TX GOP 2018 Party Platform: criminal justice reform

[boutons_deux]

the trend, believe it or not, is favorable.

Cutting spending and saving money are two things dem and GOP can agree in in Texas.

Repugs spending taxpayer money to jail people, esp non-whites, to enrich their donors in the for-profit prison business, LE unions, bail bonds industry is the strategy.

"I enrich you with taxpayer $100Ms, then you give me campaign funds, endorsements"

[Winehole23]

last year's news disagrees. de-incarceration has begun in earnest in Texas.

Texas will shutter more prisons this year than it has in any single year in history, a response to the state's tight budget and shrinking inmate population.

In the state's two-year budget, which lawmakers approved in May, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice was ordered to close four prison facilities by Sept. 1. When all four are closed, tough-on-crime Texas will have shuttered eight prisons in just six years.

https://www.dallasnews.com/news/texa...umber-lock-ups

[Winehole23]

a sliding scale for fees and fines seems to be working:

[Winehole23]

[Winehole23]

Too Good To Be True (as eventual TX law and regs)

read it and weep:

Abstract

This article surveys the important reforms adopted by the Texas legislature to advance the quality of forensic science that form what we call the "infrastructure" of forensic science in the state. In all, the legislature put into place six key components that now form the Texas forensic science infrastructure: (1) the Texas Forensic Science Commission; (2) the Texas Criminal Justice Integrity Unit (a stakeholder committee that hosts discussion meetings and training programs); (3) the Michael Morton Act, which ins uted expansive prosecutorial disclosure from pre-plea to post-conviction; (4) the "junk science" writ, a habeas pe ion that allows challenges to the forensic science used to obtain a conviction if new evidence undermines the validity of the evidence, (5) the Office of Capital and Forensic Writs, a statewide public defender for habeas pe ions; and (6) state laws requiring the preservation and testing of biological evidence.

The article also describes two local innovations that have transformed the roles each ins ution plays in the criminal justice system and have become national models. The first innovation emerged from the shambles of the scandal-ridden Houston Police Department Crime Laboratory in the early 2000s. In 2014, the Houston Forensic Science Center took over the laboratory's operations under the supervision of a board of directors consisting of community volunteers. The Dallas County District Attorney's Office originated the second innovation by establishing the country’s first Conviction Integrity Unit in 2007. Prosecutors who work in the Dallas County CIU, as well as those in the other CIUs now established in the state's other large cities, play important leadership roles in shaping state policies to prevent wrongful convictions and advance the practice of forensic science. Moreover, both of these local innovations have transformed the cultures in their respective ins utions from highly adversarial to ones that embrace collaboration with the defense bar.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers....act_id=2965851

[Winehole23]

DJT comes out in favor of sentencing reform:

The reform agenda has been shepherded by Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior advisor. Charles Kushner, Jared’s father, was sentenced to two years in federal prison on charges of witness tampering, tax evasion, and illegal campaign donations, which helps explains his son’s political sensitivity on the incarceration issue, making it a personal priority in Trump’s first term.


Kushner has worked closely not just with conservative advocates, but with Democrats who are otherwise ideological enemies. He’s reached out personally to convicts and family members whose stories were publicized in the media. “Like many of the other leaders who are supporting this legislation, he was deeply impacted by his [family’s] experience,” says Jessica Jackson Sloan, national director of #cut50, a progressive criminal justice advocacy group. “It redefined what he thought of people who go to prison.”

https://www.theamericanconservative....encing-reform/

[Winehole23]

really, nobody likes this?

[benefactor]

It's a good start for sure. We'll see if they are just tossing money/lip service at it or things really start to change.

[boutons_deux]

really, nobody likes this?

blind squirrel situation.

I assume no good-faith from Trash.

So, best case, I'm sure he doesn't know WTF he's supporting, and more typically, somebody gave him a nasty hidden motive.

[benefactor]

blind squirrel situation.

I assume no good-faith from Trash.

So, best case, I'm sure he doesn't know WTF he's supporting, and more typically, somebody gave him a nasty hidden motive.

Can you stop acting like Walter Peck for five seconds? I think almost everyone can agree this is a good thing.

