had a really good thing going -- John Singleton directing Halle Berry and Billy Bob Thornton in the movie about the drug war travesty in Tulia, Texas.

Now reports are that the project has been scrapped because Halle is pregnant.

It's been reported that after she's had her child the movie might be picked up again and put into development once again but at this point Tulia won't be made.

What a drag! While I've no illusions that Hollywood would portray the Tulia episode with any particular historical accuracy, I've been looking forward to the movie and to the symbolic, public vindication and denouement it would provide for Tulians wrongly caught up in the sting.

For more background on the Tulia case see Rev. Alan Bean's guest blog coverage on Grits of the Tom Coleman perjury trial.

TYC Project Reform Update: First Look

Last month the Texas Youth Commission gave a fat 200+ page "Project Reform Update" to legislators, the Governor and other policymakers that was discussed frequently at last week's joint legislative oversight hearing.

I obtained a copy of this document today under the Public Information Act, though I haven't had a chance to go through it yet (just the bureaucracy flow charts alone will give you a headache). UPDATE: I tried to make the link available a couple of different ways, but I'm afraid the file was too large.

Though I've not read much of this yet, one or two interesting items did jump out at me:

A total 586 employees jobs were effected when the Marlin and John Shero units closed in August. TYC lost a total of 126 of employees who previously worked at those facilities. (Table 1, executive summary)

A chart on p. 46 of the document shows that new monthly commitments to TYC still far outstrip the number of student released, so everyone can expect short-term reductions in the youth inmate population to increase again over time. That's not a tidbit administrators were emphasizing when they insisted JCO-youth staffing levels were at 1-12.

Another tidbit I find somewhat more comforting: "The design of dorms at facilities that currently have open bays are scheduled for reconfiguration. The agency received appropriations of $20 million for remodeling youth dormitories from 24-bed open-bay design into 16-single cell units" (p. 52). That should help reduce violence and make TYC facilities less dangerous for staff and youth alike.

I'll take a closer look at these materials and have more commentary soon.

TDCJ doesn't have master list of banned books; decisions what books to restrict apparently made on the fly

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice has never before compiled a master list of books denied to prisoners, I was shocked to learn today when I received a partial response to a recent open records request to TDCJ.

I'd asked for the list after learning TDCJ had forbidden a death row inmate from reading a book because it quoted baseball great Jackie Robinson and boxing legend Jack Johnson discussing racial issues.

It turns out TDCJ has no such master list. Decisions about what books prisoners are allowed to read appear to be made on a completely ad hoc basis. There's no single place where someone can go look online or anywhere else to find out which books are banned and which ones are considered kosher.

TDCJ wants to charge me $84.40 to create a master list because programmers must write a new program for task, if you can imagine such a thing. I think it's worth it, so I'm going to fork over the money (I just got a small check from Google Adsense that will cover it), but if anybody would like to hit the PayPal button in the sidebar to help with the expense, feel free. I'm doing this for all of us.

I did receive a copy of TDCJ policies on publications, both before and after recent revisions. The book on sports history that included the inflammatory Jackie Robinson quote was barred because it contained "racial content," but I cannot find anything in TDCJ's past or present policies, see the old policy and the new one, that would justify barring books for any reason related to race.

I wonder how many other books are being banned that shouldn't be under TDCJ's rules? For $84.40, and a short wait longer, I suppose we'll soon find out.

Why can't the caged bird sing?

Why wouldn't girls (and I presume boys, too) incarcerated at the Texas Youth Commission be allowed to sing?

So much information came out so quickly about TYC this spring it was hard to process it all, but this afternoon I was looking back at the "Blueprint for Girls" published May 22 by the national ACLU Women's Rights Project at the request of then-conservator Jay Kimbrough and found this grim paragraph (p. 8):

Rather than being necessary to the mission of TYC, overly harsh rules, harshly enforced, actually interfere with girls’ rehabilitation. For example, girls are allowed limited time for journal writing and other forms of expression, are rarely exposed to art or music, and are not allowed to sing, activities that for many represent important strategies for coping with pain and anger. Severe limits on girls’ social interaction, such as being prohibited from speaking to or even looking at one another during the fifteen minutes they are allotted for meals, blocks the development of necessary social skills. Girls’ ability to care for their hygiene, a basic ingredient of improved self-esteem, is frustrated by the three-minute time limit on showers imposed at some facilities. The right to shower is sometimes even denied altogether as a form of punishment.

