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Latest blog posts from Grits for Breakfast

Memories of home ... in jail
Back in the day, many jailers in small Texas towns actually lived in the jail with their families. The Wichita Falls Times Record News has a feature about a Clay County Justice of the Peace whose family was the last to live in the jail when he was a Clay County deputy in 1971 ("Justice recalls...
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Published 4 hours ago

Could Cheney, Gonzales indictments be legit?
The Brownsville Herald on Sunday ran a feature profiling Willacy County DA Juan Angel Guerra ("Guerra bucks the odds," Nov. 30) and his much-ballyhooed prosecution of a private prison company for murder, including indictments of sitting Vice President Dick Cheney and former US Attorney General...
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Published 5 hours ago

Grits makes ABA Journal's list of top 100 legal blogs
I wanted to say "Thank you" to the editors at the American Bar Association Journal for naming Grits for Breakfast one of their "Blawg 100," their second annual compilation of what the publication's editors consider the nation's top legal blogs. I'm happy to say Grits made the cut last year as...
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Published 8 hours ago

Stuff to read while I'm busy
While I'm focused elsewhere today, let me point readers to several stories I'd blog about in more detail if I had more time:Creative sentencingThe Rockwall Herald Banner recently published a column by a local attorney on creative sentencing practices, their benefits and limits.Gone to the dogsThe...
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Published a day ago

Tango Blast differs from other 'security threat groups'
Not all prison gangs are created equal.Tanya Eiserer at the Dallas News had a feature yesterday ("Texas Tango Blast gang draws kids with tattoos, loose affiliation rules," Nov. 30) focusing on the rise of the Tango Blast, an alternative to hard-core prison gangs created by Texas prisoners for...
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Published a day ago

Lonely voice in the wilderness demands end to overcriminalization
I've cracked wise before at the notion that Texas has labeled 2,324 separate acts "felonies" in state law, including eleven involving oysters. Tack on perhaps 3-4,000 more misdemeanors and countless municipal ordinances and county regulations and we really are living in a bizarre period...
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Published 2 days ago

Drug war a flop, say Mexican, US officials
Hard to say what effect such things have on public policy, though it's certainly evidence of the erosion of consensus among elites around the drug war, but from the Los Angeles Times, we see reference to a new analysis from well-credentialed sources telling us:The United States' war on drugs has...
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Published 2 days ago

Report: Travis County among worst in state at updating crime data
An AP report published in the Statesman gives a little more detail on the study described in this Grits post that found major inadequacies in the statewide database maintained by the Department of Public Safety for criminal background checks:Fort Worth-based Imperative Information Group, a...
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Published 2 days ago

Williamson Sheriff honored for mental health unit
One of the keys to diverting mentally ill offenders from jail into treatment on the front end is training law enforcement to handle mental health calls without making the problem worse and directing people to services on the front end instead of waiting for the court to order it later. At many...
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Published 2 days ago

Happy Thanksgiving: Go Longhorns, OK State!
I'm taking a couple of days away from the blog to spend with the family and root for Oklahoma State full-time between now and the Bedlam game Saturday. ;)Since this blog is all about justice, I'm naturally highly outraged at the idea that the Oklahoma Sooners might jump past my beloved Longhorns...
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Published 5 days ago

Justice system ill equipped to handle mental illness
In the San Angelo Standard Times, a mother tells the tragic story of her son's mental illness and ultimate suicide, including numerous run ins with the law along the way. Lisa Hatch and her husband were both law enforcement officers, but that didn't stop the hand of fate from dealing their family...
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Published 5 days ago

Exonerees face difficult re-entry task
With the passage of the federal Second Chance Act and numerous state and local re-entry initiatives for felons, the problem of long-time prisoners needing help to successfully get back on their feet and become productive citizens when they get out has received more focus than any time in recent...
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Published 5 days ago