[boutons_deux]

Can you stop acting like Walter Peck for five seconds? I think almost everyone can agree this is a good thing.

I didn't say it was bad. RIF

[BD24]

Interesting stuff tbh. Would be happy to see most of this implemented. Makes me a little less embarrassed that the state re-elected Ted ing cruz

[pgardn]

Everyone has figured out it costs too much money.

I bet the red team uses the 2nd chance and third chance aspect of the ideas as a major talking point during political events.
Not.

Well, maybe in the whiter, toothless regions of Trump towns where drug use got out of hand.

[boutons_deux]

I assume no good-faith from Trash.

How Liberals Got Seduced By Trump’s Gifts To Private Prisons



While all cuts to prison sentences are welcome,

the bill does zero to stop how many people actually go to prison.

The profit scam of arrests and prosecutions can continue without a hiccup.

Mandatory minimum sentences aren’t addressed either,

so those put into prison will be facing very long roads to freedom regardless.

The act will only deal with federal prisons, which only contains 13% of the population.

To no one’s surprise, illegal immigrants are not included in this act.

Long-term prisoners, deemed high-risk or slapped with certain sentences also get no room to maneuver.

The scope and funding of the bill is also quite narrow overall, with a mere 50 million being provided per year to address this crisis.

Prisoners will be released based on a “Risk Assessment System”. Activists are already pointing to the criteria for this system being correlated with race and class.

Every single one of Trump’s policies come back to making America’s streets whiter.

In other words, Trump’s Get Out Of Jail Free cards will be giving the same breaks to people who already get breaks from the system, those who are rich and white.

“Risk Assessment System” will be developed by the Attorney General Jeff Sessions, who might be even more racist than Trump himself.

“The Act allows for the Attorney General to develop policies for the warden of each BOP facility

to enter into partnerships with private organizations

to provide training, employment, and other services.

Privatizing in-prison programming,

halfway houses or

electronic monitoring

raises concerns about a lack of governmental oversight that could lead to abuse, exploitation, and the potential appearance of a quid pro quo relationship between BOP and private companies.

Funding even more contracts between for-profit actors and BOP facilities may

detract from the primary goal of rehabilitation

because private companies have a profit-seeking and profit-maximizing motive.”

Some amount of relief on the back-end of sentences is only one portion of the bill.

Further power to the private prison industry and the attorney general is another.

“Missing from this piece of legislation is the crucial issue of sentencing reform –

as distinct from prison reform.

While prison reform deals with how people who are already incarcerated are treated and may give them some faster pathways out,

sentencing reform is the piece of the puzzle that dictates how many new people are going into prison – and for how long.

Most experts say the high US rate of incarceration is a result of the dramatic increases to sentencing length that took place after crime waves in the 1970s and 80s.

However, that’s an issue that Republicans, who control both houses of Congress and the White House, are less sold on.”

Trump’s prison reform then acts like a sort of rewards card for committed customers.

Trump is just bringing the momentum to the halt with measly reforms.

The liberal critique of Trump squarely misses the force that drives him, and all forces of capitalism: profit.

This bill does nothing, absolutely nothing to change how many people enter into the for-profit system.

through the guise of some relief on the back end of a few sentences, the prison system can continue to be privatized, and therefore expanded.

Just as the air, water, schools and health care can continue to be privatized under neoliberal capital.

When it comes to prisons, privatization is especially dangerous because

prisoners lack no protections and can be treated like slaves as a result.

Additionally, the incentive to put people in prison becomes greater and greater.

Concern for public safety (let alone safety of the prisoners) is outside any debate.

It will be private profit, not public safety, that will determine who is imprisoned under this administration.

After Donald Trump’s election, the two largest prison companies (GEO Group and Core Civic) stocks went up by a third.

ICE alone is going to need 2.7 billion from Congress in 2018 for holding its prisoners.

Compare that to the mere 50 million annually that The FIRST STEP act is giving.

Clearly there’s a lot more money to be gained in detention than rehabilitation.

Never trust Donald Trump.

He has ruthlessly expanded the police state in this country.

