Good bills backed by Texas Criminal Justice Coalition

The Texas Criminal Justice Coalition has posted online a list of good criminal justice bills they're supporting this session, from innocence, to reentry, probation, parole, and drug policy reform. At the end of their three-page list, TCJC added this teaser:

Coming soon: Identification bill for returning offenders, to be authored by Rep. Turner

- DPS should comply with the 2005 legislation and accept TDCJ-issued offender identification cards as a “verifiable” proof of identity.

That's a much needed change that jibes nicely with Rep. Turner's HB 1711, which according to TCJC, "Establishes a re-entry and re-integration plan in which individuals released from prison are provided with identification papers, medical prescriptions, job training certificates, housing and structured programs, and referrals to services."

See the rest of the list for other good bills TCJC is supporting.

Pew: One in 22 Texans under control of criminal justice system

The Pew Center on the States just came out with a new report analyzing national incarceration and community supervision statistics, along with an accompanying Texas state fact sheet (pdf).

Bottom line: One in 31 American adults nationally are in prison, jail, on probation or on parole. In Texas, though, the ratio is much higher - one out of 22 adults here are under control of the criminal justice system, Pew calculated.

Texas no longer boasts the nation's top incarceration rate, however. That dubious honor belongs to Georgia. One in 13 Georgians - an astonishing 7.92%, compared to 4.56% in Texas - are in prison, jail, on probation or on parole, says Pew.

Texas' percentage of its population under control of the corrections system ranks 4th nationally behind the Peach State, Idaho, and the District of Columbia, according to Pew.

Senate report: Two-thirds of special ed youth at TYC don't receive services

Here's a second installment analyzing some highlights from the Senate Criminal Justice Committee interim report's second interim charge regarding the Texas Youth Commission, compiled by Grits juvenile justice intern Tara Haelle and edited by yours truly. As always, none of the opinions expressed here in any way represent those of UT, the LBJ School, Ms. Haelle's teacher, nor anybody but the writer and editor.

* * *

In all the fuss about whether to abolish TYC and merge it with the Juvenile Probation Commission, official discussions have too often overlooked needed educational reforms, which, happily, is something the Senate Criminal Justice Committee's Interim Report (pdf) remedies. This emphasis echoes a call last year from the Office of Independent Ombudsman (OIO) to focus on education as a key preventive for recidivism:

“Education and the associated attainment of diplomas, equivalency degrees, and certifications provide the most powerful and evidence‐based approach to improve outcomes for incarcerated youth and to reduce recidivism. Conversely, success in education and work are two of the strongest protective factors for delinquent youth. Conversely, success in education and work are two of the strongest protective factors for delinquent youth…

“As a state, Texas should embrace and require a transformation of the education program at the TYC… If we want the youth at TYC to become civically‐responsible taxpayers and citizens, we need to rethink how we educate youth at the TYC. Education continues to be the best option for reducing recidivism by providing youth with post‐release opportunities to find meaningful employment, to pursue a post‐secondary education, or to pursue post‐secondary training in a trade or skill.”

“Agency officials, expert consultant Dr. Michael Kresmien [author of the OIO report], and the Chief Ombudsman met with Senator Florence Shapiro, Chairwoman of the Senate Education Committee, to discuss legislative solutions to the problem with the education services at TYC that were identified in the [OIO] report.” (Ed note: Hopefully that means we'll see legislation filed soon on these topics.)

The committee report includes charts showing a steady decrease in TYC students’ level gains in math and reading since 2005. Much of this can be attributed to the movement of youth among the facilities and the use of “self-paced” work and punitive measures that prevent the teacher-student interaction that’s essential for effective learning.

The Senate committee report echoed the Ombudsman's conclusions that TYC needs to require better front-end assessment and more funding to meet state and federal regulations on special education. Right now, 40 percent of TYC inmates qualify for special education services, but “more than two thirds of the special education students have no direct service from a special education teacher.” The committee also expressed a desire for more options for vocational programs to aid students in finding a job following re-entry.

The next step, said the Senate committee report, would be developing a curriculum that meets Texas Education Agency standards and is used consistently across all facilities. If there is a standardized scope and sequence all facilities follow, a student doesn’t lose as much progress when moving from one facility to another. Texas ISDs should already be doing this; there’s no reason TYC could not implement a similar system. The same goes for setting a specific daily schedule for TYC educational programs.

If the agency could accomplish all this — and to succeed, TYC would require funding for increased educational staffing and professional development — it'd put youth on a better educational track when they get out (as nearly all, eventually will) and hopefully a better track for life.

School districts should be required to re-admit ex-TYC youth

Juvie corrections will be back in the spotlight this week with the Corrections Committee on Thursday devoting a day of testimony to Texas Youth Commission (TYC), the Juvenile Probation Commission (TJPC), the Office of Independent Ombudsman (OIO) and Sunset proposals for a merger.

Which gives me cause to introduce readers to Tara Haelle, a former schoolteacher who's now a grad student at the LBJ School studying juvie corrections this semester and who's been assigned to Grits as an intern to help supplement this blog's juvie coverage. I'll be editing her work (and sometimes injecting editorial content) as well as incorporating her research into my own writing. Needless to say, none of the opinions expressed here in any way represent those of UT, the LBJ School, her teacher, nor anybody but the writers themselves.

