Last month, Travis County criminal justice officials felt fairly successful in their efforts to reduce the overall jail population and to provide personal recognizance (PR) bond releases – that is, not levying cash bail – for most people accused of non-violent offenses.
Meme Styles watched her three brothers cycle through the criminal justice system starting at a young age. “Since we were teenagers, since we were kids, as a matter of fact,” she said. “In many cases, these are youth that maybe just need that support of their community, or if their father is not there, a mentor to step in and say, ‘I do care.’“
Several criminal justice reform groups are objecting to one of Governor Greg Abbott’s executive orders issued on Sunday. The mandate, Abbott said, is to prevent the release of “dangerous criminals” from Texas jails.
In response to an executive order issued by Governor Greg Abbott, the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition released the following statement: “Contrary to the advice of public health experts, legal experts, and sheriffs across the country, Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued an executive order on Sunday that suspends basic constitutional protections for people detained in county jail and puts thousands of people –
One Texas prisoner has tested positive for COVID-19 and is being treated at a hospital in Galveston. The 37-year-old man is now medically isolated after reporting shortness of breath and a cough Saturday at Lychner State Jail, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) announced Tuesday.
By the time the jail reported its first staffer with COVID-19, Harris County Judge Lina Hidalgo had spent days working on an executive order that would allow broad-scale compassionate releases of medically vulnerable, nonviolent inmates. But the effort has been complicated by an opinion from Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton, indicating to local officials the state may try to intervene.
Contrary to the advice of public health experts, legal experts, and sheriffs across the country, Texas Governor Greg Abbott issued an executive order on Sunday that suspends basic constitutional protections for people detained in county jail and puts thousands of people – many of whom have chronic illness – at grave risk of contracting COVID-19.
A teenager at Harris County’s juvenile detention center has tested positive for COVID-19 and is being treated on site, officials said Thursday. The child is under the age of 16 and has been detained at the facility since late 2019, said Kendall Mayfield, a spokesperson for the downtown center.
Here in the Estelle prison unit, most of the male inmates in the geriatric dormitory first ran afoul of the law years or even decades ago, convicted of crimes ranging from murder and sex offenses to forgery and repeat DWIs.
Not even prisons are immune to the #toiletpaperapocalypse of 2020. On Wednesday, Texas Department of Criminal Justice officials imposed a one-roll-per-day buying limit on corrections officers at state prisons after they began buying it by the case from at least one prison commissary.
Read the rest of this article from the Austin American-Statesman.
