Southtown gallery Presa House will host two events this month that engage a broader cross-section of the city than the typical art world crowd. The first takes place Sunday, April 11, and is the latest in a monthly documentary screening program conducted in partnership with the PBS Indie Lens Pop-Up Virtual series.
Art Acevedo, Miami’s new chief of police, works hard to project a public image that threads the needle between appearing tough on crime and assuring more liberal members of the public that he takes their concerns about policing seriously. He’s good at it.
Exactly one year after the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition (TCJC) first asked Governor Greg Abbott to protect incarcerated people and their communities from the urgent threat of COVID-19, the organization is remembering the lives lost to the virus and continuing to push for action.
Harris County Commissioner Rodney Ellis and Jay Jenkins of the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition joined The Appeal Live to talk about Houston jail overcrowding and COVID-19.
As of Sunday, there were 8,889 people incarcerated inside Houston’s Harris County Jail, the largest facility of its kind in Texas. Of that number, 7,772—more than 87 percent—are being held pretrial. Nearly half of the people held in the jail, according to the county’s online jail population database, have been arrested on nonviolent charges.
Finis Prendergast was expecting to have his day in court when COVID-19 came barreling into Harris County in March. The 42-year-old veteran has now spent 28 months awaiting trial at the county jail on an aggravated robbery charge; the court has reset his proceedings seven times during the pandemic.
Republicans up and down the ballot tried to link Democrats to lawlessness, but lawmakers in both parties are keeping criminal justice reform on the table.
Today, the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition (TCJC) released its legislative strategy for the 2021 Texas Legislative Session. The organization’s strategy is presented as a “divestment portfolio” for Texas lawmakers and is titled Spend Your Values, Cut Your Losses: Smart and Safe Justice System Solutions that Put Communities First.
Since November, eight defendants fresh out of jail on bond have walked into state District Judge Ramona Franklin’s court and been sent right back to jail. Instead of standing for a routine court hearing in a first step in their criminal court cases, they ended up back in sheriff’s custody after Franklin revoked their bail and ordered them back behind bars, sometimes with no lawyer present for the defendant.
As the national movement around justice system transformation continues to swell, this month the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition (TCJC) released two new data dashboards that make justice system information accessible to the public.