To kick things off, I asked Tara to run through the highlights of the section of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee's interm report (pdf, Interim Charge Two, pp 20-36) regarding TYC juvie corrections, leading off with a discussion of barriers to reentry identified by the committee. Here is an edited version of her first report:

* * *
If youth are to be successful after leaving TYC, the best path is for them to finish high school and eventually get a good job. But according to the interim report from the Senate Committee on Criminal Justice, these things aren’t always happening.

The report describes two major issues with re-entry that legislators ought to address this session: requiring school districts to admit kids released from TYC and tightening confidentiality laws that often keep kids from getting jobs after they’re released.

Key among the “barriers to the successful return to law-abiding behavior” is treatment of TYC kids when they return to regular school districts, the report says. One part of the problem is the reluctance of school districts to take the kids back:

“Some school districts refuse admission of youth when TYC places the youth in a home of a person, not a parent, because the school district considers the placement to be made without a court order.”

The Education Code already requires that public schools admit children placed in foster care by a state agency in their district, but some school districts refuse to recognize TYC’s authority and deny kids admission.

At least one unnamed school district, according to the report, tried to put a TYC youth into an alternative education program for the same offense that sent them to TYC. The law needs to clearly state that students can only be expelled or sent to alternative schools for current behavior — not for so-called "prior adjudicated behavior," i.e., the behavior that got them sent to TYC.

(The Ombudsman is also working on an evaluation of re-entry obstacles with a focus on the educational challenges. Though the report is not ready yet, it will likely provide more depth on some of the reforms necessary to help TYC students’ re-entry process.)

The interim report sensibly says that “to successfully rejoin the community, TYC youth must be given an opportunity to complete their high school education in regular or alternative schools without impediment.” But getting back in school is only one hurdle these kids face. If employers can access their records, it can be an uphill battle to get a good job. The report says:

“Some of this is caused by the increasingly easy access the public has to delinquency and/or criminal offense information on TYC youth. Internet disclosure of this information has been reported as has inappropriate release of this information from DPS employees over the phone. Even though this information is usually restricted to the general public, most employers have access to it and are sometimes reticent to give TYC youth the benefit of the doubt as job applicants.”

These records should be sealed — and so should the lips of state employees. If the state doesn’t make these records harder to leak, and the penalties more severe for leaking them, that’s one more reason kids may end up back at TYC.

It shouldn’t be so tough for a youth released from TYC to get back into regular education classrooms and working at a regular job. And it shouldn’t be so tough for the Legislature to help make that happen.

Ed note: I don't necessarily agree that penalties should be more severe for leaking information so much as I think current restrictions should be more rigorously enforced and DPS systems improved so that such information is only revealed on a need to know basis, not online or over the phone. Otherwise, these are excellent reentry suggestions by the committee.

First bills up in House Public Safety Committee today

The House Public Safety Committee will meet this afternoon and begin to hear legislation for the first time. Here are some highlights from today's short agenda:

Reimburse for police pursuit damages
HB 453 by Gonzalez-Toureilles is a good bill which would authorize funds from auction of abandoned vehicles to be used to compensate people whose property is damaged in a police pursuit.

Candidates need not apply
Myra Crownover has HB 590 up today that would disqualify anyone who's filed a campaign treasurer's statement with the Texas Ethics Commission from appointment to a Crimestopper's Advisory Council. I'm sure there's some specific backstory to this one that will likely come out at the hearing.

Closing public data about public servants
These I don't like so much. HB 120 by Joe Heflin and HB 598 by Hughes remove home address information from drivers license data for peace officers and judges respectively. This is problematic from a public accountability standpoint (as are proposals to remove date of birth information from public records for the same classes of public servants) because addresses and dates of birth are key identifying information to help investigators, reporters, etc., make sure they've identified the right person in the records, particularly when performing background checks or researching public corruption cases that involve personal finances. I'm not aware of incidents where such information has been misused, though perhaps some specific examples will come out at the hearing. But I know for a fact that closing that information makes public integrity investigations more difficult for reporters and interest groups, while achieving IMO little, tangible public safety benefit.

In fact, for judges in particular, I can give an example from my days as a political opposition researcher how that address information can be useful for investigating shady deals. In a Democratic primary race, I was hired to perform a background check on a challenger who, in the town where he'd practiced previously, had gotten in trouble for using his attorney's escrow account to pay for major home improvements - a big ethical no-no since that's the clients' money, not his. This fellow had a very common name, and knowing his address and date of birth was the only way I could have possibly followed the paper trail to uncover those key facts which ultimately knocked him out of the race. Had they not been discovered, there's a real chance this guy could have been taken seriously as a candidate and conceivably been elected to sit as a district judge. We're talking about critical, identifying data, and you need the same baseline information to investigate incumbents as for challengers.

I'm afraid that, with the corporate media weakened and fewer in number, such anti-open records bills will have an easier time of it than just a few years ago when the MSM more aggressively fought for open records at the capitol.

Who will stand up for the merits of transparency? Where is the constituency for openness? We've seen some positive expressions in Washington by the new administration, but right now I'm not sure I see a strong faction at the Texas Legislature, in either party, supporting greater government openness, and that's a little scary.

UPDATE: I forwarded this post to Reps Hughes and Heflin, and Rep Bryan Hughes responded thusly:

Thanks, man. I'm pretty big on open government - but I guess everyone thinks they are.

The judge's family in Chicago killed a few years back got my attention, and there are other news stories of threats federal and state judges and their families.

I suppose my experience with Judge Steger and his concern for his family had an effect on me as well.

