Here are a few odds and ends that merit Grits readers' attention:
Press coverage dismissive of police reform efforts
Statesman coverage of the Austin police union contract portrayed opposition by "several Austin criminal justice activists," by which they mean 10 or so community organizations and hundreds of endorsing signators, not to mention a unanimous vote to reject the contract by Travis County Democratic Party precinct chairs. But sure, "several" people oppose it. smh
'Harvey deals'
When a little time has passed, Grits will be interested in seeing data on the actual extent of "Harvey deals," or plea bargains entered into by the Harris County DA to move along overburdened dockets while the courts are displaced from Hurricane Harvey. My gut tells me the effect has been overstated. Most of the misdemeanor cases described would be handled pretty quickly, anyway.
Tall tales from the annals of junk science
Junk science comes in all forms and fashions. In Bell County, the Innocence Project of Texas has a case where faulty math was submitted as evidence by the prosecution to claim a 6'3" man committed a crime which, an analysis commissioned by the Texas Forensic Science Commission found, was really committed by a man between 5'7" and 5'9." See Brandi Swicegood's story in the Dallas News.
Second look event
Promotion has been a bit sparse, but later this week at the capitol a new group called the Lone Star Justice Alliance will host an event focused on "second look" legislation seeking expanded parole opportunities for juveniles who commit serious violent offenses. (Check out a related discussion of a legislative interim charge related to youthful offenders aged 17-25 from our latest Reasonably Suspicious podcast, beginning at the 13:13 mark.)
Zombie Predictions and the Future of Bail Reform
Another one for the reading list.
Falsely confess or we'll kill you
That's what detectives are saying, in essence, to innocent suspects when they threaten them with execution if they do not confess. Adherents of the Reid technique would tell you they're trained not to use such tactics unless they're certain the suspect is guilty. Problem is, that assumes cops never get it wrong, and they sometimes do.
Known Unknowns
Read a speech from Radley Balko on the unseen problems and costs associated with the criminal-justice system.
Tuesday, November 14, 2017
Sunday, November 12, 2017
November Reasonably Suspicious Podcast: Let me be your lawyer dog, or I won't be your man at all ...
Check out the November edition of Just Liberty's Reasonably Suspicious podcast, covering Texas criminal justice policy and politics. We're coming out a little early this month to keep things on the right side of the Thanksgiving holiday. You can listen to the latest episode here, or access it on all the usual channels: iTunes, Google Play, YouTube, or SoundCloud.
If you haven't subscribed yet, take a moment to do so now to make sure you won't miss an episode. Topics this go-round include:
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Top Stories
Looking forward to criminal-justice-related interim charges at the Texas Legislature.
Rapid fire quick takes:
If you haven't subscribed yet, take a moment to do so now to make sure you won't miss an episode. Topics this go-round include:
- The Louisiana Supreme Court said a man who told police "Why don't you just give me a lawyer, dawg?" wasn't really asking for a lawyer. But this is common. A recent Texas case denied an attorney on the same basis.
- Risk assessments have come under fire from liberals for generating racial disparities. What are the implications for using them as part of Harris County bail reform?
Looking forward to criminal-justice-related interim charges at the Texas Legislature.
- Appropriate treatment, services to offenders aged 17-25 to reduce recidivism, future crime. (See an earlier podcast segment on the topic.)
- Ineffective Assistance of Counsel: Front-end and back-end solutions.
- US Supreme Court hears oral arguments in Ayestas v. Davis, seeking funds for investigation into an ineffective assistance claim.
- A state district court considers Ex Parte Flores in which the key eyewitness was subjected to hypnosis before changing her ID of the suspect. She at first told police the suspect was a white man with long hair. Mr. Flores is an Hispanic man with short hair.
Rapid fire quick takes:
- USDOJ deleted 70% of tables from the newest edition of the national Uniform Crime Reports.
- A new study says police bodycams haven't changed police behavior. Why is that?
- Rent to own furniture companies as modern debtors prisons.
Saturday, November 11, 2017
Did TDCJ lie about Harvey flooding? Plus, Jordan Edwards' killer's white supremacist past, and other stories
Here are a few odds and ends which merit Grits readers' attention while mine is focused on family matters:
Jordan Edwards' killer's alleged white-supremacist past
Roy Oliver, the Balch Springs cop who shot 15-year old Jordan Edwards, reportedly flipped off the car containing Edwards' body after the incident.. The Dallas News account included the tidbit that, in middle school, the officer was a member of a group called "Caucasians in Effect." During that period, reported the paper, he "posted swastikas in public places and hated anyone who was not caucasian." A trial date for Oliver, who has been charged with murder, has been set for January 22.
Hurricane Harvey and flooding at TDCJ
Did the Texas Department of Criminal Justice mislead the public about flooding at Beaumont-area state-run prisons? That's the allegation arising from offender accounts reported in Mother Jones. TDCJ initially did a good job of evacuating prison units in the hurricane's initial path, but when it went back out to sea and came aground again near Beaumont-Port Arthur, they weren't nearly as prepared and apparently just hunkered down. Jason Clark's denials here are so specific and strenuous that either 1) the offender accounts may be overblown or 2) something truly significant is being covered up. The flat-out contradictions of such specific inmate commentary seems unusual, even for a prison flak.
Texas deserves credit for Michael Morton Act reforms
The Marshall Project and the Fair Punishment Project both have good stories up about Brady violations by prosecutors. But it's worth mentioning that Texas' enacted one of the strongest disclosure statutes in the country when it passed the Michael Morton Act. The MP story notes this in passing, declaring that, "Now, the politics show signs of shifting, and a renewed effort is underway to push the legislature to overhaul state discovery rules, following the example of traditionally more conservative states such as North Carolina and Texas." But the Fair Punishment story does not, and referenced a couple of Texas cases from before the passage of the Michael Morton Act. Texas' statute still has some shortcomings, but it's a lot better than it was when those cases were decided.
The End of the Briseño Standards: Aftermath of a benchslapping
After the US Supreme Court benchslapped the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals over its Briseño decision in Moore v. Texas, the issue of when it's acceptable to execute the developmentally disabled is now back on their plate. I've always considered Briseño one of the best examples of "outcome-oriented judging" by the Texas CCA (although there are many others). The court intentionally used outdated scientific information and other extraneous standards for years to get around SCOTUS' Atkins' decision, and their contrarian views finally caught up to them in 2017. Now, in the wake of this latest decision, even the Harris County DA agrees Mr. Moore has an intellectual disability. But the question remains: Will the CCA continue to flout SCOTUS, or will they acquiesce? See an op ed from the head of the Special Olympics asking them to honor the Supreme court's decision. MORE: The Republican DA in Dallas County reversed course to announce she would not seek the death penalty in a case governed by the Moore decision. Such bipartisan acquiescence to the new decision by Texas DAs perhaps makes it more likely the CCA won't take it upon themselves (again) to rewrite science and SCOTUS precedent on these topics. But you never know.
The role of community groups in the Great Crime Decline
What was the role of ordinary citizens and community nonprofits in the Great Crime Decline witnessed since the early '90s? See coverage of a new study purporting to answer the question. (Spoiler alert: their answer is "some.")
Jordan Edwards' killer's alleged white-supremacist past
Roy Oliver, the Balch Springs cop who shot 15-year old Jordan Edwards, reportedly flipped off the car containing Edwards' body after the incident.. The Dallas News account included the tidbit that, in middle school, the officer was a member of a group called "Caucasians in Effect." During that period, reported the paper, he "posted swastikas in public places and hated anyone who was not caucasian." A trial date for Oliver, who has been charged with murder, has been set for January 22.
