Pubdate: Fri, 20 Sep 2013
Source: Houston Chronicle (TX)
Copyright: 2013 Houston Chronicle Publishing Company Division, Hearst Newspaper
Contact:  http://www.chron.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/198

JAIL HELL IN TEXAS

Poor Defendants Who Can't Make Bail Pay The Price. The System's
Culture Needs To Change.

The late consumer champion/news personality Marvin Zindler often ended
his segments on Channel 13 Eyewitness News with a flamboyantly uttered
exclamation: "It's hell to be poor!"

Zindler was right then and, alas, Marvin would still be right
today.

It is hell to be poor around these parts. And that goes double if
you're poor and find yourself in the Harris County Jail - even if
you're innocent and eventually acquitted.

According to a study by a former director of the Harris County
pretrial program, reported by Chronicle reporter Lise Olsen, "In jail
system, class defines fate" (Page A1, Monday), defendants who can't
make bail typically end up with longer sentences when convicted and
too often lose their jobs when they're stuck behind bars.

Research by Gerald R. Wheeler examined more than 6,500 felony and
misdemeanor cases processed in Harris County from January 2012 to June
2013. Wheeler and attorney Gerald Fry found that many defendants
awaiting punishment for minor offenses, such as possession of small
amounts of drugs or misdemeanor charges like trespassing, spent weeks
or months in jail awaiting punishment.

The study showed that those unable to afford bail, regardless of age,
ethnicity or skin color, were much less likely to receive dismissals
or deferred prosecutions than those who could afford bail.

What is perhaps most alarming about this finding is that it is not
exactly new news. In 2009, Olsen interviewed Wheeler, whose studies
showed much the same thing: stints of up to six months in jail that
preceded actual punishment.

This suggests something larger at work in our system - an environment
created by criminal court judges and prosecutors largely inured to the
hardships and injustices routinely placed on the poor; and with no
evident recognition of a cruel form of double jeopardy for the guilty,
and unlawful confinement foisted on the innocent.

Chronicle editorial board members on a recent tour of jail intake
facilities heard as much from jailers pointing out the shortcomings of
the facility as an argument for county voters to approve a bond issue
in the November election. You can see a decades-old mind-set in the
way the structure was built. Ideas of front-door diversion for mental
health care or for posting bonds weren't part of the system. Instead,
crumbling brick and one-way hallways force practically every arrested
suspect through the same process.

Several jailers told us that the system needs a major "culture
change."

We concur.

This change should start with a basic reform: Ticketing low-level drug
offenders rather than arresting them.

This would reduce the huge bill county taxpayers foot for keeping
these individuals fed, housed and given medical treatment for extended
periods of time.

At the same time, it would potentially ease the problem of job loss
also identified in Wheeler's report. With a ticket rather than jail
time, defendants could return to the workplace while awaiting trial
for nonviolent misdemeanor offenses.

Imprisonment of those too poor to make bail is perhaps the most
obviously tilted outcome in a system with many such tilts against
those without the means to effectively advocate for themselves within
that system.

Where is the justice in allowing this injustice to continue? It is
absent.
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