The ACLU of Texas and seven other groups filed a complaint today (Monday, March 5) with the Texas Commission on Judicial Conduct against 209th District Court Judge Michael McSpadden in Harris County, asking that McSpadden be immediately suspended and removed from the bench.
Eight state and local civil rights groups filed a formal complaint Friday with a judicial commission, seeking sanctions against a Harris County felony court judge because of comments he made to the Houston Chronicle about black defendants.
Reformers have targeted Texas primary races where candidates promise bail reform and jail diversion.
A majority of facilities at the Travis County Correction Complex need major infrastructure upgrades. Nineteen of 27 buildings fail functional, mechanical, and architectural ratings, according to the Planning and Budget Office. A two-year analysis resulted in the 2016 master plan with recommendations on renovation and expansion.
When Travis County commissioners approved the 2018 budget in September that included about $6.6 million to design a new women’s facility in the Del Valle jail, County Judge Sarah Eckhardt insisted, over the cries of criminal justice reform advocates, that it would not mean more beds overall but that more would be allocated to women.
Read the rest of this article at the Austin American-Statesman.
For five days, 47-year-old Shannon Daves sat in solitary confinement in a Dallas County jail because she couldn’t afford to pay $500 bail.
The case to end cash bail puts Harris County judges and magistrates under a microscope.
Bail is not intended to be a punishment; its intended purpose is to make sure that people show up for their court date. But in communities across Texas, people who are still presumed innocent are being held in jail because they can't afford to post bail.
Read the rest of this op-ed, co-authored by TCJC's Jay Jenkins, at the Houston Chronicle.
One evening last September, an employee at the local organization Grassroots Leadership was scanning through Travis County's proposed budget when she stumbled upon plans for a new $91 million women's jail on the county's Del Valle correctional campus.
Instead, nine community groups urge for greater focus to be placed on implementing recommendations aimed at reducing incarceration rates.