Hurricane Harvey and flooding at TDCJ
Did the Texas Department of Criminal Justice mislead the public about flooding at Beaumont-area state-run prisons? That's the allegation arising from offender accounts reported in Mother Jones. TDCJ initially did a good job of evacuating prison units in the hurricane's initial path, but when it went back out to sea and came aground again near Beaumont-Port Arthur, they weren't nearly as prepared and apparently just hunkered down. Jason Clark's denials here are so specific and strenuous that either 1) the offender accounts may be overblown or 2) something truly significant is being covered up. The flat-out contradictions of such specific inmate commentary seems unusual, even for a prison flak.
Texas deserves credit for Michael Morton Act reforms
The Marshall Project and the Fair Punishment Project both have good stories up about Brady violations by prosecutors. But it's worth mentioning that Texas' enacted one of the strongest disclosure statutes in the country when it passed the Michael Morton Act. The MP story notes this in passing, declaring that, "Now, the politics show signs of shifting, and a renewed effort is underway to push the legislature to overhaul state discovery rules, following the example of traditionally more conservative states such as North Carolina and Texas." But the Fair Punishment story does not, and referenced a couple of Texas cases from before the passage of the Michael Morton Act. Texas' statute still has some shortcomings, but it's a lot better than it was when those cases were decided.
The End of the Briseño Standards: Aftermath of a benchslapping
After the US Supreme Court benchslapped the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals over its Briseño decision in Moore v. Texas, the issue of when it's acceptable to execute the developmentally disabled is now back on their plate. I've always considered Briseño one of the best examples of "outcome-oriented judging" by the Texas CCA (although there are many others). The court intentionally used outdated scientific information and other extraneous standards for years to get around SCOTUS' Atkins' decision, and their contrarian views finally caught up to them in 2017. Now, in the wake of this latest decision, even the Harris County DA agrees Mr. Moore has an intellectual disability. But the question remains: Will the CCA continue to flout SCOTUS, or will they acquiesce? See an op ed from the head of the Special Olympics asking them to honor the Supreme court's decision. MORE: The Republican DA in Dallas County reversed course to announce she would not seek the death penalty in a case governed by the Moore decision. Such bipartisan acquiescence to the new decision by Texas DAs perhaps makes it more likely the CCA won't take it upon themselves (again) to rewrite science and SCOTUS precedent on these topics. But you never know.
The role of community groups in the Great Crime Decline
What was the role of ordinary citizens and community nonprofits in the Great Crime Decline witnessed since the early '90s? See coverage of a new study purporting to answer the question. (Spoiler alert: their answer is "some.")
As DRT-boxes track Texans from planes, considering options for restricting government cell-phone surveillance
The Texas National Guard is using so-called IMSI catchers, aka "Stingrays" or "DRT-boxes (read: Dirt Boxes, which are IMSI catchers attached to airplanes or drones), which are fake cell towers used to trick your phone into routing its call through government surveillance technology instead of your carrier. See an excellent article by Melissa del Bosque, with one caveat. She quoted Austin attorney Scott McCollough declaring:
For several years, your correspondent was part of a coalition which, for a couple of sessions, made a big push at the Texas Legislature to require warrants for the government to gather people's cell-phone location data, which implicates how the Stingrays/DRT boxes are used. But despite more than 2/3 of the Texas House signing onto the bill, it couldn't clear the senate. So we dropped that bill in 2017, though the rise of a new Speaker could reinvigorate the effort in 2019. (Who knows, maybe one of the past supporters will become Speaker next. Most of them were supporters.)
Alternatively, the US Supreme Court is about to hear a case dubbed Carpenter which could end up deciding that warrants should be required for the government to gather and use personal cell-phone location data, which could moot the legislative push for a warrant.
Regardless, use of this tech has expanded beyond the capacity of existing constitutional and legislative structures to restrain it. Whether such restraints come from the judiciary or legislative sources, or more likely both, to me matters little. Folks like Orin Kerr who insist that only legislation is an appropriate solution are IMO disingenuously using the distinction to argue for doing nothing. In this situation, a vacuum of authority is what allowed the government to use these emerging technologies to track average Americans in the first place. Both branches - legislatures and the judiciary - have a role to play in in preserving Fourth Amendment rights and updating their interpretation to match 21st century realities. It's not enough to protect our "papers" anymore, the cell-phone era exposes much more data about us than just what we write down.
The fact that, in light of that vacuum, the executive branch will use surveillance technology not forbidden to it shouldn't surprise anyone. Texas had a chance to restrict this sort of surveillance tech and didn't do it. So government surveillance is what we get, until one or both of the other two branches step up to stop it.
“These DRT boxes are far more capable than the old Stingrays,” McCollough said, “The old-style Stingrays were not able to capture content. Guess what? The DRT box is. … These newer ones get everything.”McCollough knows more than most about the law surrounding cell phone surveillance (some of his clients are small cell-phone companies which must comply with law enforcement requests for customer data). But he's wrong about the tech. The old Stingrays also gathered content, by definition, since the entire call including content is routed through the Stingray, bypassing commercial cell phone towers. And as of 2013, they were already selling an "interception model" of the Stingray for which gathering content was an option.
For several years, your correspondent was part of a coalition which, for a couple of sessions, made a big push at the Texas Legislature to require warrants for the government to gather people's cell-phone location data, which implicates how the Stingrays/DRT boxes are used. But despite more than 2/3 of the Texas House signing onto the bill, it couldn't clear the senate. So we dropped that bill in 2017, though the rise of a new Speaker could reinvigorate the effort in 2019. (Who knows, maybe one of the past supporters will become Speaker next. Most of them were supporters.)
Alternatively, the US Supreme Court is about to hear a case dubbed Carpenter which could end up deciding that warrants should be required for the government to gather and use personal cell-phone location data, which could moot the legislative push for a warrant.
Regardless, use of this tech has expanded beyond the capacity of existing constitutional and legislative structures to restrain it. Whether such restraints come from the judiciary or legislative sources, or more likely both, to me matters little. Folks like Orin Kerr who insist that only legislation is an appropriate solution are IMO disingenuously using the distinction to argue for doing nothing. In this situation, a vacuum of authority is what allowed the government to use these emerging technologies to track average Americans in the first place. Both branches - legislatures and the judiciary - have a role to play in in preserving Fourth Amendment rights and updating their interpretation to match 21st century realities. It's not enough to protect our "papers" anymore, the cell-phone era exposes much more data about us than just what we write down.
The fact that, in light of that vacuum, the executive branch will use surveillance technology not forbidden to it shouldn't surprise anyone. Texas had a chance to restrict this sort of surveillance tech and didn't do it. So government surveillance is what we get, until one or both of the other two branches step up to stop it.
Friday, November 10, 2017
New TJJD sex-abuse allegations recall similar, but different '07 scandals
For anyone paying attention a decade ago, news of sex-assault allegations against staff at a Texas youth prison in Gainesville brings on a deja vu feeling regarding the Texas Youth Commission scandals in Pyote, an episode which ultimately brought down the agency and sent its successor down a tumultuous path toward reducing incarceration levels by 75 percent.
Now, "At least four former staff members at the Gainesville State School, including a woman allegedly pregnant with a youthful offender's child, are facing prison time amid allegations of sexual misconduct at the state lockup for troubled youths," reported Brandi Grissom-Swicegood and Sue Ambrose at the Dallas News.
And everyone who was around in 2007 drops their heads and thinks, "Oh no, not again."
These troubles mirror problems witnessed at the adult system, where sexual misconduct by staff at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) is a big source of federal Prison Rape Elimination Act violations. The Texas Association Against Sexual Assault has recommended the Legislature create an independent oversight mechanism at TDCJ comparable to the Ombudsman created for TJJD after the 2007 scandals.
