What We're Reading
News that caught our attention or cited the Texas Justice Initiative from across the Lone Star State and beyond.
Texas lifts yearlong ban on prison visitation
Published on March 9, 2021Texas prisons will allow in-person visitation again, reported Jolie McCullough of the Texas Tribune, after Gov. Greg Abbott announced that other pandemic-related restrictions have been lifted. In the year that prisons were closed, about 300 incarcerated people and dozens of employees died of COVID-19 and thousands got sick.
Rep. Joe Moody announces formation of criminal justice reform caucus, more efforts on police transparency
Published on February 24, 2021KXAN's Josh Barer reports on a panel on transparency in criminal justice, featuring TJI's Executive Director Eva Ruth Moravec, Rep. Joe Moody and Kathy Mitchell from Just Liberty. The event was hosted by the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas and ACLU of Texas.
With a stalled court system, some Texas jails are dangerously overcrowded in the pandemic
Published on January 28, 2021Jolie McCullough with the Texas Tribune writes that under the coronavirus pandemic, jails – potential hotspots – are filling up as the criminal justice system has been paused: "State prisons stopped accepting new inmates for several months last year, and most counties have not held a single criminal jury trial since last March."
Fatal Police Shootings Of Unarmed Black People Reveal Troubling Patterns
Published on January 25, 2021Cheryl Thompson reports that NPR dug into police and court records to investigate the deaths of 135 Black Americans who were unarmed when they were shot and killed by law enforcement since 2015. "At least 75% of the officers were white," Thompson reports. "The latest one happened this month in Killeen, Texas, when Patrick Warren Sr., 52, was fatally shot by an officer responding to a mental health call."
Opinion: How Dallas police are reducing shootings of unarmed citizens
Published on January 26, 2021John Shjarback (Rowan University), Michael White (Arizona State University) and Stephen Bishopp (UT School of Public Health - Houston and Dallas Police Department) evaluated Dallas PD's "point-and-report policy to see whether shootings went up or down after the 2013 policy.