Good to hear. When Harris County District Attorney Mike Anderson toppled incumbent Pat Lykos in last year’s Republican primary, some county budget hawks got fidgety. The campaign’s central issue, after all, was Anderson’s opposition to a Lykos policy that treated cases with drug residue of less than 1/100th of a gram as misdemeanors. Lykos was [...]
Posts Tagged ‘jails’
The next step to closing the city jail
The sobering center was Step 1. Step 2 is a joint processing center with the county, and that is now closer to happening. With backing from the city of Houston, Harris County is reviving a long-discussed plan to build a facility to process inmates into the county jail, and to offer the mental health services [...]
Treating rather than jailing the mentally ill
Very good news. Harris County Sheriff Adrian Garcia and his medical staff wholeheartedly support a bill filed this week to reduce recidivism by the mentally ill who wind up in the county jail, a $5 million pilot program to transition them into community treatment facilities. “These individuals are principally in our custody because they are [...]
Sobering center opens up
Good. Mayor Annise Parker joined council members on Thursday to unveil the innovative Houston Recovery Center, a place where people who are intoxicated can sober up instead of being arrested. Officials say there’s only one other similar facility in Texas. “Turns out that a significant percentage of the people we were putting in jail, were [...]
I got those empty prison cell blues
There’s a lot of excess prison capacity around the state, which is a big problem for a lot of communities that once thought building prisons, to be operated by private entities, would be a boon for them. Just over a decade ago, prisons were a growth industry, and Texas was the undisputed king. The state [...]
Yes, Ed Emmett supports Medicaid expansion
As I’m sure you’re aware, I’ve been banging the drum pretty much nonstop for Medicaid expansion. I see it not only as a state issue but a county issue as well, which is why I’ve made a big deal about what Harris County is or isn’t doing about it. I haven’t seen the subject come [...]
Report recommends against privatizing the Harris County jail
Very good news. Privatizing the Harris County jail would be risky and may not result in savings, according to an internal county memo recommending that Commissioners Court keep the state’s largest lockup in Sheriff Adrian Garcia’s hands. The confidential Feb. 11 memo, obtained by the Houston Chronicle, comes after more than a year of study [...]
City-county cooperation
It’s a beautiful thing, isn’t it? At 9:27 p.m. on Election Day, when it was clear a Metro referendum crucial to both of their road-building budgets had passed, Harris County Commissioner Steve Radack’s phone buzzed with a text message from Houston Mayor Annise Parker: “Maybe we can tackle world peace next.” The note hinted at [...]
Jail privatization update
Grits, from about two weeks ago: In a conference call last week with investors (see the transcript), Corrections Corporation of America said it expects to find out by next spring whether they will receive a contract to operate the Harris County Jail. Said President and CEO David Hininger: The final update I wanted to give [...]
Harris County and court costs
Grits has some interesting local news. An appellate court has ruled that all court fees in Harris County criminal cases, going back for some indeterminate amount of time, are invalid if the county did not produce a written “bill of cost” documenting their source, as the county apparently, routinely failed to do. Moreover, the issue [...]
The felony mental health court
I’d celebrate, too. [State District Court Judge] Krocker and others celebrated the official opening of Harris County’s felony mental health court, which started putting mentally ill defendants on probation instead of sending them to jail in May. Krocker has been working to get a special court to oversee felony cases of defendants diagnosed with schizophrenia, [...]
The Sheriff’s Crisis Intervention team
It’s a really good idea. Crisis intervention teams, tagged to respond to calls involving mentally disturbed subjects, reflect a new wave of law enforcement thinking pioneered by the Memphis, Tenn., Police Department in the 1980s. Such efforts have received renewed attention after a Houston police officer last week fatally shot a mentally ill double-amputee who [...]
Yet another reason to expand Medicaid
Grits: A friend forwarded me a handout being circulated at the Harris County Criminal Justice Coordinating Council detailing a pair of studies of “Kendra’s Law” out of New York, which provides court-ordered outpatient mental health treatment to a small subset of probationers in the “most desperate need for psychiatric treatment.” According to the handout, “Taken [...]
Council approves funding for sobering center
Good. City Council agreed Wednesday to spend $4.3 million to outfit a warehouse at Star of Hope Mission and $353,000 a year to operate it as a place to take drunks instead of jail. City officials expect the 84-bed facility to open later this year and justified the expense on the hope that it will [...]
Opposing the privatized psych hospital
Some pushback on a bad idea. A coalition of influential Texas organizations is pushing back against the proposed privatization of a state psychiatric hospital by Geo Care, a subsidiary of a prison operations group that has a troubled history in Texas. The Department of State Health Services is preparing to privatize one of the state [...]
Privatizing psych hospitals makes as much sense as privatizing prisons
Especially when it’s the same outfit doing the privatizing in each case. Sixteen months after the Montgomery County Mental Health Treatment Facility opened in Conroe, the state’s first publicly funded, privately run psychiatric hospital is facing at least $53,000 in state fines for serious shortcomings in patient care. The private operator, Geo Care, is a [...]
Spending a little to save a lot
Remember HPD’s Chronic Consumer Stabilization Program, in which the police department attempted to deal with some of the people who interact with them the most often in a better, more humane, and more cost-effective way? Well, it’s been working. Since the program began, run-ins between police and the top 30 chronic consumers have declined by [...]