Which brings us to the big difference between this scandal and the last one: The perpetrators were caught by the government itself, not by reporters following up leads given to legislative staff by family members of raped constituents. And the perpetrators were promptly arrested and prosecuted. The agency culture that tolerated such behavior has shifted dramatically. So that part of the system worked better than last time, one notices.
And to be fair, that's really all the Legislature's reforms after 2007 were supposed to do. As the agency reduced the population in youth prisons, it was pressed along the way for commensurate budget cuts, even though most of the facilities are chronically understaffed and suffer from among the highest staff turnover rates of any state agency. That's because of low pay, crappy working conditions, and the location of the facilities in mainly rural areas where the labor pool is either dissipating or otherwise occupied.
As a result, the agency has mainly improved the lot of youth under its care by reducing their number, with the Legislature financing (mostly cheaper) community supervision programming in lieu of housing them in state youth prisons. If those reductions had afforded the agency a chance to improve staff-to-youth ratios more aggressively, or to invest the savings in programming, it would be easier to make a case for them.
But in their current state, it's hard to argue for keeping them around at all. When activists like Angela Davis talk about "abolishing" prisons on the adult side, Grits must admit I roll my eyes. But on the juvenile side, I'm all the way there. Funding community-based programs in lieu of incarcerating youth in state-run prisons empirically has worked. Youth crime in Texas plummeted at even greater rates than crime overall when Texas shifted most offending youth into local systems.
Expanding on that model for the last thousand-or-so kids left in Texas youth prisons would also afford the chance to shift to smaller-scale units run on a more treatment-centric basis. In an ideal world, the Lege would finance locally controlled facilities reconfigured according to best practices like those endorsed a decade ago by a "blue ribbon commission," whose recommendations the Legislature first eagerly commissioned and then, when they proved inconvenient and expensive, ignored.
The blue-ribbon panel recommended the state move to smaller facilities modeled after Missouri's juvenile system, and put the era of housing juveniles in large units with hundreds of bunkmates behind us. Instead, they depopulated youth prisons, but continued to run the ones that remained on the old, large-scale warehousing model.
The other option floated periodically is to hand the system over to TDCJ to run. But as noted above, TDCJ has trouble preventing inappropriate staff relations and contraband at its adult units, which fails to inspire confidence that they'd do any better running juvenile facilities. Plus, when TDCJ executives were brought in to run TYC after the original scandals were uncovered in 2007, their skill sets did not translate to the juvenile realm and their leadership was (if we are to be frank) an unmitigated catastrophe. So as solutions go, I see that one as a pig in a poke. It could invite new troubles and wouldn't necessarily solve anything.
Anyway, that's Grits' initial takeaway from this dispiriting news out of Gainesville: The mechanisms the Legislature created to identify, prosecute and punish sexual misconduct by staff actually appear to have worked. But the corrections culture that produces these illicit relationships at TJJD and TDCJ continues to afford opportunities for predatory behavior.
So we're better at catching and punishing predators. What hasn't worked is warehousing youth in large state facilities a decade after the experts recommended breaking them up. Texas was told ten years ago it needed to shift to smaller, treatment-based programs, locally controlled and located near their own communities. And with these problems recurring, maybe it's time state leaders finally heeded those suggestions.
Now, "At least four former staff members at the Gainesville State School, including a woman allegedly pregnant with a youthful offender's child, are facing prison time amid allegations of sexual misconduct at the state lockup for troubled youths," reported Brandi Grissom-Swicegood and Sue Ambrose at the Dallas News.
And everyone who was around in 2007 drops their heads and thinks, "Oh no, not again."
These troubles mirror problems witnessed at the adult system, where sexual misconduct by staff at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) is a big source of federal Prison Rape Elimination Act violations. The Texas Association Against Sexual Assault has recommended the Legislature create an independent oversight mechanism at TDCJ comparable to the Ombudsman created for TJJD after the 2007 scandals.
Which brings us to the big difference between this scandal and the last one: The perpetrators were caught by the government itself, not by reporters following up leads given to legislative staff by family members of raped constituents. And the perpetrators were promptly arrested and prosecuted. The agency culture that tolerated such behavior has shifted dramatically. So that part of the system worked better than last time, one notices.
And to be fair, that's really all the Legislature's reforms after 2007 were supposed to do. As the agency reduced the population in youth prisons, it was pressed along the way for commensurate budget cuts, even though most of the facilities are chronically understaffed and suffer from among the highest staff turnover rates of any state agency. That's because of low pay, crappy working conditions, and the location of the facilities in mainly rural areas where the labor pool is either dissipating or otherwise occupied.
As a result, the agency has mainly improved the lot of youth under its care by reducing their number, with the Legislature financing (mostly cheaper) community supervision programming in lieu of housing them in state youth prisons. If those reductions had afforded the agency a chance to improve staff-to-youth ratios more aggressively, or to invest the savings in programming, it would be easier to make a case for them.
But in their current state, it's hard to argue for keeping them around at all. When activists like Angela Davis talk about "abolishing" prisons on the adult side, Grits must admit I roll my eyes. But on the juvenile side, I'm all the way there. Funding community-based programs in lieu of incarcerating youth in state-run prisons empirically has worked. Youth crime in Texas plummeted at even greater rates than crime overall when Texas shifted most offending youth into local systems.
Expanding on that model for the last thousand-or-so kids left in Texas youth prisons would also afford the chance to shift to smaller-scale units run on a more treatment-centric basis. In an ideal world, the Lege would finance locally controlled facilities reconfigured according to best practices like those endorsed a decade ago by a "blue ribbon commission," whose recommendations the Legislature first eagerly commissioned and then, when they proved inconvenient and expensive, ignored.
The blue-ribbon panel recommended the state move to smaller facilities modeled after Missouri's juvenile system, and put the era of housing juveniles in large units with hundreds of bunkmates behind us. Instead, they depopulated youth prisons, but continued to run the ones that remained on the old, large-scale warehousing model.
The other option floated periodically is to hand the system over to TDCJ to run. But as noted above, TDCJ has trouble preventing inappropriate staff relations and contraband at its adult units, which fails to inspire confidence that they'd do any better running juvenile facilities. Plus, when TDCJ executives were brought in to run TYC after the original scandals were uncovered in 2007, their skill sets did not translate to the juvenile realm and their leadership was (if we are to be frank) an unmitigated catastrophe. So as solutions go, I see that one as a pig in a poke. It could invite new troubles and wouldn't necessarily solve anything.
Anyway, that's Grits' initial takeaway from this dispiriting news out of Gainesville: The mechanisms the Legislature created to identify, prosecute and punish sexual misconduct by staff actually appear to have worked. But the corrections culture that produces these illicit relationships at TJJD and TDCJ continues to afford opportunities for predatory behavior.
So we're better at catching and punishing predators. What hasn't worked is warehousing youth in large state facilities a decade after the experts recommended breaking them up. Texas was told ten years ago it needed to shift to smaller, treatment-based programs, locally controlled and located near their own communities. And with these problems recurring, maybe it's time state leaders finally heeded those suggestions.
A primer for police union leaders on making "the guilty innocent" after a high-profile incident
In the October episode of Just Liberty's Reasonably Suspicious podcast, we included a segment analyzing Chapter 11 of a new book on police-union politics called "Law Enforcement, Police Unions, and the Future," coauthored by Ron DeLord, formerly of the Combined Law Enforcement Associations of Texas. That chapter is titled, "What every union leader should know about dealing with the media in a high profile incident," and opens with this quote from Malcolm X: "The media's the most powerful entity on earth. They have the power to make the innocent guilty and the guilty innocent, and that's power, because they control the minds of the masses."