I appreciate your point about the background information you picked up on the primary candidate, and I acknowledge that the information might have been otherwise been missed.

But I think to be independent, the judiciary must have a somewhat predictable level of safety.

In the balancing of interests, I am willing to let open government yield here.

I appreciate what you do, and I'm glad you and I agree much more than we differ.

That was a nice note and I appreciate the repesentative taking time to respond. Certainly Hughes and Heflin's bills are borne out of good intentions, and this is a matter on which reasonable people may disagree. But I fear the damage to investigative reporting and restricting tools for background checks on public officials may be a significant unintended consequence that's more serious, in the end, than the problems they're trying to solve.

Invited graffiti: Solution or enabling for unwanted tags?

I've believed for a while now that municipal graffiti management (and it can only ever be managed, never eliminated) must involve three prongs: 1) Enforcement, with number of arrests more important than length of punishment, 2) Rapid cleanup (at taxpayers' expense, so crime victims aren't punished again by the state), and 3) More invited graffiti in both public and private venues.

Here's a roundup of recent news and blog items focused on that oft-ignored third theme of invited graffiti, which has long been the most underutilized part of that three-pronged approach:

ATX Graffiti has pictures of legal graffiti commissioned for the SXSW music festival on East 5th Street in East Austin. Clearly more talented, prolific graff writers are willing to put up more elaborate, creative work when they know the project will ride for a while. I'll bet it won't get defacd as often as the blank wall, either.

In Corpus Christi, high school students were invited to create graffiti-style spray paint murals at La Retama Park.

A UK community has given a ten-year old girl the run of the town to paint graffiti murals, though when you see her art you can understand why. It's not just her, though; the same town allows a great deal of more elaborate, invited graffiti from quality artists.

From the always wonderful Subtopia, check out invited graffiti on "blast walls" installed by the US military in Baghdad, which makes the landscape more hospitable and also helps prevent subversive, anti-American graffiti.

In San Francisco, anti-graffiti zealots on the city council tried to pass an ordinance "that would define what constitutes a legal mural and where it may be painted." In other words, they think it will reduce the amount of outlaw art if they over-regulate legal, invited and commissioned art, which heretofore, presumably, had not been a significant source of concern. It seems absurd to have to say so, but you can't regulate your way out of a graffiti problem: It's already an illegal activity.

At the NY Times City Room blog, Sewell Chan has an excellent post reviewing a new book by a sociologist who's been studying graffiti for 30 years and believes that, “In its purest form, graffiti is a democratic art form that revels in the American Dream.” He also describes instances where graff writers allied interests with property owners, including one Brooklynite who was "eventually embraced by property owners who saw his style — with large, neat letters, quite separate from the spray-painted bold colors and complicated letter styles that are more common in graffiti — as a useful ornamentation for their storefronts."

Finally, where do we draw the line when defining graffiti? Unwanted spray paint or etching into glass is one thing, but how much can you credibly talk about "property damage" when discussing messages left in chalk on the sidewalk? A Flagstaff, AZ city ordinance treats non-permanent chalking the same as more permanent graffiti.

See prior Grits posts related to invited graffiti:

• Toward a restorative graffiti policy
• Paint responsibly: Museum offers hands-on graffiti exhibit
• Creating public spaces for invited art adds carrot to stick of banning uninvited graff
  
• Mexico prevents graffiti by encouraging it at El Azteca Stadium
• Moscow turns to invited graffiti to liven up Soviet era buildings
  
• Adidas: Graffiti is legitimate art
• Grading graffiti? What do youth want?
• Digital graffiti, or, Is there something to a wall that wants us to write on it?
• Austin lags on important third component of graffiti policy

Should USDOJ investigate Texas Court of Criminal Appeals' secret pre-vote on unfiled motion?

Rick Casey at the Houston Chronicle adds his own high-powered rumor from the Court of Criminal Appeals, following up on Vince Leibowitz's reporting that some members of the Court want Presiding Judge Sharon Keller to resign before her removal hearing later this month. Casey writes:

According to the formal charges by the Commission on Judicial Conduct, Judge Cathy Cochran at 11:29 a.m. e-mailed to Keller and her other colleagues an Internet link to the Kentucky Supreme Court decision that was being appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court.

The document then says that in “early afternoon” the court’s general counsel, Edward Marty, “began drafting a proposed order for the court in anticipation of Mr. Richard’s appeal based on Baze. The Honorable Judge Tom Price drafted a dissenting opinion in anticipation of Mr. Richard’s appeal and circulated the dissent to the other judges.”

What the document omits is that the judges first took an informal vote. I have it on good authority that the tally was 5-4 to turn down Richard’s appeal.

They made up their minds without waiting for the arguments of Richard’s lawyers.

David Dow, the University of Houston Law Center lawyer who headed Richard’s defense team, called the procedure “outrageous.”

“It’s the equivalent of them sticking their fingers in their ears,” he said. The judges may well have felt confident they could anticipate the arguments, and they didn’t want to wait until late in the day to begin taking up the matter.

Yowza!! Deciding motions before they're filed? Sometimes it seems that way, but it's pretty shocking to see it confirmed. Maybe that explains why, according to Vince's source:

at least one justice is fearful that some or all of the Court of Criminal Appeals Justices could be subject to similar judicial conduct complaints as the one now facing Keller simply because the other justices did nothing to stop Keller and did not more closely examine Keller’s actions

Perhaps the concern isn't that other judges "did nothing," but that they actively participated in a process that a) wasn't recorded in official records and b) may not hold up to public scrutiny if "U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder [were] to launch an investigation into whether or not Michael Richard’s’ civil rights were violated."

