Ramsey on what the new University of Texas/Texas Tribune poll says about the governor’s race, education, immigration, and other issues; Grissom on a far West Texas county divided over Arizona’s immigration law; Ramshaw talks health care reform and obesity in Texas with a legendary Dallas doctor; M. Smith on the Collin County community that’s about to break ground on a $60 million high school football stadium; Aguilar on the backlog of cases in the federal immigration detention system; Philpott of the Green Party’s plans to get back on the ballot; Hu on the latest in the Division of Workers’ Comp contretemps; Mulvaney on the punishing process of getting compensated for time spent in jail when you didn’t commit a crime; Hamilton on the fight over higher ed formula funding; and my sit-down with state Sen. Kirk Watson, D-Austin: The best of our best from May 24-28, 2010.
Texas Department Of Criminal Justice
Posted in
Criminal Justice
The Price of Innocence
Let’s say you served time for a crime you didn’t commit: How much is each year you lost really worth? A new law increases the state’s payout to exonerees, but the process of getting compensated is its own form of punishment.
Posted in
Criminal Justice
Defenseless
Before adopting the Fair Defense Act in 2001, Texas was considered abysmal in legal circles when it came to providing representation for the poor. Proponents and critics of the current system agree the situation has improved since lawmakers started requiring counties to implement minimum representation standards. But has it improved enough?
Posted in
Criminal Justice
The War at Home
For many of the more than 150,000 Texans who have returned from the battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan, the struggle to cope with the horrors they’ve seen can result in drug addiction and violent outbursts. To deal with those harsh realities, 10 counties are working to establish “veterans courts” that would emphasize treatment or counseling over punishment.
Posted in
Criminal Justice
TribBlog: Study: Mentally Ill End Up in Texas Prisons
Texas has nearly eight times as many people with serious mental illness in jails and prisons as it does in psychiatric hospitals, according to a new study by the Treatment Advocacy Center and the National Sheriffs’ Association.
Posted in
State Government
On the Records: Prisons App 1.1
We’ve updated our Texas prisons app to include data and visualizations about inmates from each of the state’s 254 counties.
Posted in
Criminal Justice
“A Country of Immigrants”
To the sound of drums and the sight of American flags, more than 25,000 people marched on Dallas City Hall in the latest episode in Texas’ endless immigration saga.
Posted in
Demographics
TribWeek: In Case You Missed It
Stiles and Thevenot’s searchable database of more than 5,800 public schools, Thevenot on why smaller high schools are better, Garcia-Ditta on the possible unification of Big Bend National Park with Mexico, Grissom on what’s likely to happen on immigration reform this year (nothing), Hamilton on how Admm Bobby Ray Inman is managing a crisis, Hu on the health care reform straw man, Ramsey on the no-shoo-in-for-the-experienced-guy special election in Senate District 22, Philpott on the likely post-Arizona immigration brawls, Ramshaw on the emergence of concierge care as a response to health care reform, Aguilar on how Texas will soon become Cuba’s top U.S. trading partner, Stiles and Babalola’s searchable database of more 160,000 inmates in Texas prisons, M. Smith on the depressing fact that every single U.S. Attorney position in Texas is now vacant, and my on-camera sit-down with Texas Transportation Commission chair Deirdre Delisi. The best of our best from April 26 to 30, 2010.
Posted in
Criminal Justice
On the Records: Mapping U.S. Attorney Vacancies Nationwide
President Obama and the U.S. Senate haven’t yet installed U.S. Attorneys in any of Texas’ four federal court districts. As our national map shows, more than half of the country is in the same situation.
Posted in
Criminal Justice
Data App: Let’s Go to Prison
Our latest interactive database has records on each of the more than 160,000 inmates in Texas prisons, including their names, crimes, hometowns, height, weight and gender, the counties in which they were convicted and their sentencing dates. Explore them all.