My colleague Sukyi McMahon added a little slideshow to the excerpted segment to jazz it up a bit. If you didn't hear it the first time, or even if you did, check out this version:
Coming up tomorrow: A discussion of Austin's police-union contract and why local advocates are seeking to end instead of renew it.
My colleague Sukyi McMahon added a little slideshow to the excerpted segment to jazz it up a bit. If you didn't hear it the first time, or even if you did, check out this version:
Coming up tomorrow: A discussion of Austin's police-union contract and why local advocates are seeking to end instead of renew it.
Wednesday, November 08, 2017
What is a DA's role in dictating police overtime pay?
Over the summer, Grits highlighted perverse incentives created by overtime rules in police union contracts that give officers extra pay for time they appear in court, honing in on the subject in July's Reasonably Suspicious podcast. Some officers have gamed the system to extract exorbitant amounts of overtime pay which not infrequently can exceed an officer's annual salary.
So I was interested to see in coverage of the Philadelphia DA's race this tidbit about why the local police union opposed the ultimately victorious reform candidate:
So I was interested to see in coverage of the Philadelphia DA's race this tidbit about why the local police union opposed the ultimately victorious reform candidate:
Why is [the union] so afraid to see [Larry] Krasner as Philly’s head prosectuor? Because he will lose the ability to protect “bad apples” and their overtime pay.
According to Open Data Philly, in 2016 some police officers and detectives earned $100,000 in overtime, more than doubling their salary. The way most police officers make overtime is by appearing in court. If the DA’s office brings charges after an arrest, the cop will most likely be called to testify. In Philadelphia, every time officers appear in court off-shift, they receive a minimum of two hours of overtime pay. This is a clear financial incentive for cops to arrest as many people as possible, and might explain why in 2016 one in four pedestrian stops made by Philadelphia police was deemed unconstitutional.
Krasner’s campaign platform pledges that he will “end this practice [stop-and-frisk] by refusing to bring to trial cases stemming from illegal frisks and searches.” McNesby’s main concern as a union representative is the compensation of FOP members. Unfortunately, those members work in a system that rewards civil rights violations. Cops who abuse civil rights to increase their salary will be hurt if Krasner is the next DA.
Your correspondent had not heretofore made the connection between local DA policies and the ability of police officers to max out overtime. Not only do cities incentivize court time through contracts, but DAs through scheduling conceivably could have an enormous impact on how much overtime a given officer makes. I hadn't considered that.
Regardless, this is evidence that officers gaming the system to maximize overtime pay for court appearances isn't just a Houston, or an Austin, or just a Texas problem, but instead is something with which many cities are struggling. They get these overly generous provisions in their contracts, then act surprised when officers behave in a way to maximize their own self interest. But the officers ultimately are not the ones to blame. Rather, those who allowed such policies to be enacted in the first place are primarily culpable for the problem. And in many cases, it can only be rectified once every few years when the union contract comes up for renewal.
Sunday, November 05, 2017
Optical illusions for traffic calming?
Society spends a lot of money on the question, "how do you get drivers to slow down and pay attention?" From traffic engineers to law enforcement to public-education campaigns - none seem to have good solutions. (Well, the traffic engineers do, but most cities aren't willing to re-imagine their fundamental ways of doing things.)
No word yet on evidence whether or not the tactic works. But there's plenty of evidence that it's awesome! Some others are even more artsy and elaborate.
H/T: Adafruit.
But in Iceland they're pioneering a traffic calming method which requires only a few buckets of paint: Creating optical illusions at pedestrian crosswalks. Check it out:
No word yet on evidence whether or not the tactic works. But there's plenty of evidence that it's awesome! Some others are even more artsy and elaborate.
H/T: Adafruit.
Texas should now look to other states for justice-reform solutions
Texas Sen. John Cornyn keeps touting the "Texas model" for reducing incarceration, and has signed onto federal reform proposals. But Texas' big probation/parole reforms were more than a decade ago now and - aside from raising the property-theft thresholds in 2015 to keep up with inflation - the state hasn't done much since.
Thankfully, the models for what state-level criminal-justice reform might look like are proliferating, and becoming more interesting.
That said, Texas' past actions are still having a residual effect of helping spur change in other states. In Massachusetts, blue-state officials were in part shamed into action because so many red states had taken the lead. “When states like Texas, Alabama and Georgia are leading criminal justice reform, something is wrong with the picture,” [a leading Democrat] said. “Many of these policies have not been reviewed or revised in generations. We need to sweep out the cobwebs.”
But as a Texan, my concern is what goes on within our borders, not becoming a symbol that encourages other states to change. And Texas' reforms have stalled.
Last session, a Republican committee chairman who's now a Speaker candidate (Phil King) filed legislation to reduce the lowest-level drug penalties and use the savings for treatment. But the probation directors killed that pretty easily because they don't want to lose more-lucrative felons from their probation rolls (they're paid less for misdemeanor probationers, who also stay on supervision a shorter period of time). Since money from penalty-reduction savings would be available, there should be ways to resolve that. But the probation directors refused to budge, and the Lege was too focused on bathrooms and immigration to interrogate that self-interested and counterproductive opposition.
Advocates have been beating our heads against that particular door for a few sessions now, so maybe it's time to consider reforms happening elsewhere and retool our approach. Texas has become known nationally for its 2007 decarceration push. But that was a long time ago now. Among reformers nationally, Texas is also becoming known for talking a big reform game without really delivering results to match. (After all, we do have the largest prison population of any American state!) After a decade of telling other states they should model themselves on Texas, it's probably time we began looking at other jurisdictions more closely to crib a few good ideas from them.
Thankfully, the models for what state-level criminal-justice reform might look like are proliferating, and becoming more interesting.
- Oklahoma voters last year approved reclassifying low-level drug possession from a felony to a misdemeanor.
- Massachusetts' reforms included raising the age of adult culpability to 19 years old and repealing mandatory minimums, including for drug sales in school zones. (In Texas, 17-year olds are charged as adults, and drug-sales in school zones trigger major enhancements.)
- Louisiana's reforms included reducing the harshest sentences for some violent offenders, as well as good-time policies which have spurred early releases.
- Illinois' reforms centered on addressing untreated trauma, improving reentry prospects (including record expungement), giving judges more control over sentencing, and requiring defense attorneys be present at bail hearings.
- Georgia reduced probation lengths and focused most community supervision resources on the earliest period people are on probation, creating incentives for probationers to earn early release through good behavior.
- In California, a federal judge ordered the state to release inmates if it couldn't solve severe overcrowding problems, spurring voters to reduce penalties for certain drug possession cases and to begin housing some state prisoners in county jails. (Texas may need to rent county jail space if too many more of its inmates fall under the federal court order mandating air conditioning for prisoners with "heat-sensitive" conditions.)
That said, Texas' past actions are still having a residual effect of helping spur change in other states. In Massachusetts, blue-state officials were in part shamed into action because so many red states had taken the lead. “When states like Texas, Alabama and Georgia are leading criminal justice reform, something is wrong with the picture,” [a leading Democrat] said. “Many of these policies have not been reviewed or revised in generations. We need to sweep out the cobwebs.”
But as a Texan, my concern is what goes on within our borders, not becoming a symbol that encourages other states to change. And Texas' reforms have stalled.
Last session, a Republican committee chairman who's now a Speaker candidate (Phil King) filed legislation to reduce the lowest-level drug penalties and use the savings for treatment. But the probation directors killed that pretty easily because they don't want to lose more-lucrative felons from their probation rolls (they're paid less for misdemeanor probationers, who also stay on supervision a shorter period of time). Since money from penalty-reduction savings would be available, there should be ways to resolve that. But the probation directors refused to budge, and the Lege was too focused on bathrooms and immigration to interrogate that self-interested and counterproductive opposition.