Since that was written, all TYC youth have been gender segregated, so I wonder what changes to these routines, if any, have been made since this report and its recommendations were released? Does this paragraph reflect how TYC youth are currently treated? Perhaps TYC field staff can answer these questions:

• Is it really true they aren't allowed to sing?

• Do kids at TYC facilities have regular (or any) access to musical instruments or arts materials?

• Is it true that youth are "prohibited from speaking to or even looking at one another during the fifteen minutes they are allotted for meals"?

Are these things still going on at TYC, and if so, can anybody explain why?

Pretext stops by El Paso PD misdirect focus from crooks

Here's an absurd spin on police practices that I think violate drivers' rights, from KFOX TV in El Paso:

El Paso police conduct random license and insurance checkpoints around the city in hopes of making drivers more responsible.

What a ridiculous statement. How do random stops of drivers who've committed no offense make anyone more responsible? Aren't there actual crimes in El Paso to investigate?

Already more than 10% of El Pasoans have outstanding traffic warrants, mostly because they can't afford to pay expensive state surcharges on tickets. So the only tangible results of random checks would be 1) creating more unlicensed and uninsured drivers because of new surcharges, and 2) filling up the county jail with the 11% who have traffic warrants.

Does that make anyone safer? Of course not - not even the police believe that. These are pretext stops, mere excuses for police to look for evidence of other crimes when under the law they would have no legal reason to pry.

Checking drivers' license and insurance is just an excuse. Instead police want to look inside the car for weapons or drugs, see if the driver smells of alcohol, ask them questions that might incriminate , and generally perform a mini-spot investigation that IMO amounts to (what should be, but isn't) an illegal detention. (In my mind's eye I imagine the officer asking, "May I have your papers, comrade?")

Investigation techniques that rely on randomness will produce random results, while those that focus on crooks have a better chance to get crooks off the street. The vast majority of people stopped for no other reason than to "check" their license and insurance will have done nothing wrong. Indeed, in a real sense it's the El Paso Police Department that's in error.

While on the subject, it's always a good time for a reminder; feel free to just say "No" to to requests for police searches:

We have a DA's race in Houston! Former Police Chief C.O. Bradford will challenge incumbent Chuck Rosenthal

Harris County District Attorney Chuck Rosenthal has drawn a serious Democratic contender for his post next November, former Houston police chief C.O. Bradford.

In her final column for the Houston Chronicle before leaving to work for the Washington Post, Kristen Mack correctly declared that the "race will be the marquee local election on the ballot next November." "In his last election, Rosenthal walked away with 55 percent of the vote against a relative unknown. He's never faced a serious political threat since getting elected in 2000." she noted.

As candidates go, Bradford has some flies on him from his role in the Houston crime lab scandal, but since he stepped down as police chief his opponent has spent so much energy blustering against every proposed crime lab solution, I can't imagine voters will hold the issue against one man more than another.

Strictly going by the numbers, a Democrat with good name recognition has a real chance to knock off Mr. Rosenthal, who has a reputation as a mean-spirited bully. Harris county judicial races, which I've always considered a bellwether for county elections, in 2006 were closer than at any time in recent memory, with Democrats in many cases coming within 2-3 percentage points of defeating incumbent Republicans.

If you like hardball politics, get ready for some fun; if not, duck and cover: With Bradford atop the local Democratic ticket, 2008 races in Houston ought to be a real barnburner.

California Lege sends innocence bills to the Governator

The California state legislature has sent three bills related to innocence topics to the Governor for his signature or veto, according to a column in the San Jose Mercury News by the state Senate majority leader. The bills mirror ideas that have been proposed but never gained much traction here in Texas:

Electronic recording of custodial interrogations would help end coerced confessions and protect both defendants and the police. SB 511 (Alquist) would mandate recording of the entire interrogation, including the Miranda warning. Several other states already require recording of the full interrogation, including Iowa, New Mexico and Wisconsin. Prosecutors and law enforcement officers praise the practice in every state where it is now required.

Misidentification of perpetrators by eyewitnesses causes the most wrongful convictions. SB 756 (Ridley-Thomas) would require the attorney general to develop voluntary guidelines for conducting lineups based on documented best practices.

The third proposed law would curb false testimony by jailhouse informants by requiring corroborating evidence for all such testimony. Jailhouse informants have strong reasons to lie because they are offered leniency in return for information. SB 609 (Romero) would not affect a large number of cases in California, but it would provide important protections, particularly in death penalty cases.