Have Liebowitz and Casey between them identified the ball the CCA wants most desperately to hide - that the Court had made its decision on Michael Richard's appeal before seeing his argument? Based solely on Vince's source, I didn't understand why judges might fear a civil rights investigation by the Department of Justice. Perhaps in light of Casey's revelation, though, a DOJ review may warranted. At a minimum, says Casey, it will undermine public confidence to confirm:

that the judges acted a bit like the Queen of Hearts in Alice in Wonderland.

“Let the jury consider their verdict,” the King said, for about the twentieth time that day.

“No, no!” said the Queen. “Sentence first — verdict afterwards.”

This news opens ups a whole new can of worms for the embattled Texas Court of Criminal Appeals. The questions facing it might soon become much bigger than whether their Presiding Judge should resign, be impeached or face removal by the Judicial Conduct Commission.

MORE: Before commenters try to make this about late filings by capital defense attorneys, let me emphasize that last-minute filings in capital cases were and are entirely a function of the court's own rules. When they changed them to require final appeals two days prior to execution, Dow and others complied and did that instead. If new filings on the day of execution are inherently bad, there is no one to blame but the CCA which created the rules and the timeline, then (according to Casey) conspired to ignore and circumvent them.

NUTHER UPDATE (3/3): The Stand Down Project has a good roundup of additional, Keller-related coverage.

What strategies work to keep HIV+ ex-prisoners on their meds?

From the abstract to an article in the Journal of the American Medical Association, we get a bit more information about the shockingly high rates of HIV positive inmates who stop receiving anti-retroviral drugs when they leave prison. Researchers fear such inmates could become the source of drug-resistant HIV strains, which would be a grave outcome indeed.

Reuters reported that just 5.4% of former HIV+ inmates filled their prescriptions after ten days. Only 17.7% had done so within 30 days, and 30.0% after 60 days - still a strikingly low figure with 70% still off their antiretroviral medication two months after they leave prison.

There's a practical, public safety aspect to this that can't be ignored: The creation of drug-resistant HIV would be a very, very bad thing.

On the bright side, the study identified two variables that improve the chances HIV+ ex-prisoners get back on their meds after leaving confinement.

First, according to the abstract "Inmates released on parole were more likely to fill a prescription within 30 days ... and 60 days" by significant margins.

Even higher compliance rates, though, came because: "Inmates who received assistance completing a Texas AIDS Drug Assistance Program application were more likely to fill a prescription within 10 days," 30 days and 60 days. (See "Results" at the bottom of this page for the statistical details.)

In other words, HIV+ inmates on parole were slightly more likely to get their medication, presumably because they're under supervision, but they were much more likely to do so, especially in the short-term, if they're told where they can get help paying for the (quite expensive) drugs.

That makes a lot of sense, and it points to possible legislative solutions.

Perhaps there's some way to leverage stimulus funds designated for law enforcement or health services to go into the (already strapped) AIDS Drug Assistance Program, designating additional money to pay for indigent ex-prisoners to get that compliance rate somewhere closer to 100%? We're talking about a relatively small number of folks - an average of 700 or so people per year; that's a small price to pay for TDCJ to avoid becoming the source of some terrible, new medical scourge.

Once TDCJ has started an HIV+ prisoner on antiretroviral medications, making sure they're signed up to get their meds on the outside seems like as important a public safety function as locking prisoners up in the first place. The same could be said for mentally ill prisoners, for whom I'd like to see a similar study performed. More attention should be paid to that transition.

This is one of those moments when "an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure." I could make that argument for quite a few other reentry services, but in this instance it's particularly true.

Questions regarding a completely corrupt jail

According to just-handed down indictments, the jail in Montague County under just-ousted Sheriff Bill Keating was completely corrupt, reports AP:

A former sheriff and several ex-jailers were among 17 people named Friday in a 106-count indictment on charges ranging from having sex with inmates to bringing them drugs at a now-closed county jail.

Former Montague County Sheriff Bill Keating was charged with official oppression and having sex with inmates, according to the indictment. Keating was defeated in a primary election last spring.

Several female jailers were charged with having sex with inmates and bringing them drugs, cell phones and cigarettes, while several male jailers were charged with drug possession and with bringing inmates banned items, according to the indictment.

Several inmates also were charged with drug possession, according to the indictment.

State District Judge Roger Towery has sealed the names in the indictments until the suspects are arrested, but their jobs and charges were made public.

Insanity ... pure insanity. Though it's a county lockup instead of a state agency, this episode seems as scandalous, or at least more endemic, than what was going on at TYC. Several questions arise:

Were there no non-corrupt employees to rat out all these alleged wrongdoers? How about the local District Attorney and other law enforcement agencies in the county? How could somebody not have known? Why did it take the feds coming in for somebody to investigate?

The Sheriff was allowed to finish out his term and was arrested immediately when his successor took office. If things were this bad, why was the situation tolerated by officialdom until then?

Though the Montague jail failed its last Jail Standards Commission inspection, state inspectors had no authority to fix the problem. Given that the agency is under "Sunset" review, doesn't this tell us the Texas Commission on Jail Standards needs more teeth and greater overt regulatory authority?

