Today is Sandra Bland Day in Austin. The day was proclaimed in 2019 to remember Bland, whose suspicious 2015 death sparked outrage. Bland died in a Waller County, Texas jail cell in 2015 at the age of 28, but her death is still under speculation to this day.

Read the full article from Spectrum News Austin.

Several organizations held an event Saturday in Austin to provide information and resources to people who've been previously incarcerated.

This week, the Travis County Commissioners Court will weigh whether to hire a marketing firm for $250,000 to help the Travis County Sheriff’s Office fill current vacancies. That includes 145 corrections officer vacancies, up from only 60 vacancies before the pandemic in May of 2019. Additionally, the jail population has increased by 60 inmates this May compared to that same May of 2019, now up to 2,173.

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A new report evaluates the Houston Chronicle’s coverage of bond reform and crime stories. The report, “Materially Misleading: How the Houston Chronicle’s Coverage of Bond Misinforms the Public,” was produced by the Texas Center for Justice and Equity (TCJE) and authored by Elaine Hennig and Jay Jenkins.

In the two years since Harris County reached a landmark settlement on misdemeanor bail reform, a picture of the impacts of those reforms is becoming abundantly clear. Recidivism rates have been flat. Racial disparities have narrowed. And, as two years’ worth of data show, numbers of misdemeanor cases in Harris County are steadily declining.

This week, local justice advocacy groups will host a virtual candidate forum for the Travis County Commissioners Court election. Participating will be candidates for Precinct 2 Commissioner Bob Libal and Brigid Shea (incumbent), and candidates for Precinct 4 Commissioner Margaret Gómez (incumbent) and Susanna Ledesma-Woody.

In 2019, a federal judge ruled that Harris County’s misdemeanor bond system was unconstitutionally keeping people stuck in jail before trial simply because they couldn’t afford to pay for their freedom. The county revamped its misdemeanor system to create a presumption of release for most low-level cases. In response, reform opponents unleashed a full-fledged attack in the press.

Read the rest of this article from the National Partnership for Pretrial Justice.

Across the country, pretrial reform measures have been shown to promote public safety, improve fairness, and uphold constitutional rights — undermining critics’ claims to the contrary.

Read the rest of this article from Arnold Ventures.

Lawmakers don’t have enough information to manage Texas’ criminal justice system, and they should create a legislative committee to study the system’s most pressing problems and create reports with guidance and improvements — that was the assessment of a state review in 2006. Texas legislators heeded that recommendation. The next year, in 2007, they created the Criminal Justice Legislative Oversight Committee. 

A new data tracker will highlight the role of bail bondsmen in the Harris County criminal justice system, pushing some transparency on an enterprise that has long operated with minimal oversight, according to county officials.