OUR LOCK 'EM JUSTICE IS A LOSER

Harris County Doesn't Need To Build Any More Jail
Cells. We Need To Construct Common-Sense Sentencing Policies.

The Harris County jail has reached 102.31 percent of capacity, 9,660
inmates, as of Oct. 1. That is about 1,000 more inmates than mandated
by the state (90 percent capacity is the rule).

The county wants to spend $267 million for construction of new jails
that will take many millions of dollars more to operate each year.
While Harris County and the city of Houston struggle to hire qualified
peace officers, these proposed jails threaten to divert hundreds of
new peace officers to the job of warehousing inmates. Flawed criminal
justice policy, not crime, is the cause of our jail
overcrowding.

Only 1,297 jail inmates (around 14 percent of the total jail
population) are convicted misdemeanor offenders serving their
sentence. There are more than three times that many not yet convicted,
just waiting for trial - more than 4,000 pretrial detainees.

Working-class people live paycheck to paycheck and need to get out of
jail while awaiting trial to feed their families and to afford a
private lawyer, rather than a county-paid lawyer, to defend them.

Harris County's pretrial release agency creates one of the lowest
personal recognizance bond (get out of jail with a promise to appear
in court) rates in Texas. Originally created a few decades ago to ease
jail populations, this local bureaucracy has grown and now feeds
itself with a diet of probation fees and burdensome bond conditions.
Harris County has the highest probation revocation rate of any major
county in Texas due to the onerous conditions.

The Harris County jail is also holding 1,319 state jail felons as
compared to an additional 577 for the entire rest of the state. Why
won't the state take them? Maybe it is because Harris County is the
state's per capita leader in jailing trace drug cases, such as empty
cocaine vials.

All sides of the issue agree that drug treatment works, so let's do
it. State District Judge Michael McSpadden suggests treating trace
drug cases as misdemeanors. Good idea. While we're at it, how about
spending a fraction of the $267 million of proposed new jail money on
a 1,000-bed drug treatment facility?

Harris County has a growing population categorized as "others" that
fits into no listed category of jail inmates as reported by the Texas
Commission on Jail Standards. Last August, the county held 799
"others" and in September this grew to 940 - the largest per capita
amount anywhere in the state. Many of these "others" are people
sentenced to drug treatment who are languishing in jail, often for
many months, waiting to start their treatment.

Our criminal court judges also contribute to the jail overcrowding.
They do so by hiring plea-bargain attorneys in clear defiance of state
law (the Fair Defense Act) and creating an assembly line of
one-size-fits-all prison or jail sentences. Some judges jail
individuals merely for failing to have a lawyer and also give jail
time after a jury mandates probation. These practices must stop.

Just who is driving new jail construction? The four Harris County
commissioners have millions of dollars, much from construction
interests, in their campaign accounts. Does that answer the question?

Conservatives, moderates and liberals agree: No more jails in Harris
County.

Kallinen is a Houston civil-rights lawyer who is an adviser to the
University of Houston Law School's Criminal Justice Institute and a
board member of the Harris County Criminal Lawyer's Association. He
can be emailed at attorneykallinen@aim.com.