Many other law enforcement agencies around the state have experienced problems with corruption. Would these issues have been exposed sooner if Texas had a law enforcement integrity unit?

Finally, the DA has only charged Sheriff Keating with "official oppression and having sex with inmates," but not "sexual assault." Why not? After all, he coerced an informant into performing oral sex, according to the US Attorney, who said in a press release that,

Keating told L.M. that if she complied with his request, that he would help her get a job, a place to live and that she wouldn’t be criminally charged with possessing any drugs or drug-making equipment that was found in the home. Keating also told her that if she didn’t comply, she would go straight to jail.

So, where's the sexual assault charge? By definition under Texas law, a sexual assault has occurred if "the actor is a public servant who coerces the other person to submit or participate." How is it that someone who's engaged in such behavior doesn't wind up on the sex offender registry?

What an astonishing nest of sleaze and corruption - more remarkable, still, because the Sheriff was allowed to complete his term before rooting it out.

"Writ Writer" documentary screened at capitol today

An email from the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition reminds me to re-promote an event at the Texas state capitol today sponsored by state Rep. Elliot Naishtat: A screening of the film "Writ Writer" at 2 pm this afternoon (Capitol Extension Auditorium, Room E1.004), a documentary which aired last year on PBS:

"Writ Writer" portrays the historic conflict that emerged in the 1960s when Texas prisoners, inspired by the Civil Rights movement, challenged inhumane prison conditions. Long before the Ruiz v. Estelle lawsuit was filed, inmate Fred Arispe Cruz waged the legal battle that would be key to successful prisoner litigation in the 1970s and '80s. Prison officials retaliated by subjecting Cruz to months of solitary confinement and other punishments in an attempt to coerce him to drop his lawsuits. This attracted the attention of civil rights attorneys Frances Jalet and William Bennett Turner who came to assist Cruz.

The film, described by national news magazine The Week as "a brutal, revealing look at the Texas prison system as well as an inspiring portrait of human endurance," was broadcast on the Emmy Award-winning PBS series Independent Lens last summer.

Austin-based documentary filmmaker Susanne Mason will host a Q&A at 3:00 p.m., following the screening, joined by special guests Steve Martin, Texas attorney and prison consultant, and Jorge Antonio Renaud, former inmate and author.

Rumor: Some CCA judges want Keller to resign, worry about future investigations, elections

Vince over at Capitol Annex offered up this provocative bit of rumormongering the other day about divisions on the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals over Presiding Judge Sharon Keller's looming removal hearing before the Judicial Conduct Commission:

A source closely connected with the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals told Capitol Annex that several of the justices on the state’s highest criminal court want Presiding Justice Sharon Keller to resign in order to halt proceedings brought by the Texas Commission on Judicial Conduct.

The proceedings would force the justices to testify on activities surrounding the execution of death row inmate Micahel Richard.

Speaking on condition of anonymity, the source told Capitol Annex that several justices are not eager to take part in a trial proceeding as part of the Commission on Judicial Conduct complaint against Keller because it would result in further revealing the content of private meetings and closed door activities–many of which were revealed in the publicly distributed notice of formal proceedings, much to the chagrin of judges and longtime court employees. Each of the court’s other eight justices would most likely be called as witnesses. Without question, Justice Cheryl Johnson would be a key witness for the TCJC.

According to the [source], the justices are fearful that a public trial for Keller could expose the court to more significant media scrutiny, could irreparably damage relations between the justices necessary for the court to function properly, and could hurt the justices politically during a time when Democrats have a better than average shot at capturing statewide offices. The source advised that at least one justice is fearful that some or all of the Court of Criminal Appeals Justices could be subject to similar judicial conduct complaints as the one now facing Keller simply because the other justices did nothing to stop Keller and did not more closely examine Keller’s actions, the source said. Another justice is reportedly worried that increased publicity could force U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder to launch an investigation into whether or not Michael Richard’s’ civil rights were violated–further exposing the court and the justices to a level of public examination they are unaccustomed to.

If accurate, and it sounds pretty reasonable to me, it appears the Court of Criminal Appeals these days has quite a bit of behind-the-scenes drama going on regarding Judge Keller's looming fate, perhaps relieved only slightly by the delay granted in her case until March 24.

Reading this account, Judge Keller's travails take on a bit of a soap-opera quality, whereas from the outside it all looks more like a circus.

RELATED: More incentive to resign instead of fight: Keller's legal team will reportedly cost several hundred thousand dollars.

Will stimulus money let Texas boost prison guard pay?

I've been wondering what the recent injection of federal stimulus money into Texas' state budget might mean for the Department of Criminal Justice's plan to boost prison guard pay by 20%?

The agency is facing a big-picture staffing crisis that seemed insurmountable before the infusion of federal funds. Now, with the federal pork flowing so freely, in theory, at least, the state has enough money to increase guard pay enough to staff up its far-flung system of 112 units,

Governor Perry and some state budget writers have been adamant that stimulus money should not be used for expenses that obligate the state to ongoing, future costs. In that light, raising guard pay by 20% would directly violate that pledge.

But the state could use stimulus money to pay for other expenses and use the difference to offset increased guard pay without technically spending the surplus money, though the net effect would be essentially the same.

