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When Michael Bryant was found with illegal drugs last year, it landed him in jail for about a month, exacerbating his problems with addiction. Bryant, who is now 33, had been struggling with drug addiction for much of his life, and the problems got worse in 2015, when he moved to Austin from New York after a difficult breakup.
The cards and artwork that Maggie Luna’s children sent to her in prison helped her make it through her sentence. “It was one of the few things I had to look forward to,” she says. Now new mail and visitation rules in Texas prisons could further restrict what little contact family members have with loved ones in lockup.
Even as Texas celebrates the good news of its growing statewide population, there is one population segment that is shrinking, and that is also good news. The number of people incarcerated in Texas has dropped by more than 15,000 over the past decade. Last year alone, the number fell by 4,000 to about 140,000 prisoners, according to a report from the Legislative Budget Board.
On Feb. 6, two armed police officers in Florida walked a 6-year-old girl out of school and into the back seat of a cruiser. They’d been called to take her to a mental institution after she allegedly threw chairs in her elementary school classroom. Body camera footage later published by a local news station shows the girl calmly walking to the car. Police can be heard discussing how school officials must have overreacted.
A coalition of criminal justice reform groups has found significant racial disparities in arrests and incarceration rates for people in possession of a gram or less of controlled substances in Travis County, Texas. A new report on the findings comes as the county’s largest police department, in Austin, faces accusations of institutional racism and overzealous policing of people for drug use, even in cases where both the City Council and the county prosecutor have said they will not prosecute.
It may be a small step, but Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is putting a little of his money where his mouth is on criminal justice reform. Thursday afternoon, the governor announced a specialized clemency application process for Texas Department of Corrections inmates who were victims of sex trafficking or domestic violence prior to their being locked up.
Gov. Greg Abbott rolled out a new clemency application specifically for survivors of human trafficking or domestic violence Thursday afternoon. The new application, launched in coordination with the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles, will include a specific section for applicants to provide a statement about experiences with human trafficking or domestic violence.
Following a declining inmate population and dangerous understaffing in Texas prisons, the state is closing two of its more than 100 lockups. State Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, announced Thursday that the Garza East prison in Beeville and the Jester I Unit in Sugar Land would be closing soon.
Authorities must take a different approach towards addressing drug use in Travis County, according to the authors of a newly released report. Earlier this month, the four criminal justice groups involved in a study into drug possession arrests revealed some of their findings.
Today, researchers from four Texas-based organizations released their full review of 2,900 drug possession arrests in Travis County from June 2017 to May 2018. The data used to create their final report reveals troubling police practices that harm communities, exacerbate racial disparities in arrests and jail detention, and fail to address the underlying needs of people who use drugs.