Advocates have been beating our heads against that particular door for a few sessions now, so maybe it's time to consider reforms happening elsewhere and retool our approach. Texas has become known nationally for its 2007 decarceration push. But that was a long time ago now. Among reformers nationally, Texas is also becoming known for talking a big reform game without really delivering results to match. (After all, we do have the largest prison population of any American state!) After a decade of telling other states they should model themselves on Texas, it's probably time we began looking at other jurisdictions more closely to crib a few good ideas from them.
Saturday, November 04, 2017
DRP surcharges impinging on post-Harvey rebound for thousands of Texans
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| Image H/T: TCJC |
Ultimately, the Legislature should abolish the DRP entirely. But until they take that step, the Department of Public Safety has authority to grant amnesty. And this sort of large-scale emergency clearly justifies taking every possible step to get people in the region street-legal and back to work.
This post was updated to clarify that the Harvey-related delay in DRP payments for debtors in affected counties is now over.
"Lawyer dog" incident hardly unique; judges like loopholes that deny counsel
In the same vein, Texas 14th Court of Appeals in Texas ruled on October 31st that a defendant who said he wanted to call his sister to ask her to get him a lawyer also didn't unambiguously say he wanted a lawyer. In part, that's because the detective kept interrupting him to keep him from being more explicit! And at the end of the day, the ploy worked! The appellate court said the defendant's desire for representation was insufficiently explicit to be binding, even though it's obvious to any sentient person he wanted an attorney because it was "the only option I have."
This garbage has been going on as long as I've been around the criminal-justice arena and it's indefensible. When someone says they want a lawyer, cops should stop questioning them until they get one. Instead, they look for loopholes to argue that's not what the defendant really meant, and, since judges are reluctant both to throw out confessions or to make counties pay for counsel when defendants are indigent, they routinely allow those sorts of legalistic workarounds. It's bullshit, but the practice is as common as pine trees in East Texas.
Wednesday, November 01, 2017
Massive 4-part study offers justice-reform suggestions
This four-volume behemoth - funded by the Charles Koch Foundation, produced by the Arizona State Law School, and authored by some of the most distinguished minds in the criminal-justice reform realm - has so much good stuff in it it nearly makes Grits' head spin.
- Volume 1: Introduction and Criminalization
- Volume 2: Policing
- Volume 3: Pretrial and Trial Processes
- Volume 4: Punishment, Incarceration, and Release
Checking in on opposition to Austin police union contract
After the final, negotiated police-union contract in Austin failed to include most reform recommendations from the Austin Justice Coalition and its growing array of allies, police reformers along with anti-tax advocates are now openly asking the City Council to not renew the contract, which will slather officers who are already the state's most highly paid with more than $80 million in new raises and new benefits (like the "patrol stipend" that pays patrol officers more for ... wait for it ... patrolling). The union will vote on the contract soon (it includes a $1,000 "signing bonus" for every officer), and the Austin City Council is scheduled to consider it in December.
Austin can avoid those extra costs and save millions more without harming officer pay by letting the contract expire. And, by all accounts, we would lose scarce little in real-world police accountability. Indeed, arguably accountability in some ways would improve.
For example, Austin PD automatically reduces suspensions to lower-level infractions that aren't subject to open records or even criminal discovery, according to this analysis from the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition. My wife, Kathy Mitchell, works at TCJC and authored the report. She opined in the press release, “No private sector employer or HR department would agree that a boss should not be able to consider an employee’s past serious misconduct if that employee violates the rules again later.” That's pretty decent messaging, don't you think? It emphasizes the degree to which Austin cops receive unusually special treatment under the contract.
In addition, Kathy/TCJC recently published another analysis detailing numerous reform recommendations for the Austin Police Department from its civilian review panel. APD has never implemented any of them. See also an executive summary and an appendix.
These two reports together show why local accountability advocates don't care if the civilian review panel is abolished. It's been in place nearly two decades and has never spurred meaningful change at APD. Meanwhile other, portions of the contract actually make police less accountable.
On our latest Reasonably Suspicious podcast, Kathy and Sukyi McMahon from Just Liberty discussed local advocacy surrounding the police contract and why they ended up opposing it. Here's that segment, excerpted, give it a listen:
RELATED: See also a speech by Campaign Zero's Sam Sinyangwe explaining why Austin's police union contract ranks as one of the worst and least accountable in the country.
Austin can avoid those extra costs and save millions more without harming officer pay by letting the contract expire. And, by all accounts, we would lose scarce little in real-world police accountability. Indeed, arguably accountability in some ways would improve.
For example, Austin PD automatically reduces suspensions to lower-level infractions that aren't subject to open records or even criminal discovery, according to this analysis from the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition. My wife, Kathy Mitchell, works at TCJC and authored the report. She opined in the press release, “No private sector employer or HR department would agree that a boss should not be able to consider an employee’s past serious misconduct if that employee violates the rules again later.” That's pretty decent messaging, don't you think? It emphasizes the degree to which Austin cops receive unusually special treatment under the contract.
In addition, Kathy/TCJC recently published another analysis detailing numerous reform recommendations for the Austin Police Department from its civilian review panel. APD has never implemented any of them. See also an executive summary and an appendix.
These two reports together show why local accountability advocates don't care if the civilian review panel is abolished. It's been in place nearly two decades and has never spurred meaningful change at APD. Meanwhile other, portions of the contract actually make police less accountable.
On our latest Reasonably Suspicious podcast, Kathy and Sukyi McMahon from Just Liberty discussed local advocacy surrounding the police contract and why they ended up opposing it. Here's that segment, excerpted, give it a listen:
RELATED: See also a speech by Campaign Zero's Sam Sinyangwe explaining why Austin's police union contract ranks as one of the worst and least accountable in the country.
Comings and Goings
A few movement-related personnel matters merit Grits readers' attention:
In a particularly unfortunate blow, for this writer, anyway, Becky Bernhardt is leaving the Texas Fair Defense Project and Susanne Pringle is taking over as interim executive director. Susanne's wonderful, but I'll miss Becky at TFDP. She ramped up their advocacy quite a bit and accomplished a great deal during her tenure there. She also gave me a place to volunteer, feel welcome and supported during a recent stretch of unemployment during the months before Just Liberty launched. In fact, Becky's a Grits for Breakfast contributing writer, a board member at Just Liberty and has been supportive of my work for years. If you want to celebrate her on the way out the door, TFDP's annual luncheon/fundraiser on Friday in Austin may still have a few seats available.
At the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Marc Levin was named their new Vice President for Criminal Justice Policy and his #2, Derek Cohen, who as fate would have it is our board chair at Just Liberty, became Director of the Center for Effective Justice and leader of the Right on Crime Campaign. Congrats to both men. It's good to see criminal-justice reform given a full-blown seat at the leadership table at the state's principle right-wing think tank.
The Texas Forensic Science Commission has hired Jody Koehler, DNA section manager at the Texas Department of Public Safety crime lab division, as their new Scientific Adviser. That would be a fascinating but tough job. Glad they hired someone who will be familiar with the DNA mixture controversy, as well as Texas crime-lab people and practices.
The Texas Indigent Defense Commission hired Geoffrey Burkhart, a public defender out of Illinois, to replace Jim Bethke as executive director. I don't know Mr. Burkhart but look forward to meeting him; he has big shoes to fill.
Brete Anderson, a long-time staffer for state Rep. Senfronia Thompson, has officially retired, though it's possible we may see him back working for some other legislator in 2019. He's one of those staffers behind the scenes whom the public never hears about but who makes things happen. Good luck, Brete, wherever you land.