According to TDCJ's in-house Connections magazine, boosting guard pay is still the agency's top legislative priority:

Although the Department of Criminal Justice will be seeking additional appropriations for such important items as contraband detection screening and video surveillance technology, enhanced reentry services for releasing offenders and the renovation and repair of existing facilities, salary increases for TDCJ staff remain the agency’s highest legislative priority for new funding, according to Executive Director Brad Livingston.

The Department is seeking an average pay increase of approximately twenty percent for security staff and parole officers and supports an across-the-board pay raise for all other agency employees. The agency is also seeking funding to provide retention bonuses to correctional officers currently employed at or willing to transfer to designated understaffed units, and seeking a change in state law which will make all hazardous duty personnel eligible for the higher rate of hazardous duty pay authorized during the last legislative session. Additionally, the agency is seeking funding to construct three (3) 80-bed officer dormitories, which could be constructed adjacent to three (3) of our most understaffed units.

Meanwhile, TDCJ says the understaffing problem would be even worse without bonuses paid to new hires wiling to work in understaffed units:

Through October 2008, 1,322 recruitment bonus checks had been mailed to new or returning correctional officers who had taken the incentive TDCJ is offering as a way to boost staffing levels at 16 designated facilities. After taxes, the officers generally net between $1,050 and $1,100 each.

New recruits were also given more pay in their initial months through an emergency authorization last year. Those interim measures manged to stave off a full-blown crisis, for now, but did not nearly eliminate the agency's staffing shortage.

TDCJ has estimated it needs nearly $1 billion more per biennium just to safely staff the prisons it operates now, assuming Texas doesn't build any new ones. That wouldn't be a one-time expenditure but something the Lege would be committing taxpayers to pay for ad infinitum.

I have no way to predict the outcome, but it seems to me that's at least an outline of the terms of debate over what happens with guard pay this session.

Drug interruptions upon leaving prison could create drug-resistant HIV strains

HIV/AIDS is the number one killer of Texas prison inmates, and TDCJ spends about half its pharmacy budget on HIV medications, but many ex-prisoners don't keep taking the drugs once they get out, according to a new study from UTMB. Reported Reuters:

Results of a new study show that major interruptions in HIV drug treatment occur after release from prison.

Within 60 days of release from prison, just 30 percent of HIV-infected inmates in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice system filled a prescription for antiretroviral drug therapy, researchers report in Wednesday's issue of the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Moreover, 90 percent or more of inmates did not fill a prescription soon enough to avoid an interruption in their antiretroviral therapy, according to the report.

"These remarkably high rates of lengthy HIV treatment interruptions are troublesome from a public health perspective," study investigator Dr. Jacques Baillargeon, from the University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, noted in a written statement.

"Several studies suggest that many released inmates who discontinue antiretroviral therapy also resume high-risk behaviors such as injection drug use or unsafe sex," Baillargeon added, "and this combination may result not only in poor clinical outcomes for these individuals but also in the creation of drug-resistant HIV reservoirs in the general community."

The study involved 2115 HIV-infected inmates who were receiving antiretroviral therapy prior to their release from prison between January 2004 and December 2007.

Just 5.4 percent of inmates filled an antiretroviral prescription within 10 days of release, the researchers found.

HIV drugs are expensive so for prisoners with no access to health insurance it's not surprising if most stop taking them. But that also sets the stage for a significant public health crisis.

It's easy to say we shouldn't care about prisoners healthcare, but surely everybody should care about the possible "creation of drug-resistant HIV reservoirs in the general community."

I don't know if the solution is to provide meds to parolees with HIV or how this situation might be addressed, but it'd be a catastrophe of enormous proportions if Texas prisons became the breeding ground for some scary, new drug-resistant HIV strain.

Open Thread - Crimjust committees meet in Texas House

I'm out for at least half the day to spend three hours in a dentist's chair.

In the meantime, I'm disappointed I'll have to miss the House Corrections Committee's organizational meeting this morning at 8 a.m., (update: see the archived video here).

Meanwhile, the House Criminal Jusrisprudence Committee met for the first time yesterday. I was invited to speak to their organizational meeting on behalf of the Innocence Project of Texas; watch the video to grade my performance.

The House Public Safety Committee had a brief organizational meeting Monday; see the video here.

And finally, the Appropriations Subcommittee on Criminal Justice was busier than any of them, meeting three times this week revieiwing budgets for various agencies - they did TDCJ, TYC and TJPC on Tuesday (here's the video from that meeting and an archive of their broadcasts).

Use this as an open thread while I'm away from the blog to discuss these committee's work and any other legislative topics.

Nomination of anti-sex toy activist to parole board draws more criticism

Houston Chronicle columnist Lisa Falkenberg says that, with the appointment of anti-sex toy activist Shanda Perkins to the Board of Pardons and Paroles, Governor Rick Perry’s "shameless pandering to the fire-and-brimstone fringes of his party crossed a line into absurdity."

After that harsh assessment, though, Falkenberg says only that the Texas Senate should take "a closer look" before rubber stamping Governor Perry's choice.

Grits readers will recall that Perkins led an infamous morality crusade in Johnson County against sex toy sales that resulted in Texas' law being declared unconstitutional by the Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals.

According to Falkenberg, "Perry’s spokeswoman Allison Castle said the governor has known Perkins for 'many years and believes she’s 'the most qualified candidate.'”

Huh ... the "most qualified"? Really? That's the Governor's story? You mean the fact that she's out distributing anonymous attack flyers at political events targeting his all-but-announced gubernatorial primary opponent has nothing to do with it? That's a bit of a stretch.

