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As the number of infections and deaths from the new coronavirus rise across Texas, prison officials are ramping up efforts to prevent an outbreak among the state’s 149,000 inmates.
Read the rest of this article from the Austin American-Statesman.
As imprisonment rates for women rise disproportionately across the nation, a group of formerly incarcerated women in Texas has called for family-oriented policies that provide mothers with community-based alternatives that allow them to avoid jail, in addition to major changes to state sentencing guidelines such as sharply lowered penalties for nonviolent drug offenses.
Last week, as the number of confirmed coronavirus cases in Texas rose, Collin County Sheriff Jim Skinner urged local police to think twice about who they arrest and bring to his jail.
Today, a group of advocates, community leaders, and justice system experts sent a list of urgent recommendations regarding COVID-19 and incarcerated populations to Governor Abbott. Urging state leadership to recognize the particularly dire threat that the global pandemic poses to people incarcerated in prisons, jails, and juvenile facilities, the letter lays out recommendations for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and the Board of Pardons and Paroles, the Texas Commission on Jail Standards, county jails (including sheriffs, courts, and district attorneys), law enforcement, and the Texas Juvenile Justice Department.
Zero-tolerance policies can set up a pathway that leads a child’s future to be defined by their misbehavior, no matter the other situations happening in the child’s life. If you break the student codes, if you are struggling, if you have an emotional blow-up while at school, if you mess up, does that mean you don’t matter?
Yesterday, the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition (TCJC) released a new report sharing the future policy priorities of the Texas Women’s Justice Coalition. The report, called “The Future of Dignity: Insights from the Texas Women’s Dignity Retreat,” is the result of a wide-ranging policy discussion led by many of the women who pushed for eight new women’s justice bills to become law during the 2019 Texas legislative session.
![HPD policy changes are not enough. More needs to be done. [Editorial]](https://texascje.org/sites/default/files/articles/2021-08/HPD%25203820.jpg)
More than a year after the botched Harding Street raid, which left two people dead and five officers wounded, we still don’t know the full extent of the rot in the Houston Police Department. Chief Art Acevedo is convinced that it’s a case of a bad apple infecting an otherwise air-tight department. But as Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg’s review of cases tainted by former Houston narcotics officer Gerald Goines expands, that’s increasingly difficult to accept.
Addiction treatment in America is like a Rubik’s Cube. We’ve talked about this. We know this. We feel this. But good programs do exist. This week, we visit The Women’s Home in Houston, a non-profit established 60 years ago, to check out their long-term approach to residential treatment.
Zero tolerance disciplinary policies in some of our public schools are creating a school-to-prison pipeline. It needs to be shut off. The disturbing findings of a recently released report from the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition show how harsh disciplinary policies that offer little or no flexibility disproportionately affect students of color and those with disabilities.
Read the rest of this editorial from the San Antonio Express-News.
As of Sunday, Texas prison inmates can no longer receive greeting cards on colored paper from their children and loved ones. The new policy — named Inspect 2 Protect — was approved in February as a way to eliminate contraband, such as drugs, from coming into prisons through the mail, said Jeremy Desel, Texas Department of Criminal Justice director of communications.
Read the rest of this article from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram.
