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Criminal Justice
Get the latest Texas Tribune coverage on criminal justice, including crime, courts, law enforcement, and reforms shaping the state’s justice system.
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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?
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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.
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Criminal Justice
On the Records: Paycheck U.
Today we’re adding another 17 agencies to our government salaries database, an extra 67,000 workers who collectively earn $2.9 billion in public payroll. The database now has records on more than 550,000 employees working at 62 of the largest state agencies, cities, universities, counties and mass-transit authorities.
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Criminal Justice
On the Records: The Capitol in 3-D
The next legislative session is more than eight months away, but that doesn’t mean you can’t explore the Capitol grounds — from your desk — thanks to Google Maps.
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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.
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Criminal Justice
TribBlog: Senators Get Social
With more and more state employees and elected officials using websites like Facebook and Twitter the onslaught of social media use within governmental bodies brings with it a lot of questions.
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Criminal Justice
On the Records: Come and Take Our Data
Records in the Texas Tribune’s data library are licensed under Creative Commons, which means you’re free to download them, remix them and republish them — so long as you comply with our simple terms.
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Criminal Justice
TribBlog: O’Neill Signs Off
Texas Supreme Court Justice Harriet O’Neill, who isn’t seeking reelection to the court, also isn’t finishing her term. She told Gov. Rick Perry and the other members of the court today that she will step down from the bench on June 20.
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Criminal Justice
On the Records: Combs’ Open Data Center
Susan Combs’ new texastransparency.org includes an Open Data Center, where anyone can download dozens of raw data sets, much like the federal government’s data.gov.