Tag Archives: Texas Department of Criminal Justice
‘The Penal System Today is Slavery’: Lawmakers Finally Start to Talk About Unpaid Labor in Texas Prisons
The 13th Amendment left a loophole for prisoners to be forced to work without pay. Texas remains one of five states that exploits the carveout for state profit.
Inmates in Texas make license plates, grow crops, tend to cattle, make soap and clothing, refurbish buses and computers, build furniture and more. They’re req...Read More
A Tale of Two Prison Systems
Scandals led to increased transparency for Texas’ juvenile lockups. When will lawmakers demand the same for the state’s adult prisons?
Early in the morning on February 22, Jeffrey Jelinski, a 58-year-old serving prison time for unauthorized use of a motor vehicle, died at the state’s LeBlanc ...Read More
Texas Prison Reformers Demand Dignity for Incarcerated Women
Bills addressing the basic needs of incarcerated women bolster the larger call for reform in the state prison system this session.
Like four out of five women incarcerated by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Maggie Luna was a mother when she went to prison. And like most women in p...Read More
When Prison Reform Goes Bad
What happened to the Legislature's two-decade-old attempt to break the cycle of incarceration for low-level felons?
In the early 1990s, the Texas Legislature tried to build something surprisingly progressive amid the state’s tough-on-crime prison boom: an alternative to pri...Read More
College Degree Options Are Disappearing for Women in Texas Prisons
In Texas, four-year degree programs for imprisoned women are expiring, even as more of them end up in the prison system.
The only bachelor’s degree programs available to women incarcerated in the Texas prison system are ending. By 2020, Texas A&M University-Central says it w...Read More
Lawyers Seek to Reform ‘Ethical Minefield’ of Public Defender’s Office Controlled by Texas Prison System
Former public defenders say prison officials who had a hand in prosecuting their clients influenced and sometimes outright interfered with their defense work.
Last week, David O’Neil stood before the Texas Board of Criminal Justice with an awkward request: He asked nine governor-appointed board members to relinquish...Read More
New Report Finds — Surprise — Indigent Defense Attorneys Shouldn’t be Under the Control of the State Prison System
The Texas prison system controls an agency tasked with defending poor inmates accused of crimes inside Texas prisons. What could possibly go wrong?
A new report by a committee of the State Bar of Texas aims to draw attention to a glaringly obvious conflict of interest at a little-known indigent defense syst...Read More
The 10 Best Observer Stories of 2016: ‘No Place for Old Men’
Texas prisons are filling up with the old and the ill — at enormous expense.
No Place for Old Men By Dick J. Reavis Published February 15 The state of Texas operates 109 prisons holding about 148,000 inmates. Some 27,000 of them are, l...Read More
The 10 Best Observer Stories of 2016: ‘The First Time Texas Killed One of My Clients’
An attorney pieces together a life cut short.
Editor’s Note: It’s hard to find new ways to write about the death penalty. And in these polarized times, most readers already have their minds made up....Read More