Just a couple of comments on each of these. First, while I strongly support recording custodial interrogations, research I've run across recently makes me think the devil still may be in the details of how recording is implemented. Researchers have found that a "camera perspective bias" can sway viewers to assume a question is voluntary when it's only focused on the defendant. Camera angles that include the questioner, or using two cameras that view both parties, captures more context and reduces the likelihood a viewer will wrongly consider a confession voluntary.

The Cali bill on identification procedures appears as weak as the senate bill that died in Texas this spring waiting to be set for a vote by the House Calendars committee. It commands the California AG to produce "voluntary" guidelines for lineup procedures. There's really no sense in that - the jury is in on lineup procedures, and no credible research supports the old practices like using group photo arrays, having biased investigating officers perform lineups, failing to warn that the perpetrator may not be in the pictures, and showing witnesses the same suspect in multiple lineups until they finally pick them.

Texas' lineup reform bill that died this year, SB 799, would also have made guidelines "voluntary," which to me is like telling police and prosecutors they can convict innocent people "if they want to." Given the scientific consensus on the topic, to me anything short of a requirement to adopt lineup best practices cannot be justified. I'm still hopeful a Texas legislative committee will tack this subject on to its interim study topics, which should be announced this month.

Finally, the Cali bill on jailhouse snitches deserves to be replicated in Texas and elsewhere. The proposed statute declares that "a court may not convict a defendant, find a special circumstance true, or use a fact in aggravation based solely on the uncorroborated testimony of an in-custody informant." Currently Texas law allows uncorroborated jailhouse snitch testimony in all those cases. Texas does require corroboration for informants in drug cases, a change made after the "Tulia" debacle, but not for jailhouse snitches, which are a particularly unreliable breed who deserve similar statutory skepticism.

Obviously I hope the Governator will sign these California bills into law, and also that legislators in Texas all watch to see what it looks like when lawmakers actually care about preventing innocent people from being convicted. This year all the bills aimed at reducing wrongful convictions failed to pass, and Texas only approved new laws that made convicting innocents more likely.

Crime Increases as a Result of Employment Denial to Ex-Felons

Here's an odd but interesting press release issued yesterday from a security camera surveillance company based in Houston promoting the idea that "Crime Increases as a Result of Employment Denial to Ex-Felons":

In 1986 Leon Pena was sentenced to 7 years in the Texas department of criminal justice for delivery of a controlled substance less 28 grams. It was his first offence; no priors. Since Leon Pena didn’t snitch, he was not offered probation. Leon has since been released some 27 years ago.

He has worked 70 hours and got paid for 40 hours, and he has been escorted out of job interviews by security officials. Even after he received an associate degree in Information Technology and passed his A certification and Network , Leon is still denied employment.

Crime is a problem across the country due to the growing numbers of felons who are released into society and are denied employment because of their criminal records. Most, if not all felons, are denied employment for the rest of their lives. Non–violent first time felons are also denied employment, and some of them have no choice but to become career criminals who commit violent crimes in order to provide for their families.

With no laws protecting this kind of discrimination in the work place, crimes committed by career criminals continue to rise. Tax payers are left to pay for crime by purchasing expensive alarm systems with security cameras. Tax payers also pay for crime when repeat offenders are caught and sent back to jail. “It sometimes cost the tax payer about $40 to $50 dollars a day to house a criminal,” explains Leon Pena of Security Camera Services.

Solutions: make a discrimination law to protect non-violent felons from discrimination in the work place. Give ex-felons 7 years of grace from the time a felony was committed. If an ex-felon does not commit another felony within those 7 years, seal their criminal record from the public.

IMO he's dead-on right - I can hardly think of a more counterproductive, crime generating policy than barring ex-felons from future employment, but hundreds of jobs are formally barred to felons in Texas, and many other employees discriminate against these workers of their own accord.

A security camera company seems like an odd source for a proposal to expunge criminal records for nonviolent felons, but it sounds like Mr. Pena has firsthand experience in that matter. Bully for him for using his security company to promote policies that increase public safety instead of just profit from it. That's nice to see, don't you think?

MSM unwittingly colludes in covering up police misconduct

The mainstream media (MSM) frequently play an unwitting role in covering up police misconduct, mainly as a result of the sources and methods commonly used to cover the topic. Here's an almost classic example:

In Pasadena, TX, two police officers apparently lied about circumstances surrounding the July death of a jail inmate in their custody. Police initially told the family he died of a heart attack, then told the press he tripped and fell. Now it appears he was beaten to death, reported the Houston Chronicle yesterday ("Inmate death at Pasadena jail ruled a homicide," Sept. 5):

The recent death of Pasadena Jail inmate Pedro Gonzales was a homicide caused primarily by trauma to the lungs with rib fractures, the Harris County Medical Examiner's Office has determined.