For this is late-stage capitalism.

There was a reason the Obama administration cut off private prisons from the Department of Justice.

It was because across the board they failed human rights standards whenever they were put in practice.

make a greater profit when they spend less on the prisoners once they have them,

which is why they are treated so horribly.

our prison system is much like everything else in our oligarchy,

it serves the 1%.

Questions of justice usually come only after profit is maximized, and this bill is no exception.

In Trump’s survival of the fittest dystopia,

there is a way out for the few,

a way down for the many, and

a profit to be made for a handful.

Trump doesn’t care where you are, as long as he can make money off you.

The American police state, which wreaks havoc at home and abroad, is on the road to privatization.

Even the best of con men can be seduced by the mighty dollar, and

it is once again capital that has the last laugh.

https://www.counterpunch.org/2018/11/23/how-liberals-got-seduced-by-trumps-gifts-to-private-prisons/

[Winehole23]

if you want to see prisons get worse, privatize em.

[boutons_deux]

if you want to see prisons get worse, privatize em.

More maggots and mold found in Michigan's prison food


https://www.metrotimes.com/table-and...ns-prison-food

[Th'Pusher]

Mitch McConnell should drop the lame excuses. Let the Senate vote on bipartisan justice, prison reforms.

BY HERALD-LEADER EDITORIAL BOARD

November 23, 2018 08:01 PM
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell’s excuse that the Senate lacks time to consider bipartisan prison and sentencing reforms rings lame, especially in a season when many Americans are working brutally long hours to meet the demands of their jobs.

More likely, McConnell wants to avoid a public fight inside his Republican caucus, a fight sparked by retrograde Sens. Tom Cotton of Arkansas, Ted Cruz of Texas and others unwilling to do the smallest thing to trim the huge costs — in dollars and human potential — that mass incarceration inflicts on our country.

McConnell should let the Senate vote. Given the support the bill has on both sides of the aisle, getting the 60 votes to end a filibuster should not be hard.

Then this Congress could claim a genuine bipartisan achievement.

And McConnell, master of obstruction, could claim some credibility for his recent appeal for bipartisanship from the Democratic House that takes office in January.


Speaker Paul Ryan says the Senate version of the First Step Act would zip through the House. President Donald Trump says he is eager to sign it. The package of modest reforms has support on the right from evangelical Christians, some big Republican donors, including the Kochs, and Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul, and on the left from the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for American Progress and Sen. Cory Booker of New Jersey.

Given that the United States imprisons a greater share of its people than any nation, the First Step Act is just that, a first step. But it’s taken years of debate and compromise to reach the consensus behind even that first step.

If this Congress fails to approve the bill, the new Congress would have to start all over. It could take still more years to reach another compromise and consensus. Meanwhile, real people, real families, real communities are suffering in ways that both Republicans and Democrats now serving in Congress are ready to relieve.

Contrary to opponents’ scary warnings, the First Step Act would not flood the streets with felons. It applies only to federal courts and prisons which account for 181,185 of the more than 2 million Americans who are in prison or jails.

If it becomes law, maybe 7,000 people now in prison could win release, through retroactive increases in time off for good behavior and a reduction in the punishment for crack cocaine offenses. Congress in 2010 reduced the huge disparity in punishments between crack and powdered cocaine. Because crack was more prevalent in black neighborhoods, the law had produced an imbalance that’s held up as evidence of race-based injustice.


In the future, federal judges would have the authority to skirt mandatory minimum sentences for more nonviolent drug offenders; an estimated 2,000 people a year would be eligible. The bill reduces some mandatory sentences, the “three strikes penalty” and the number of people who could receive extra years for committing a crime while holding a gun

.It pumps $375 million into job training and rehab programs and gives inmates the chance to earn 10 days in halfway houses or in-home supervision for every 30 days spent in rehab and job training. (Former Attorney General Jeff Sessions slashed funding for halfway houses and dismantled efforts to improve education in federal prisons.)