Speaking of legislative staffers, Terra Tucker has left Chairman John Whitmire's staff on the Senate Criminal Justice Committee to work for the Alliance for Safety and Justice, a national reform group.
Jason Clark, the Public Information Officer at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, has been named Deputy Chief of Staff, the agency announced on Twitter.
Finally, congrats to Chris Harris on his new gig crunching numbers for Grassroots Leadership. They found themselves a good'un.
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| Scott Henson and Becky Bernhardt |
At the Texas Public Policy Foundation, Marc Levin was named their new Vice President for Criminal Justice Policy and his #2, Derek Cohen, who as fate would have it is our board chair at Just Liberty, became Director of the Center for Effective Justice and leader of the Right on Crime Campaign. Congrats to both men. It's good to see criminal-justice reform given a full-blown seat at the leadership table at the state's principle right-wing think tank.
The Texas Forensic Science Commission has hired Jody Koehler, DNA section manager at the Texas Department of Public Safety crime lab division, as their new Scientific Adviser. That would be a fascinating but tough job. Glad they hired someone who will be familiar with the DNA mixture controversy, as well as Texas crime-lab people and practices.
The Texas Indigent Defense Commission hired Geoffrey Burkhart, a public defender out of Illinois, to replace Jim Bethke as executive director. I don't know Mr. Burkhart but look forward to meeting him; he has big shoes to fill.
Brete Anderson, a long-time staffer for state Rep. Senfronia Thompson, has officially retired, though it's possible we may see him back working for some other legislator in 2019. He's one of those staffers behind the scenes whom the public never hears about but who makes things happen. Good luck, Brete, wherever you land.
Speaking of legislative staffers, Terra Tucker has left Chairman John Whitmire's staff on the Senate Criminal Justice Committee to work for the Alliance for Safety and Justice, a national reform group.
Jason Clark, the Public Information Officer at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, has been named Deputy Chief of Staff, the agency announced on Twitter.
Finally, congrats to Chris Harris on his new gig crunching numbers for Grassroots Leadership. They found themselves a good'un.
Monday, October 30, 2017
Interview: Campaign Zero's Sam Sinyangwe
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| Scott Henson and Sam Sinyangwe |
For more background, check out a speech Sinyangwe gave in Austin last month (audio/transcript/materials) detailing specific criticisms of Austin's police contract. Find a transcript of our interview after the jump.
Saturday, October 28, 2017
Rent-to-own stores get special debtors-prison privileges
When Grits uses the phrase "debtors prisons" in the 21st century context, I'm typically talking about the practice of government jailing people for unpaid fines and traffic tickets, a practice which has expanded to a breathtaking scale in the last couple of decades.
But rent-to-own stores in Texas and elsewhere still utilize jails as debtors prisons the old fashioned way: By having local prosecutors file criminal charges against people who can't pay their private debts to a commercial vendor, the Texas Tribune reported. "[T]he 1977 provision turned the concept of 'innocent until proven guilty' on its head." Back then,
MORE: From NerdWallet. AND MORE: From the Texas Tribune. AND: From the Dallas News: "What are you in jail for? I rented a couch."
But rent-to-own stores in Texas and elsewhere still utilize jails as debtors prisons the old fashioned way: By having local prosecutors file criminal charges against people who can't pay their private debts to a commercial vendor, the Texas Tribune reported. "[T]he 1977 provision turned the concept of 'innocent until proven guilty' on its head." Back then,
“The Legislature, in this business-friendly environment ... was all too eager to allow commercial interests to use the criminal statutes to clean up bad decisions they may have made in entering into contracts with people,” said Tom Krampitz, who was assistant director of the Texas District and County Attorneys Association when the bill was passed. “The reason why the [rental] industry deserves a special deal, without sounding too jaded, is they had a good lobbyist.”Regular readers will perhaps be unsurprised to learn that McLennan County DA Abel Reyna ranks among the worst offenders. "[R]ent-to-own disputes made up 98 percent of the theft of service complaints filed with the Waco and Bellmead police departments from 2014 through the first half of 2017."
MORE: From NerdWallet. AND MORE: From the Texas Tribune. AND: From the Dallas News: "What are you in jail for? I rented a couch."
Friday, October 27, 2017
Of strawmen, bodycams, underdeveloped brains, and Twin Peaks DA buffoonery
Here's a quick roundup of items of likely interest to Grits readers that will also allow me to clear my browser tabs.
Reyna recuses self from Twin Peaks cases
As the Twin Peaks biker shooting cases begin to head to trial, McLennan Co. DA Abel Reyna has begun to recuse himself from the cases. Although he's denied before now that his office is under investigation by the feds, that investigation is the reason he's asking for a recusal. And the truth may be about to come out, anyway. On Monday, according to to a defense court filing, "Testimony from six witnesses will be introduced as evidence in an effort to show FBI agents have been investigating Reyna." What a zoo! Grits would place the Over-Under at how many felony convictions they might obtain in the end - out of 177 initial arrests - at about 1.5. (Post your guesses in the comments.) And I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to be zero. By all accounts from those who've gone through the evidence, the actual shooters are all dead. And most of the people arrested at the scene, apparently on DA Abel Reyna's orders, committed no crime.
New approaches for 17-25 year olds among TX legislative foci for interim
More on this later, but here are the Texas House and Senate interim charges, which include a number of criminal-justice-related topics. Grits was particularly pleased to see the House Corrections Committee receive an interim charge on the appropriate criminal-justice approach to 17-25 year olds whose brains have not yet finished developing, a topic which was the subject of this Reasonably Suspicious podcast segment from August.
Transparency would make bodycams more useful
IMO, the reason body cameras have had little impact on police behavior is that most of the footage is secret or very difficult to acquire. So it's become a source of secret information to which for the most part only police have access instead of a means to hold police accountable. Texas' body cam law is far too opaque. That footage should be subject to the same open records rules as we've had for dashcams for nearly 20 years, with little ill effect.
DOJ eliminates nearly 70% of UCR data tables
The first Trumpian Uniform Crime Reports from the FBI deleted nearly 70 percent of the data tables, Fivethirtyeight.com reported. This makes me alternatively want to cry and physically attack the person responsible. It's as though DOJ has figured out that, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, and so has decided to blind the public by eliminating the information experts rely upon to evaluate criminal-justice trends. Embarrassing and pointless. The feds need that data as much as anyone. This is government shooting itself in the foot.
Pfaff review corroborates Grits on 'strawman' claim
A review of John Pfaff's book Locked In in the Boston Review (combined with a review of James Forman Jr.'s Locking Up Our Own) reiterated Grits' assertion that the "Standard Story" Pfaff purported to debunk amounted to a "strawman." See related Grits commentary. Bottom line: Pfaff's big contribution to debates over mass incarceration was to highlight how prosecutors increased the rates at which they sought convictions, even as crime and the number of arrests declined. But many of his other claims were overstated. And his prescriptions for which priorities the movement should embrace hinged on false assumptions, were mired in error, and recommended strategies which would have significantly set back the progress being made. One will learn a lot from reading Prof. Pfaff's book, as long as one doesn't fall into the trap of following its advice.
Reyna recuses self from Twin Peaks cases
As the Twin Peaks biker shooting cases begin to head to trial, McLennan Co. DA Abel Reyna has begun to recuse himself from the cases. Although he's denied before now that his office is under investigation by the feds, that investigation is the reason he's asking for a recusal. And the truth may be about to come out, anyway. On Monday, according to to a defense court filing, "Testimony from six witnesses will be introduced as evidence in an effort to show FBI agents have been investigating Reyna." What a zoo! Grits would place the Over-Under at how many felony convictions they might obtain in the end - out of 177 initial arrests - at about 1.5. (Post your guesses in the comments.) And I wouldn't be surprised if it turned out to be zero. By all accounts from those who've gone through the evidence, the actual shooters are all dead. And most of the people arrested at the scene, apparently on DA Abel Reyna's orders, committed no crime.