While "homicide" does not necessarily mean foul play was involved, it does appear to contradict statements by officers Jason W. Buckaloo and Christopher S. Jones that Gonzales was injured after he tripped and fell as they escorted him to a patrol car on July 21.

The Harris County District Attorney's Office may refer the investigation to a grand jury later this month, said prosecutor Joe Owmby, head of the police integrity unit.

Pasadena police stuck to the story that Gonzales "tripped" for several days after the incident, which to me implies a department-wide coverup. The family said police told them yet another story about how their relative died:

Gonzales' sister, Elvia Garza, has said police told her the morning of his death that he may have died from a heart attack or stroke.

Pre-incision autopsy photos show multiple bruises, cuts and abrasions to various parts of Gonzales' body as well as what appear to be blood splatters on his jeans.

Other photos show that Gonzales' two top front teeth were missing.

Family said those teeth were not missing before he was booked into the jail on July 18 for public intoxication.

So did he "trip," did he have a "heart attack," or is the coroner right that this was a "homicide" and the inmate was beaten to death? What do you think the odds are that either of the stories told by officers or the department were accurate? Oh, and if you still think the officers might have really told the truth, perhaps it's because I forgot to add this part from yesterday's story:

A witness to the force used by officers on Gonzales said the 51-year-old man was not struggling or resisting arrest as police hit him and repeatedly knocked his body to the ground.

"Just the way they were beating him and him not moving, I think that's (the homicide ruling) pretty right," the witness, Evelyn Moreno, 20, said Tuesday.

Whoops! So much for the tripping theory! The Harris County DA initially took officers' word for it how Gonzales died and declined to investigate, while the officers' union rep from the Texas Municipal Police Association insisted publicly, “It was thoroughly investigated and both officers did everything asked of them ... I’m not aware of them engaging in any misconduct.” (FWIW, I've never in my life heard a police union rep say anything else in response to allegations of misconduct.)

I know nothing more about this case than I've read in the media, but the MSM accounts follow a pattern that I've observed in dozens of controversial death in custody cases over the years:

In cases where the department might be held liable, initial reports are often flat out lies. Literally falsehoods. Fabrications. When there is no evidence public yet, police spinmeisters can and do say whatever they think makes the department look best. Often these lies aren't even necessary - they sometimes appear to be just habitual. The media then dutifully report these misstatements to the public.

Within a week or so, a tiny bit of truth trickles out and police must backtrack. The media print a less prominent story with the added information.

Finally, weeks later, if evidence arises of police culpability that contradicts earlier statements, the story gets covered again, but by this time the record is strewn with false and misleading statements and often the public's attention has shifted to another topic.

At this point, one of two things happen: Either the story goes away, or in order to gin up public interest again, the media must publish a "gotcha" story that accuses the department of lying (since they did) and that causes the department to circle the wagons further to protect the officers in all but the most clear-cut cases. This pattern of media coverage doesn't just happen in Houston, btw. It's how police PIOs handle "critical incidents" just about everywhere.

When I was director of ACLU of Texas' police accountability project I'd get a lot of calls asking for quotes in the wake of a police shooting or death in custody and I declined every one. There's never enough information immediately following an incident to adequately judge how to respond, and in case after case if you wait just a bit, it turns out the initial story wasn't even close to true. I've told many reporters I think it's irresponsible to publish police statements immediately after such incidents when we all know from experience the story will change in just a few days.

Reporters need to do their best to independently verify police statements before printing them, just as they would the statements of a suspect in any violent crime. In their initial comments to the press, Pasadena police basically issued a cover story that exonerated officers who are now suspects in a homicide! How many other homicide suspects get their own institutional PR department whose statements are republished reflexively in the media as truth?

We've got a long way to go before we know whether these Pasadena officers will be held accountable for what they did to Pedro Gonzalez, but I know one thing: Wait a little longer and I'll betcha even more truth from the story will come out, and I'll bet it won't support the claim that Gonzalez "tripped."

Inmate writers deserve bylines, forum; Remembering The Echo and Jorge Renaud

An interesting news item I'd missed last month, via the Reporters Committee for Freedom of the Press: Federal prisons can no longer prevent inmates from writing bylined articles:

U.S. District Judge Marcia S. Krieger rejected prison officials' contentions that the regulation was needed to prevent inmates from gaining notoriety among fellow prisoners because of articles they authored, to leave prison employees free to exercise control over inmates without fear their conduct and statements would be published in the press, and to prevent prisoners from starting businesses behind prison walls.

