Pretrial & Defense

On June 24, the architecture and design firm HDR Inc. held what it thought would be a standard event as part of the 2022 American Institute of Architects (AIA) conference at its office in Chicago, Illinois. But the firm, which has designed more than 275 jails and prisons while billing itself as progressive and morally responsible, was met with a powerful presence of abolitionists at its doorstep during the conference.

Somewhere deep in the Austin Police Department's computer database sit the personnel files of each of its approximately 1,800 officers. Those files include their disciplinary histories, which may include details about unnecessary violence or unethical conduct, Internal Affairs investigations, and the punishments meted out for misconduct. Most officers won't have much or any disciplinary history. But some, almost certainly, have multiple instances of discipline in their files.

Harris County Commissioners Court on Tuesday will consider a $25 million agreement to send jail inmates to the Giles Dalby Correctional Facility, a prison located in Post, a small Texas city near Lubbock. In January, the county shipped hundreds of inmates to a facility in Louisiana. Now, the county could approve an agreement to send inmates to an additional facility 475 miles away from Houston.

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.

Read the rest of this article from KXAN.

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.