New approaches for 17-25 year olds among TX legislative foci for interim
More on this later, but here are the Texas House and Senate interim charges, which include a number of criminal-justice-related topics. Grits was particularly pleased to see the House Corrections Committee receive an interim charge on the appropriate criminal-justice approach to 17-25 year olds whose brains have not yet finished developing, a topic which was the subject of this Reasonably Suspicious podcast segment from August.
Transparency would make bodycams more useful
IMO, the reason body cameras have had little impact on police behavior is that most of the footage is secret or very difficult to acquire. So it's become a source of secret information to which for the most part only police have access instead of a means to hold police accountable. Texas' body cam law is far too opaque. That footage should be subject to the same open records rules as we've had for dashcams for nearly 20 years, with little ill effect.
DOJ eliminates nearly 70% of UCR data tables
The first Trumpian Uniform Crime Reports from the FBI deleted nearly 70 percent of the data tables, Fivethirtyeight.com reported. This makes me alternatively want to cry and physically attack the person responsible. It's as though DOJ has figured out that, in the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king, and so has decided to blind the public by eliminating the information experts rely upon to evaluate criminal-justice trends. Embarrassing and pointless. The feds need that data as much as anyone. This is government shooting itself in the foot.
Pfaff review corroborates Grits on 'strawman' claim
A review of John Pfaff's book Locked In in the Boston Review (combined with a review of James Forman Jr.'s Locking Up Our Own) reiterated Grits' assertion that the "Standard Story" Pfaff purported to debunk amounted to a "strawman." See related Grits commentary. Bottom line: Pfaff's big contribution to debates over mass incarceration was to highlight how prosecutors increased the rates at which they sought convictions, even as crime and the number of arrests declined. But many of his other claims were overstated. And his prescriptions for which priorities the movement should embrace hinged on false assumptions, were mired in error, and recommended strategies which would have significantly set back the progress being made. One will learn a lot from reading Prof. Pfaff's book, as long as one doesn't fall into the trap of following its advice.
Thursday, October 26, 2017
Risk assessments under fire, but critics don't differentiate uses
Grits has been a supporter of risk assessments as part of pretrial detention determinations in lieu of bail, which available evidence suggests leads to far better outcomes. But lately there has been much weeping and gnashing of teeth among liberals over risk-assessment instruments, charging that they result in racial bias depending on which variables are used.
See a critique of risk assessments from ProPublica, a defense of risk assessments from the Marshall Project, and related critiques.
In all these debates, Grits has seldom if ever seen commentators focus on a key distinction between how risk assessments are used at different stages in the process.
Grits is not a fan of their use in any but an advisory capacity for predictive policing or in sentencing. In policing, probable cause must always be individualized to a specific person. And punishments should be decided by judges and juries, not algorithms (although if we're honest, that process is really controlled by prosecutors and certainly isn't immune from racial bias).
But using risk assessments to decide pretrial detention is a horse of a different color, because the alternative is that money bail is required of all. That means people who can't afford bail must rot in jail until their case is resolved, putting immense pressure on even-innocent people to plea. In that circumstance, the benefits to liberty from applying a risk-assessment tool that lets the majority of poor people out pretrial outweighs any detriment from bias in the instrument.
Risk assessments also have well-recognized uses for probation systems which are key to reducing recidivism and encouraging probationers' success. Low-risk probationers subjected to intensive programming (or for that matter, who are revoked to prison) tend to escalate in criminality in ways which are counterproductive, a growing body of research indicates. So assessing risk/needs is key to deciding what programming should be assigned.
In those circumstances, Grits remains unconvinced that bias from these instruments is greater or more harmful than the bias being exhibited by judges. For example, the videos of bail hearings before magistrate judges which arose out of the Harris County bail litigation demonstrated near-universal disrespect for misdemeanor defendants' pretrial liberty interests, whereas the risk assessment would have freed most of them. So which is more biased? And which bias is more concerning?
Predicting "future dangerousness" (as the courts have dubbed risk assessment by juries in the sentencing phase of capital cases) is always a dubious prospect, but also a fundamental part of what the justice system does. In most phases of the process, those decisions should probably be left to the decision-makers traditionally in charge of them.
In the case of pretrial detention, though, where the defendants are still presumed innocent by the system, IMO opposing the use of risk-assessment tools amounts to allowing the perfect to become the enemy of the good. Ditto for probation where there's a pragmatic need to assess probationers' risk in order to make decisions about programming, and risk levels can change significantly over time.
The desire to purge the system of racial bias is understandable, but please let's not throw the baby out with the bath water.
Tuesday, October 24, 2017
Reasonably Suspicious: Police unions, collective bargaining, and accountability
Check out the latest episode of the Reasonably Suspicious podcast from Just Liberty. You can listen to it here or access it on all the usual channels: iTunes, Google Play, YouTube, or SoundCloud.
If you haven't subscribed yet, take a moment to do so now. I'm enjoying the format and am hoping to do some interesting things in the coming months heading toward the 86th Texas Legislature. If the Wall Street Journal's right that the next billion internet users won't type, relying on voice and video, then it behooves an old dog to learn new tricks. And having cool, original music wrapped around the conversation - thanks to producer/guitar virtuoso Gabe Rhodes and some of the finest musicians in Texas (which is saying something) - makes it fun to put together.
This month's episode features three segments on police union politics, including one focused on Austin's "meet and confer" contract presently under negotiation (these highlights from the negotiating table recently made the rounds among city insiders), and a discussion of what Grits had dubbed the police union playbook on spinning to the press in the wake of police misconduct or high-profile "critical incidents." I'm perhaps most excited about the interview with Sam Sinyangwe, Campaign Zero's data specialist who has now twice visited Austin to support including accountability measures in the police union contract (or scuttling it if they're not included). I'll publish the full interview in a few days (in the meantime, you can also check out the speech he gave in Austin in September). But the segment in the podcast on why police unions too often get a political pass was worth the cost of admission.
Lots of other good stuff sprinkled throughout. As always, find a transcript of the podcast after the jump below.
If you haven't subscribed yet, take a moment to do so now. I'm enjoying the format and am hoping to do some interesting things in the coming months heading toward the 86th Texas Legislature. If the Wall Street Journal's right that the next billion internet users won't type, relying on voice and video, then it behooves an old dog to learn new tricks. And having cool, original music wrapped around the conversation - thanks to producer/guitar virtuoso Gabe Rhodes and some of the finest musicians in Texas (which is saying something) - makes it fun to put together.This month's episode features three segments on police union politics, including one focused on Austin's "meet and confer" contract presently under negotiation (these highlights from the negotiating table recently made the rounds among city insiders), and a discussion of what Grits had dubbed the police union playbook on spinning to the press in the wake of police misconduct or high-profile "critical incidents." I'm perhaps most excited about the interview with Sam Sinyangwe, Campaign Zero's data specialist who has now twice visited Austin to support including accountability measures in the police union contract (or scuttling it if they're not included). I'll publish the full interview in a few days (in the meantime, you can also check out the speech he gave in Austin in September). But the segment in the podcast on why police unions too often get a political pass was worth the cost of admission.
Lots of other good stuff sprinkled throughout. As always, find a transcript of the podcast after the jump below.
Top Stories:
- The Police Union Playbook on reacting to critical incidents
- If Harris County prosecutors are screening arrests, why are so many people arrested for Class C misdemeanors?