This may be one of those "be careful what you ask for" victories. In Texas, the prison newspaper The Echo was shut down after an old college buddy of mine, Jorge Renaud (still serving a quite-long stretch for armed robbery, sad to say) wrote a pair of bylined investigative stories that administrators considered critical of an April 2000 system-wide lockdown.

Jorge's story makes me sad whenever I think of it. Without exaggeration, Jorge was the most innately talented Texas writer of my generation, even though he's spent most of his adult life behind bars. He authored a guide for Texas prisoners and their families published by a university press, and also this account of fatherhood behind bars. Jorge also writes poetry that's powerful but tender, humorous and often stunningly moving. More than once I've grumbled to Kathy that Jorge has a more significant writing career than I do and he's locked up in Huntsville!

We're all worse off because Jorge and other talented writers in prison can't practice their craft, or when we diminish their ability to tell their stories to the outside world. How much would our culture have been enriched were Dostoevsky allowed to write publicly about his ordeal in a Siberian prison at the time it occurred? Most prison writers aren't as good as Dostoevsky, or Jorge, but IMO just one emerging from among them now and again would make all the others' lesser work tolerable.

I'd like to see The Echo revived and published online in addition to within TDCJ's confines. And I'm glad in this case the courts are protecting inmates' rights, at least on the margins, to publish their stories and participate, to the extent they choose, in the national conversation just like every other American.

UPDATE/CORRECTION: A commenter informs me that The Echo some time ago resumed publication and is under control of the Windham School District. A quick online check confirmed that, and I'm sorry for the error. Here's subscription information for those interested:

The ECHO is a monthly censored publication compiled by inmate staff at the Windham School District's Media Center, under TDCJ guidelines for dedicated use by TDCJ offenders. Subscriptions to the Echo can be purchased for $12 (US subscription), or $15 (Outside the US.) Money orders or personal checks must be made out to the Echo/WSD. Correspondence via U.S. Mail must be addressed to the Echo, P.O. Box 40, Huntsville, TX 77342-0040.

New Zealand to pay graff writers; Banksy crosses the pond

Having written extensively recently about graffiti, I couldn't help but notice this fascinating development from New Zealand, backed by the national railroad, to pay graffiti artists to paint murals over previously vandalized spots.

Reported The New Zealand Herald ("Taggers to be paid for graffiti," Sept. 5):

OnTrack, the government organisation in charge of the railway infastructure, supports the move.

Communications manager Kevin Ramshaw said today many OnTrack buildings are targeted by the spray-can brigade.

"We like the idea of a bright mural instead of some offensive scribble," he said.

"Besides, if a talented kid with a spray can gets a chance to lift him or herself up and achieve something that others look at as art rather than vandalism that's a good result all around."

KNZB chief executive Barry Lucinsky said graffiti spoilt New Zealand's scenery.

"It's certainly possible to tighten laws and penalties against graffiti attacks, but it's such a simple crime to commit that a better approach is needed."

He said some graffitti artists were talented.

"Why they waste their time spraying symbols illegible to the rest of us is beyond me."

That strikes me as a similar idea to at least part of the approach I've advocated recently on Grits, providing public spaces for graff artists and incentives to use them while discouraging uninvited graff through rapid cleanup.

Meanwhile, speaking of graffiti, this article from the New Yorker describes a British graff artist named Banksy whose work Sunray's Wench turned me onto a couple of weeks ago. Here's Banksy's personal web page. This guy's doing some really cool work that I think anybody in their right mind would recognize as "art," vandalism or no.

Note to Banksy: You can tag my house anytime - email for directions.

Gladewater cop gets slap on wrist for threatening Dallas News reporter with shotgun

I know the media aren't too popular in many quarters, but isn't something wrong with this picture?

Gladewater police officer Bryan Todd Naismith was unhappy that a Dallas Morning News reporter planned to do a story about a suspect shot by Naismith under questionable circumstances where the officer was never charged. Reported AP today:

Naismith must now permanently surrender his law enforcement license, take anger management classes and pay a $1,000 fine after pleading guilty to unlawful restraint Friday in Upshur County.

In March 2006, reporter David Michaels pursued a story about Naismith never being charged in the 2005 shooting of a suspect. When Michaels showed up at Naismith's home for a second time, Naismith allegedly pointed a shotgun through the reporter's car window and ordered him out.

