Texas Lowers Childcare Standards To Keep Private Family Detention Centers Open
The Texas Health and Human Services Commission quietly lowered standards for licensing childcare facilities, allowing family detention centers to stay open.
ICE Punishes Immigrant Women On Hunger Strike With Isolation, Cold Cells
Guards at the Hutto Detention Center in Texas, are retaliating against immigrant detainees engaged in a hunger strike to protest their living conditions.
Texas Prisons For Migrant Families May Be Licensed As ‘Childcare Facilities’
Texas is considering granting childcare licenses to immigrant family detention centers in order to bring them into compliance with a federal court order.
Questionable Medical Care Turns Short Jail Stays Into Death Sentences
When Jesse Jacobs reported to the Galveston County Jail to serve a 30-day sentence for a DUI, he did so knowing that if everything went well, he would be out in 12 to 15 days. Six days later, he was dead. Jacobs was one of the nearly 1000 people who die each year in America’s jails, according to statistics released by the Department of Justice’s Bureau of Justice Statistics. Like Jacobs, four in every ten of these people die in their first seven days in jail.
Delays Abound In Prosecution Of Austin Police Detective For 2013 Shooting Of Larry Jackson
Two years ago, Austin Police Det. Charles Kleinert shot and killed Larry Jackson, Jr., an unarmed black man, under a bridge near one of the city’s many greenbelt trails. His death was the savage culmination of a wild chase through the city that ultimately led to Kleinert’s early retirement and indictment for manslaughter.
Activists Demand Sandra Bland Investigation With 750,000 Petition Signatures
On August 26, activists delivered 260,000 signatures to the Justice Department, demanding a federal investigation of Sandra Bland’s suspicious death in a Texas jail. Although officials ruled her death a suicide, many suspect she was murdered and, regardless of her official cause of death, her needless arrest during a traffic stop directly led to her demise.
Judge Rejects Obama Administration’s ‘Fear-Mongering,’ Orders Release of Immigrants
A federal judge rejected “fear-mongering” over “illegal immigration” by President Barack Obama’s administration and ordered the government to implement changes to ensure detained mothers and children are released within the next two months.
Battling The Criminal Justice System For Diabetes Healthcare (Reader Response)
Reader Phillip Baker responds to Gaming the System by sharing his experiences as a prisoner healthcare advocate who spent years trying to get adequate healthcare for prisoners with Type 1 diabetes. To his dismay, prison healthcare officials seem to care little for the well-being of their inmates.
New Report Finds Inmate Deaths on the Rise
Inmate deaths in local jails and state prisons are on the rise for the third year in a row, according to a new study by the federal Bureau of Justice Statistics. The report, released on August 4, found that the number of jailhouse deaths increased between 2012 and 2013 even though jail populations declined by 4% during that time.
Austin Police Accountability Activist Arrested On Copwatch, Again
Antonio Buehler, Austin-Texas-based police accountability activist, has been arrested for copwatching — again. Buehler was arrested Saturday while filming the police with Peaceful Streets Project, a group he founded that frequently holds “copwatch” events, and spent about 18 hours in jail.