Things That Make Little Sense
July 12th, 2007 at 4:53 pm
Here are two cases of where some smart criminal justice policy would really help.
First, it’s going to cost Harris County (taxpayers, that is) $4 million to ship about 400 inmates from county jails to a privately run prison in Louisiana.
“An official with the Harris County Sheriff’s Office … described the transfer … as an ‘emergency concept’ aimed at dealing with a recent seasonal ’surge’ in the inmate population,” the Houston Chronicle reported.
Two months after the chronically overcrowded jail came into compliance with the state’s staffing ratio, it needed to ship out these inmates to maintain that compliance. Harris County Sheriff’s Office Chief Deputy Mike Smith blamed part of the overcrowding on 1,200 inmates in county jails who are serving time for state felonies.
Rick Perry did his part, too: “Smith also said the jail population could have decreased had Texas Gov. Rick Perry not vetoed a bill that would have allowed bail for technical parole violators. Nearly 500 technical violators — people who have not committed other crimes — are housed in the county lockup, Smith said.”
The best quote in the article, though, went to county commish Steve Radack. “The state dumps on Harris County like we’re running a little Alcatraz down here,” he told the Chron. “They pass these laws. Then take people that should be in state facilities and expect the county to take care of it.”
Meanwhile, in Dallas, a black mark on the otherwise promising tenure of district attorney Craig Watkins: “A felon who was out of jail on at least $400,000 in bonds for crimes including attempted capital murder killed a man Friday at a central Oak Cliff drug house, police say,” reported the Dallas Morning-News.
The guy was out on bond for a litany of alleged violent crimes dating back three years, along with a history of violent charges. But most harrowing is that 2004 guilty plea in an attempted capital murder case, for which he had yet to receive a sentence. His most recent arrest was just in May, for driving without a license. He was released on $500 bond.
Here’s the nut of the tension in Dallas, as Watkins and others try to alleviate the strain on county jails:
Officials at the Dallas County district attorney’s office couldn’t immediately explain why Mr. Wyatt’s bail was not revoked.
“The Dallas County district attorney’s office has seven drug court prosecutors who at any given time are handling as many as 500 cases and when a district attorney’s office is inadequately funded and understaffed, it translates into not having the proper resources in place to monitor the activities of defendants once they have made bond,” Mr. Watkins said in his statement.
Since Dallas County officials began cycling hundreds of low-level offenders through the system more quickly to reduce pressure on the county’s bulging jails, Dallas police have become increasingly vocal about fears that the city’s notoriously high crime rate will climb as the criminals have more time on the streets.
The point of moving low-level offenders through quickly is to make room to hold legit bad guys, but it’s easy to understand the police concerns when one obviously violent offender slipped through the cracks. There’s got to be a reasonable middle ground.
One question the DMN’s coverage of this event doesn’t answer is why sentencing in this case would have taken so long. We’ll see if we can track that down.