The bill also enshrines in law what many consider basic decency, such as providing women with free sanitary supplies and not shackling them while giving birth and n

Read more here: https://www.kentucky.com/opinion/edi...#storylink=cpy

[boutons_deux]

"trim the huge costs — in dollars and human potential — that mass incarceration inflicts on our country."

the CounterPunch article that I posted said this bill is not a money or human saver.

No sentencing reform, so keep locking up Ms of people for long time

AND

privatize more of the Federal prison operations (a tiny part USA's Incarceration Nation) which always means paying more and getting less.

Of course, McC is indefensible. I'm sure he is more interested in political gaming than he is in humanity, and surely he's got his eye on the many $Ms in donations to Repugs from the Prison Industrial Complex.

[Winehole23]

Mitch McConnell should drop the lame excuses. Let the Senate vote on bipartisan justice, prison reforms.

Hear, hear!

[boutons_deux]

Tom Cotton Is Here To Ruin Prison Reform

The Arkansas Republican is working hard to blow up a bipartisan deal.

https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry...gEmail__112918

[boutons_deux]

Meet District Attorney Mark Gonzalez, Criminal Justice Reformer

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h8iM...em-uploademail

[Winehole23]

Texans shouldn't be jailed for non-payment of traffic tickets. Passing a law to make it illegal is in both party platforms this legislative session.

When a defendant loses in small-claims court (it's not called that, anymore, but that's what it is), a JP typically orders monetary payment as judgment.


If the defendant cannot pay, jailing them is not allowed. Instead, plaintiffs must pursue debt collection using other methods, such as liens on property, turnover orders, sending the debt to commercial collections, etc..


We're left to wonder, why is debt to the government somehow such a big deal that it warrants incarceration of those who cannot pay? Clearly, non-carceral methods are sufficient for these same judges to declare "justice" done if the beneficiary of court-declared debt is a person, not the government.


The government has created a double standard to benefit itself. Ethical qualms about the private sector excessively squeezing the poor are routinely ignored in the public sector when it comes to criminal-justice debt, particularly Class C misdemeanor traffic fines.

http://gritsforbreakfast.blogspot.co...to-handle.html

[Winehole23]

Group sues Texas over the Driver Responsibility program that traps thousands of Texas in poverty:

https://m.chron.com/news/houston-tex...y-13444715.php

[Winehole23]

Misdemeanors ruin lives; increased prosecutorial discretion can change that:

That enormous misdemeanor process cons utes the bulk of the American criminal system. Thirteen million misdemeanor cases are filed annually — that’s 80 percent of all state criminal dockets. This is how our criminal system works most of the time, for the most people.


There are many ways that the police and prosecutors can improve the misdemeanor system, mostly by shrinking it. The police can deploy low-level arrests less often and in more targeted and strategic ways, as many community policing programs already do. And they can focus on reducing racial disparities.


Prosecutors should devote more time and resources to screening misdemeanors so that minor arrests do not become criminal charges so easily and so often. The ultimate aim — and the thing voters should demand in the next election — is to ease the flood of misdemeanor arrests and convictions that quietly derails millions of people’s lives every year and that exacerbates some of the worst injustices of our criminal system.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/26/o...demeanors.html

[boutons_deux]

"Police should ..."

"Prosecutors should ..."

good luck with that. The LE culture is as corrupt as BigFinance and the military.

arrests, confessions, convictions are how the LE "culture", for decades, proves, come election time, its worth to politicians, voters.

And nobody is "policing the (immune) police" and prosecutors. How many prosecutors lose jobs, get debarred for malpractice, even after eg the Innocence Project exonerates their victims, ansd/or prove that the prosecution withheld exonerating evidence in order to convict?

Any politicians proposing bills or regs, running for office, that "go easy on crime"?

Punishing people, hurting people are fundamental to American adversarial, dog-eat-dog Capitalist so-called Christian society.

If I'm The Punisher, I must be good, God loves me.

And Trash epitomizes that "ethic". His goal is not only to win a negotiation, a deal, a conflict, but also to hurt the other party.

10Ms of Americans, esp Bible-humping evangelicals, elected Trash to "hurt", to punish non-whites, non-males.

However, informative article. I learned that police, as well executing unarmed, innocent blacks for just about anything, are in some locales then entire judicial system.