Medicaid expansion isn’t just about hospitals
Grits has an insight. At [last] Monday’s House County Affairs hearing, Chairman Garnet Coleman noted the irony in response to testimony by witnesses regarding the effectiveness of Veterans Courts, which are essentially mental-health courts aimed at current and former military members. Citing the example of a mentally ill veteran coming back from Afghanistan who, as a [...]
The Mayor’s 2013 budget
What a difference a year – and better sales tax receipts and a better real estate market – makes. Mayor Parker has unveiled her budget for the 2012-2013 fiscal year, and it promises no service cuts, no layoffs, and no tax increase. Last year, the city issued 764 pink slips and cut services as budget [...]
Hard times in the prison building business
Bad news for the mostly small counties that are left holding the bag on their bond debt, good news for the rest of us. The dusty West Texas ranch town of Anson, once known for its no-dancing law made famous in the 1984 movie “Footloose,” has a dubious new claim to fame: the Jail to [...]
The Sheriff’s office is hiring
Good. Harris County Sheriff Adrian Garcia says by balancing his department’s $392 million budget, he’ll be able to transfer 100 deputies from jail duties to crime-fighting jobs in the next year while hiring hundreds of new civilian jailers. During a news conference Monday, Garcia said when he took office in January 2009 the department was [...]
Sober up
This seems like a sensible idea. City officials plan to open a “sobering center” at the Star of Hope Mission downtown later this year. It would be an 84-bed facility that would allow people whose only offense is being drunk to bypass jail. Houston police arrest 19,000 people a year for public intoxication, racking up [...]
Interview with Sheriff Adrian Garcia
Harris County Sheriff Adrian Garcia was elected in 2008 with the highest vote total of any candidate on the ballot. He inherited an office that was tainted by the scandals of his long-term predecessor, a jail system that was overcrowded, understaffed, unsafe, unsanitary, and under the spotlight of federal and state inspectors, a hiring freeze [...]
More on disciplining deputies
Here’s another long Chron story about disciplinary statistics for Harris County Sheriff’s deputies. Reading through it, I felt like there was some context missing. A Houston Chronicle review of disciplinary records indicates that from 2008 through 2010, more than 200 jail employees were disciplined for various offenses, some serious and others minor. Last year, the [...]
Fewer inmate deaths
More good news for the Sheriff’s office. The number of inmates who have died while in Harris County detention has plummeted during the last three years, a decline that Sheriff Adrian Garcia described as “deeply satisfying” but could not explain. Three county prisoners died last year, down from 11 in 2010, and 16 in 2009, [...]
Inmate outsourcing on the way out
This is unequivocally good news. Dropping inmate numbers at the Harris County Jail will let the county end its nearly 5-year-old practice of shipping overflow inmates to Louisiana and other Texas counties within days, Sheriff Adrian Garcia said this week. The jail population has fallen 31 percent since 2008, to 8,573 inmates. The jail has [...]
More on the crime lab and the city jail
Here we have some more information about Mayor Parker’s plans for the crime lab, though it’s still not really clear where this is going. Parker wants to make the lab independent of HPD and the city, overseen instead by a local government board similar to the Port of Houston Authority, whose members are jointly appointed [...]
Weekend link dump for December 25
Just a few more hours till the after-Christmas sales start. Assuming there are any more Chistmases after this one. The case against Santa Claus. Trying to exert control over the presents your kids get is ultimately doomed to fail. How many of the presents under your tree were made in America? On baby names, pet [...]
More on privatizing the Harris County jail
Grits: On Sunday, Grits broke the news that Corrections Corporation of America had submitted a bid to manage the Harris County Jail, citing information given to investors about a county-issued RFP which hadn’t been reported in the local media. Last night, the local Fox TV affiliate confirmed it: FOX 26 News obtained this news letter from Corrections Corporation [...]
Reducing prison population is hard
And we’re taking a step backwards. Last summer, when tough-on-crime Texas closed its first prison ever, legislative leaders were jubilant over downsizing one of the nation’s largest corrections systems by more than 1,000 beds. It was a first big step, they said, toward saving taxpayers tens of millions of dollars in coming years. Meanwhile, prison [...]
More on Lykos versus the cops
Here’s another Chron story about the recent dust-up between Harris County DA Pat Lykos and six Harris County police groups that don’t like her policy that trace amounts of crack will not be prosecuted as felonies. Two points that are worth highlighting from the story: State District Judge Michael McSpadden has presided over Houston’s criminal [...]
What next for Sugar Land prison property?
Now that the Central Unit in Sugar Land has been closed, what will happen to the empty facility? The fate of the Central Unit site will be decided by the three-member School Land Board, which oversees real estate investments on behalf of the $26 billion Permanent University Fund. The board is chaired by Texas General [...]
A better way for law enforcement to deal with the mentally ill
Good. Three Harris County Sheriff’s deputies will have new partners riding shotgun soon, if county officials approve a pilot program pairing them with mental health workers to deal with mentally disturbed suspects. Sheriff Adrian Garcia said he wants to treat the mentally ill, not jail them. “This will help keep those in crisis from becoming [...]
Will there be more prison closures?
This story, which is primarily about the soon-to-be-closed Central Unit in Sugar Land, discussed the possibility that other prisons may also wind up being closed, but doesn’t seem to hopeful about it. Officials note that Texas is perhaps the only state in the country now with hundreds of empty prison bunks and the possibility of [...]