More TYC Layoffs, Reorg

The Texas Youth Commission's Mart unit will lose 130 jobs, but only 13 of those are lyoffs while the rest comes from eliminating unfilled positions. According to the Waco Tribune Herald:

About 130 jobs will be eliminated from the McLennan County State Juvenile Correctional Facility in Mart after the Texas Youth Commission has a third round of staff reductions to respond to a drop in the number of youths incarcerated.

The cut will lay off 13 workers, and the rest of the reduction will come from scrapping open positions at the facility, according to a press release Tuesday. Jim Hurley, spokesman for TYC, said the cuts are mainly for caseworker and administrative positions and will not eliminate corrections officers. ...

Since Executive Commissioner Cherie Townsend took over TYC in October 2008, the agency has cut 720 positions statewide to match its decreasing youth population, reducing costs by $25 million.

TYC’s youth population has significantly decreased since 2007 reforms under which only the state’s most serious or chronic felony-level offenders were committed, the press release stated. The reforms followed increased state scrutiny after allegations of sexual abuse of inmates in the TYC system. ...

About 110 positions also were cut from the West Texas State School in Pyote, including 67 employee layoffs. ...

Both facilities will take fewer youths to maintain the current 12-to-1 youth-to-officer ratio, officials said. The West Texas school will be limited to 48 youths.

Good luck to those who've recently lost their jobs at TYC, and for that matter, to Cherie Townsend and her management team who appear to be making the tough decisions needed to reorganize the troubled agency before the Legislature does it for them.

Waiting on the Lege to solve county jail overcrowding?

McLennan County officials say they need "help from Austin" to solve their jail overcrowding problem, but don't own up to the role of their own local decisionmakers in causing and continuing the situation. An editorial from the Waco Tribune Herald ("State lawmakers need to help county jails with overcrowding," Feb. 23) begins:

No matter how fervent you are about law and order, some people just don’t need to be taking up precious space in county jail, especially when it’s packed full and costing we the taxpayers to house them elsewhere.

That’s good enough reason for state lawmakers to iron out legal impediments that keep officials like our sheriff from using electronic ankle monitors to keep track of nonviolent, low-risk offenders.

McLennan County Judge Jim Lewis, who plans to meet with state Sen. Kip Averitt, R-Waco, and his staff this week, hopes the influential legislator can carry the bill this session. We hope so, too. We need some help from Austin.

I certainly understand why McLennan County doesn't want to pay to jail petty offenders. I don't blame them, but they don't need ankle monitors to solve the problem. Last year, Grits identified the main sources of overcrowding in Waco and suggested several approaches to reduce their jail population that the county still isn't using:

According to ... data from the Commission on Jail Standards, McLennan County has the second highest incarceration rate in Texas among counties with more than 200,000 people, incarcerating more than 4 people per 1,000 residents. More than 20% of McLennan's pretrial detainees (95 out of 473 as of April 1) are charged only with misdemeanors

More than half of McLennan's jail inmates were incarcerated awaiting trial as of April 1st, while not too many years ago the statewide average was only 30%. To get back closer to that level, judges need to more aggressively use pretrial services to vet low-level offenders for release on personal bonds.

The Sheriff, Waco PD and county commissioners should also look at implementing HB 2391 in their county, which allows officers to give citations instead of arresting for certain low-level, non-violent misdemeanors. I've argued repeatedly since it passed in 2007 that voters should reject new jail building proposals if their officials aren't using new tools available to them to reduce overcrowding, particularly the new discretion under HB 2391.

The other option McLennan commisioners should pursue is to create low-level incarceration alternatives, perhaps modeled after the day reporting center in Tyler which has saved big bucks for a comparably sized jurisdiction.

Today, little has changed. More than 21% of McLennan's pretrial detainees are misdemeanants (or they were on Feb. 1), and McLennan has risen in the ranks and now has the highest incarceration rate statewide among counties with more than 200,000 people. That's not the Legislature's fault, it's the result of choices by local police, prosecutors and judges.

Similarly, other Texas jurisdictions, most recently Austin PD, have begun using new authority granted by the Lege in 2007 to issue citations for more petty misdemeanants to reduce overcrowding and keep more officers on the street. If overcrowding is such a big problem, why hasn't Waco PD done so, or for that matter the McLennan County Sheriff?

Plus, GPS is not a panacea. If someone is a flight risk, they can easily enough detach the ankle bracelet and run. And as a recent item at Sentencing Law & Policy showed, GPS doesn't prevent crime, plus the tactic requires quite a bit of manpower to manage if it's going to serve a meaningful supervisory purpose.

While I think GPS tracking has its uses in certain, narrow circumstances, it's hardly a wholesale solution to counties' excessive use of pretrial detention. Even if the Lege granted such authority, McLennan County would need to use other tools available to them to actually effect the overcrowding problem.

If counties want the Legislature to bail them out of their home-grown jail overcrowding problems, they should at least demonstrate they're using all the tools the Legislature already gave them to address the issue.

Private prison news and notes

Several informative, recent private prison stories caught my eye and deserve Grits readers attention:

Do private prisons save money?
While I agree most of his suggestions for saving money on state corrections costs, I dispute the final contention in a column by Marc Levin from the Texas Public Policy Foundation that greater reliance on private prisons would save the state money. Such savings may be illusory if vendors skimp on healthcare and other necessities, as happened prior to two recent prison riots at a privately run immigration detention facility in Pecos. The inmates were protesting inadequate healthcare. Texas Prison Business has more on the Reeves County riots, as does Tom Barry at the America's Program Report.