- Sukyi McMahon and Kathy Mitchell on the Austin police union contract
- Scott Henson interviews Campaign Zero's Sam Sinyangwe on why liberals and conservatives are both reluctant to criticize police union excesses
- Bexar and Dallas Counties cease arrests for misdemeanor marijuana possession
- Court of Criminal Appeals still denying DNA testing to capital defendants
- Real costs of incarceration top $1 trillion nationally
- Unions now a minority at Dallas police pension board
- Time to make the Austin crime lab independent?
- Bipartisan push in Congress for asset forfeiture reform
Saturday, October 21, 2017
An awkward death row moment, judges with PTSD, 'incompetent scientists using bad science,' and other stories
Your correspondent has been away from the blog for most of the week, but here are a few odds and ends that merit Grits readers attention while mine is focused elsewhere:
An awkward death-row moment
TFW you find out the guy you're about to execute tonight may confess to a murder you want to execute a guy for a month from now. Awkward! Death row inmates are held in solitary confinement, so the union for prison guards has alleged that, if the two men conspired and even passed documents between their cells, as prosecutors allege, they were able to do so because of understaffing at Texas prisons. Certainly, this is more reason for courts to allow DNA testing in Swearingen's case - which the Court of Criminal Appeals recently denied - to make sure they're executing the right guy.
Texas senators and #cjreform
Texas Senator John Cornyn cited Texas' decarceration reforms in touting a new federal sentencing reform package. And our two senators both sit on the Senate Judiciary Committee, meaning they'll have outsized voices in debates over bipartisan asset forfeiture reform amendments recently voted out of the US House. Go here to send Texas senators an email asking them to support asset-forfeiture reform.
Time to ditch Harris County criminal courts building?
A Houston attorney makes the case for scrapping the Harris County Criminal Justice Center after Hurricane Harvey flooding and starting over.
Racial disparities in juvie incarceration
Texas' racial disparities among incarcerated youth (4.4:1, black to white) aren't the worst in the country, but they're nothing to write home about, either.
'Incompetent scientists using bad science'
The Austin crime lab's DNA screwups extended to capital cases, and the Court of Criminal Appeals has ordered a habeas investigation to determine if the lab generated false or misleading evidence that was used at trial. A defense attorney with the Office of Capital and Forensic Writs criticized "forensic evidence developed by incompetent scientists using bad science."
Judges, advocates require self care
Judges say they experience secondary traumatic stress from the awful stories they encounter at their jobs. The same could be said for prosecutors and defense attorneys, and for that matter, in many cases, reform advocates. Most of the innocence cases I've seen involved terrible, hair raising dramas which can be truly haunting. The stories don't leave you. Your correspondent can barely read jail mail anymore without a panic attack after more than two decades of advocacy in this area; the constant stream of tragedy and unmet need becomes overwhelming.
When judges cherrypick facts
News flash: SCOTUS Justices frequently cherrypick facts that are sometimes flat-out wrong and are never held accountable. You're shocked, I know, to learn that judges might pick facts to support a pre-conceived opinion rather than derive their opinions from the facts. Except, oh wait, Grits readers are aware of the Government-Always-Wins faction at the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, so for y'all this sort of outcome-oriented judging has likely already become apparent.
So if you can't execute the developmentally disabled, what do you do with them?
The Moore case out of SCOTUS earlier this year limiting executions for the developmentally disabled is calling into question at least ten additional Texas death cases, including five from Harris County. The case overturned the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals notorious Briseno decision, an outcome-oriented ruling which applied outdated scientific standards to uphold dubious death sentences. (See above re: cherrypicking facts.)
Mass incarceration costs US economy $1 trillion
The annual cost of incarceration totals more than $1 trillion, according to a new analysis, or more than 6 percent of Gross Domestic Product. Notably, according to one of the researchers, “More than half of the costs are borne by families, children and community members who have committed no crime.”
Bogus diagnosis?
Excited delirium: Legitimate medical diagnosis or coverup vehicle for in-custody deaths caused by police? See related Grits coverage.
What's causing overdoses: opiods or ignorance?
Some doctors are starting to push back on the prescriptions-caused-the-opiod-crisis narrative that's been prevalent lately, and Scientific American has perhaps the best rendition of their argument I've seen.
An awkward death-row moment
TFW you find out the guy you're about to execute tonight may confess to a murder you want to execute a guy for a month from now. Awkward! Death row inmates are held in solitary confinement, so the union for prison guards has alleged that, if the two men conspired and even passed documents between their cells, as prosecutors allege, they were able to do so because of understaffing at Texas prisons. Certainly, this is more reason for courts to allow DNA testing in Swearingen's case - which the Court of Criminal Appeals recently denied - to make sure they're executing the right guy.
Texas senators and #cjreform
Texas Senator John Cornyn cited Texas' decarceration reforms in touting a new federal sentencing reform package. And our two senators both sit on the Senate Judiciary Committee, meaning they'll have outsized voices in debates over bipartisan asset forfeiture reform amendments recently voted out of the US House. Go here to send Texas senators an email asking them to support asset-forfeiture reform.
Time to ditch Harris County criminal courts building?
A Houston attorney makes the case for scrapping the Harris County Criminal Justice Center after Hurricane Harvey flooding and starting over.
Racial disparities in juvie incarceration
Texas' racial disparities among incarcerated youth (4.4:1, black to white) aren't the worst in the country, but they're nothing to write home about, either.
'Incompetent scientists using bad science'
The Austin crime lab's DNA screwups extended to capital cases, and the Court of Criminal Appeals has ordered a habeas investigation to determine if the lab generated false or misleading evidence that was used at trial. A defense attorney with the Office of Capital and Forensic Writs criticized "forensic evidence developed by incompetent scientists using bad science."
Judges, advocates require self care
Judges say they experience secondary traumatic stress from the awful stories they encounter at their jobs. The same could be said for prosecutors and defense attorneys, and for that matter, in many cases, reform advocates. Most of the innocence cases I've seen involved terrible, hair raising dramas which can be truly haunting. The stories don't leave you. Your correspondent can barely read jail mail anymore without a panic attack after more than two decades of advocacy in this area; the constant stream of tragedy and unmet need becomes overwhelming.
When judges cherrypick facts
News flash: SCOTUS Justices frequently cherrypick facts that are sometimes flat-out wrong and are never held accountable. You're shocked, I know, to learn that judges might pick facts to support a pre-conceived opinion rather than derive their opinions from the facts. Except, oh wait, Grits readers are aware of the Government-Always-Wins faction at the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals, so for y'all this sort of outcome-oriented judging has likely already become apparent.
So if you can't execute the developmentally disabled, what do you do with them?
The Moore case out of SCOTUS earlier this year limiting executions for the developmentally disabled is calling into question at least ten additional Texas death cases, including five from Harris County. The case overturned the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals notorious Briseno decision, an outcome-oriented ruling which applied outdated scientific standards to uphold dubious death sentences. (See above re: cherrypicking facts.)
Mass incarceration costs US economy $1 trillion
The annual cost of incarceration totals more than $1 trillion, according to a new analysis, or more than 6 percent of Gross Domestic Product. Notably, according to one of the researchers, “More than half of the costs are borne by families, children and community members who have committed no crime.”
Bogus diagnosis?
Excited delirium: Legitimate medical diagnosis or coverup vehicle for in-custody deaths caused by police? See related Grits coverage.
What's causing overdoses: opiods or ignorance?
Some doctors are starting to push back on the prescriptions-caused-the-opiod-crisis narrative that's been prevalent lately, and Scientific American has perhaps the best rendition of their argument I've seen.
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