Michaels was later let go after Naismith yelled at him, police said.

Naismith was fired from Gladewater police three months after confronting Michaels. As part of his plea deal, he was also given a one-year probated jail sentence and ordered to perform 80 hours of community service.

So a reporter doing an investigative story comes to the officer's home. The officer points a shotgun at him, unlawfully detained the reporter, and hollered at him threateningly for some unspecified period of time - presumably with the intent of intimidating the reporter not to write the story.

Still, it took the Gladewater PD three months afterward to fire the officer, and his criminal sentence amounts to a slap on the wrist - 80 hours community service, a $1,000 fine, and one year probation is one of the lowest sentences I've seen for any gun crime in many a moon.

Several questions arise from this case and its outcome: What kind of jerk cop pulls a gun on a reporter? Don't they train these clowns? (That's an inexcusable response to the media asking questions about a legitimately controversial subject.) And once they knew about the incident, why did the Gladewater PD wait three months to terminate him? Why did prosecutors and the judge accept such a lenient plea deal? Finally, why was the Dallas Morning News investigating this story instead of the Tyler Morning Telegraph?

Tack this incident on to the growing list of East Texas police officers arrested or indicted in the last couple of years.

Intimidation of the press is a police tactic I might expect south of the border, where journalists routinely take real risks to report crime news, but it's a shame to see Texas cops behaving so disgracefully.

Insert Shrunken Testicle Joke Here: Book by ex-Texas cop defends police steroid use

A newly published book by a former Texas police officer defiantly details his long-time steroid addiction, beginning in the police academy and continuing until he himself became a dealer in steroids and paraphernalia to officers and firefighters around the country over the internet. In Falling Off the Thin Blue Line, a pseudonymous ex-police officer from an unnamed Texas city alleges that law enforcement tolerates a subculture of steroid abuse. From an early review:

While athletes like Barry Bonds are constantly needled over steroids, there’s a good chance your local cop or fireman is also on the stuff.

Or so claims a former police officer named “David Johnson,” who says society would be shocked to discover how many public servants use steroids just to make it through rigorous work days.

Johnson knows of what he speaks. For 10 years, he used almost every kind of steroid imaginable, and even had a thriving Internet business selling syringes and needles to “roid” users across the country.

“The public is clueless about how many policemen and firefighters are on steroids,” Johnson said, adding that he believes the drugs should be legal.

“Steroid laws are a waste of taxpayer money,” he said. “I can understand why psychoactive drugs are illegal – they get you high. But steroids help you with recovery from personal injuries.”

Johnson, 31, started using steroids while attending a police academy in Texas

The author disputes that "roid rage" is a significant issue: “I think that term is exaggerated,” Johnson said. “If you’re already a jerk, maybe you’ll be more of one on steroids. But when I was using, I was fine. It’s when you’re off them that’s a problem.” Hmmmm. Even if he's right that still sounds like a problem, unless officers just intend to take steroids indefinitely.

A couple of years ago I recall four cops in Oklahoma were busted for running a steroid ring out of their local department - apparently Officer "Johnson" did the same thing in Texas but got away with it.

After the Norman, OK bust, AP reported that "Police officers in Mississippi, Ohio, Connecticut, Hawaii, Colorado, Alabama, Florida, Arkansas and New York have also been accused of steroid-related offenses in recent years." Who really believed that Texas officers would be immune from this trend?

Though the Texas Legislature this year required student athletes in high school to undergo testing for steroids, there's no requirement police departments test their officers for the illegal substances. How ironic is that?

For me, after just a taste of Mr. Johnson's views from the book review above and the press release, I'm glad he's out of professional policing. I've requested a review copy from the author and if I get it I'll have more to say on the subject.

BLOGVERSATION: More from Pete at Drug War Rant.

Say 'Howdy' to Juvienation

Say "howdy" to a new blog on juvenile justice topics, Juvienation, which is:

written and published by Mark Sorkin, a journalist living in Brooklyn, New York. It is a news site covering developments in juvenile justice, a forum for exploring ideas on how to reform the system, and a resource for anyone interested in or curious about the subject. Along with regularly updated blog posts, Juvienation is also a repository of links to relevant articles, policy papers, websites and books.

Sorkin's blog also turned me on to a few other juvie-oriented websites I'd not previously perused that seem worthy of Grits readers' attention:

• The Coalition for Juvenile Justice
• National Juvenile Justice Network
• The Juvenile Law Center
• National Juvenile Defender Center
  
• The Youth Law Center
• Models for Change