Today, the Texas Center for Justice and Equity (TCJE) released a policy brief outlining a path to closing Texas’s five youth prisons by 2027.
“Finish the 5” Policy Plan to Close Texas’s Youth Prisons
Conditions of Confinement
1A Remaking America: What's Being Done About The Rise In Jail Deaths?
Millions of people enter jail in the U.S. every year. They've become a revolving door for those with mental health issues or substance-abuse disorders. The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that inmates are entitled to life-saving medical care, but that isn't quite guaranteed.
Equal access to the polls includes jail-based voting
In 1974, the U.S. Supreme Court opined that pretrial detainees maintain their right to vote, and in Texas, you do not lose that right if you are convicted of a misdemeanor offense. Nevertheless, localities and the state government have failed to effectively mobilize the necessary resources to create sufficient voting access for incarcerated, eligible voters to cast a ballot during elections.
Juvenile Justice Advocates on Sentencing Reform
The Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Administrator Liz Ryan discusses sentencing reform during an event hosted by the Sentencing Project.
The number of women in U.S. prisons is skyrocketing, but little data exists about their experiences.
Academia has an obligation to highlight the voices and experiences of cis and trans women—especially Black women, Indigenous women, and women of color. But as research around mass incarceration shifts to acknowledge the gendered and racialized realities of incarceration, I've seen my fellow academics continually ignore the ways in which women—especially Black, Indigenous, and women of color—are affected by the carceral system.
Women have long borne the brunt of over-policing. Now, they're the fastest-growing incarcerated population in Texas.
In Texas, women's incarceration rates have increased dramatically over the past few decades—over 1000 percent since 1980. Within that group, Black single women are the persons with categorically the highest likelihood of ending up incarcerated. Still, conversations about the harms incarceration causes have historically and largely been centered around men.
Design Firm Wants to Build “Feminist” Jails and Prisons. Abolitionists Say “No.”
On June 24, the architecture and design firm HDR Inc. held what it thought would be a standard event as part of the 2022 American Institute of Architects (AIA) conference at its office in Chicago, Illinois. But the firm, which has designed more than 275 jails and prisons while billing itself as progressive and morally responsible, was met with a powerful presence of abolitionists at its doorstep during the conference.
People Say They Languish in Texas Prisons' 'Mental Health' Unit
In the nine months after Edee Davis arrived at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s William P. Clements Unit near Amarillo, Texas for mental health treatment, she says she only attended three peer-group sessions facilitated by a counselor.
Failed Architecture Podcast: Stop Building Prisons
For Breezeblock #30, editor christin hu chats with community organizers Maggie Luna, Avalon Betts-Gaston, and Sashi James about their recent action at HDR (Henningson, Durham, Richardson), one of the largest architecture firms in the world, who are responsible for designing hundreds of prisons. Together, they discuss the reasons why architects should refuse to take part in the building of prisons and what they can do instead.