Sunset, TCJS, and private jails
Additionally at Texas Prison Bidness, Nick analyzes the Sunset recommendations for the Texas Commission on Jail Standards related to privately run county jails.

The Business of Detention
Also from TPB, Bob reports that "The Business of Detention website, a project of Columbia University journalism students Renee Feltz and Stokely Baksh which analyzes CCA's growing business in immigrant detention, has been selected as a 2009 Finalist in the "Student" category at the South by Southwest Interactive Web Awards."

More speculative jail building
According to the Central Texas Business Journal, a new privately run jail in Burnet County must find out-of-county inmates to pay for expanding far beyond the county's needs.

Whitmire: Don't change TYC policy on 19-20 year olds for now

Despite a recent analysis by TYC's Ombudsman saying changes from 2007 resulted in more Texas youth being certified as adults for crimes committed as juveniles, Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman John Whitmire says the policy is unlikely to change this session, the San Antonio Express News reported yesterday ("More juvenile offenders landing in actual prison," Feb. 23):

Scores of youthful offenders are being sent straight into the adult criminal justice system - 246 of them last year alone - for crimes they committed as juveniles.

Juvenile justice advocates are blaming last year's 22 percent spike on a reform effort launched two years ago that was designed to protect younger offenders. They say young people who are easier to rehabilitate are being forced into a harsher adult setting that can't meet their needs.

After the Texas Youth Commission sex abuse scandal in 2007, state officials decided the agency would no longer handle offenders 19 to 21 - a move intended in part to protect younger children from older youths.

"It's pretty simple," said Jill Mata, Bexar County's chief juvenile prosecutor. "If we didn't have enough time to work with these kids within the juvenile justice system (before they turned 19), then we were faced with no option but to certify them as adults."

Bexar County certified 28 juveniles as adults last year, a 75 percent jump from a year earlier.

Tarrant County certified 11 juveniles as adults last year, nearly triple the number from a year earlier. Harris County saw a more modest rise in adult certifications since the TYC reforms passed in 2007, from 74 cases in 2007 to 76 last year.

Bill Hawkins, who until last month was Harris County's chief juvenile prosecutor, said the length of time a youth would have at TYC was one of the major factors for him in deciding whether to seek adult certification for particular kids. "When the window was shortened, certification became a more viable option in some cases," he said.

Texas allows juveniles as young as 14 to stand trial as adults for capital and first-degree felonies. Fifteen-year-olds can stand trial as adults for any kind of felony.

TYC ombudsman Will Harrell, who in a recent report highlighted the increase in adult certifications last year, would like to see the age limit restored to 21.

But with key lawmakers vowing to further reduce TYC's already dwindling population - calling the troubled agency a lost cause - it's not clear if there will be an appetite for raising TYC's maximum age past 18.

"We're not going to change anything at this stage," said Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee. "We need a greater sampling before we determine that there's a cause and effect. I'm not convinced."

Austin PD finally will implement citations for petty misdemeanors

After a year and a half of delay, the Austin Chronicle reports the Austin Police Department will finally begin using new authority granted to them by the Lege to issue citations instead of arresting, at the officers' discretion, for certain low-level, nonviolent misdemeanors. Reports Jordan Smith ("Cite and release in (almost full) effect," Feb. 22):

On Feb. 22, the Austin Police Department began implementing the so-called cite-and-release law, which authorizes police to forgo arresting individuals for certain misdemeanor offenses. The law does not decriminalize any of the offenses – among them, possession of small amounts of marijuana – but allows an officer, under specific conditions, to decline to book a person into jail for initial processing, thereby saving time, money, and police manpower. The law does not eliminate the possibility of eventual jail time for the Class A and B offenses covered – if convicted, a defendant could still get six months in jail for a class B offense, or up to a year for class A. “Organizational efficiency and the prioritization of resource use is critical, especially during tough economic times,” said APD Chief Art Acevedo. “We believe this process will free up our limited resources and enable our officers to focus on more serious crimes.”

APD will implement the policy, codified by lawmakers in 2007, in both Hays and Travis counties. The Travis Co. Sheriff’s Office – whose top cop, Sheriff Greg Hamilton, along with County Attorney David Escamilla, helped lawmakers write the law in 2007 – has been using the option since the end of 2007. They say it has been a good way to keep deputies in the field.

See prior, related Grits posts:

• Smart policies can boost police coverage even in tight economy
  
• Long booking times a strong argument for police using new citation authority
  
• APD finally implementing B misdemeanor citation policy
  
• Police union backs using citation authority at Austin PD
  
• With safety costs rising, why won't Austin PD use new citation authority?
  
• Nuts and bolts of citations for low-level misdemeanors explained by Travis Sheriff's Office
  
• On the source of volitional jail overcrowding in Bexar County: Why solve a problem when you can create one?
• Tyler officials should listen to voters, use new tools to reduce jail overcrowding
  
• Sheriffs more likely than PDs to welcome new arrest discretion
  
• Jefferson County works out kinks with new cite and summons authority
  
• How one Texas county will take advantage of new law to reduce jail overcrowding
• HB 2391 could save Bexar taxpayers $10,000 per day
• Cite and summons for low-level offenses could free up jail space
• Texas Lege approved new tools to reduce jail overcrowding, if police can change their thinking