Money to burn

In its never-ending quest to make prisons as inhospitable as it can (just because it can), the State of Texas spent $7 million fighting a lawsuit over the installation of air conditioning at a prison unit near College Station, Texas. Inmates filed the suit in 2014 arguing that the conditions in the prison during the summer violated the 8th Amendment's prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment.

The inmate suit pointed out that 23 inmates had died of heat stroke since 1998 including 10 who died during a heat wave in 2011.

Currently about 75% of prison housing units in Texas lack air conditioning.

The state wasn't having any of it. An expert hired by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice estimated that it would cost $20 million to install a/c at the prison. After a federal judge told Texas that the conditions were unconstitutional, the cost to install the a/c suddenly fell to a mere $11 million.

Under pressure to settle the case, lest the damages spiral out of control, TDCJ revised its estimate to install a/c down to $4 million. The estimate had come in so low that TDCJ has asked the legislature for more money to install a/c at a unit housing developmentally challenged inmates.

So, to recap, the geniuses running this state spent around $7 million dollars to defend a lawsuit when it only would have cost about $4 million to install the air conditioning system. Why was the state fighting the suit in the first place? Why would you spend almost three times as much to defend a lawsuit as it would cost to do what was asked of you?

This is fiscal responsibility for conservatives in Texas. We would rather spend a shitload of money so we don't set a precedent by doing the right thing. Then, when a loss is damn near guaranteed, we'll concede that we lied from the get go about the cost and we'll do the work.

So, Greg Abbott, what have you to say for yourself? What other uses were there for $11 million?

So, Dan Patrick, what have you to say for yourself? You're the one who's supposed to be the fiscal conservative, yet you set $11 million on fire to prove a point. You were a blowhard when you were the sports anchor at KHOU (and how I wish I could find footage of the time you painted yourself blue for an Oilers playoff game) and you're still a fucking blowhard today.

So, Ken Paxton, what have you to say for yourself? I understand it can be difficult to do your job when you're constantly fending off indictments and ethics charges, but surely a wingnut like yourself can't condone the waste of $11 million.

And, more importantly, why do we have prisons units in this state not equipped with air conditioning? What purpose does that serve? The men and women in these units are still human. They may have done things we find repugnant, but they still deserve to be treated better than animals. Making life as hard as possible for inmates does nothing for them when they are released back into society. But, hey, the inmates don't have a powerful lobby so we'll just make life hell for them until they file a lawsuit against us.

You think we'd know better by now.

Prison inmates sue Texas over conditions

I'm sure there are plenty of folks out there who don't give two damns whether or not the state provides air conditioning for its inmates in state prison.

But they should.

Our entire prison system was born of the idea that the best way to "cure" a person of criminal intent was to take them out of the environment that bred that intent and educate them in the honest ways of the world. So we built penitentiaries out in the middle of nowhere.

Then somewhere down the line the idea came about that prisons should be about punishment, not rehabilitation. So we made life harder for inmates and stripped them of their dignity all in the name of that Old Testament trope "an eye for an eye" or some bullshit like that.

Then we decided that society was best served when we just plain eliminated folks from society who had shown a penchant for misbehaving (I know I am painting a very broad stroke). We decided it was better to just lock 'em up and throw away the key since neither of the first two schools of thought seemed to be working.

Not coincidentally, this movement toward removing folks from society sprung up as the courts decided that the Constitution applied equally to black folks as well as white folk. Prisons took their place as one of our preferred modes of oppression. The move over the last two decades toward mass incarceration is nothing but a tool of social control. That is Bill Clinton's true legacy.

And that brings us back to Texas where a group of inmates has filed suit against the state alleging that the conditions in Texas prisons amount to cruel and unusual punishment. Specifically the lawsuit focuses on the lack of air conditioning in Texas prisons.

Now we could debate all day long on sentencing and parole and prison conditions, but I would hope that we could all agree that forcing folks to live in cramped quarters in the Texas heat without air conditioning is beyond cruel.

"All of the people that tend to die are the sickest and the most fragile among the inmates. What makes what's going on reprehensible is that the department knows this. We're asking the court to force the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to reduce the temperatures to a safe and livable amount." -- Jeff Edwards, lead counsel

Sure, there are people around Texas who don't have air conditioning - but that doesn't matter when it comes to how the state treats those entrusted to its care. Food, health care and sanitary conditions in prison are already deplorable around the state. Why don't we remove the potential deadly consequences of heat stroke from the sentences of those behind bars?

Let us not forget that those are people behind bars. They are men and women with families and friends. We can't continue to treat them as nothing but a number.

A broken record

On the way to the municipal courthouse during the lunch hour yesterday I happened upon a discussion on the local public affairs show Houston Matters on KUHF. The topic was the state of Texas prisons. One of the guests was Ray Hill who hosts Execution Watch on KPFT and who used to host The Prison Show.

I've provided a link to the program but, unfortunately, the broadcast isn't broken down into sections.

The show contained a bit of a history lesson about the Texas prison system. Up until the last 30 years, Texas prisons used a building tender system to maintain discipline in the units. Prison officials would actually pick inmates to run the buildings on a daily basis. Predictably this led to greater violence and harsher conditions. That system was tossed out as a result of the Ruiz v. Estelle lawsuit that put Texas prisons under federal control for years.

What I found most interesting was the fact that the prison population has grown by nearly 900% over the past 30 years while the population of Texas has only doubled. What's wrong with this picture?

I think we can all agree that there are some folks behind bars that really need to be there. But that number is a whole lot less than you might think. The population explosion in our prisons went hand-in-hand with the failed war on drugs. Drug addicts don't need to be in prison. Prison therapy is not an effective method of helping folks cope with their addictive behavior.

Instead of spending roughly $18,000 a year to house an addict in prison, why don't we spend the money on community-based drug treatment programs? I've mentioned this before, but we need to change our model for handling drug addiction. We need to treat it as the public health problem that it is, not as a criminal problem.

We promote drug courts like they are some new panacea that will turn defendants clean with a little bit of tough love. The problem is that, no matter how much we candy it up, a drug court is still a criminal court; and criminal courts deal in acquittals and convictions. Criminal courts only function properly when there are adversarial parties arguing both sides of a case. Whenever we start to put prosecutors and defense lawyers on "teams" we are undermining the adversarial system and weakening the protections the Founding Fathers set out for criminal defendants.

Our jails and prisons are filled to the breaking point with folks whose only transgressions are an inability to get through the day without the use of illegal stimulants or depressants. Those folks don't need their liberty taken away. They need to be able to carry out their day-to-day lives with the addition of therapy provided by counselors who aren't interested in violating their probation and sending them to jail or prison.

Those folks don't need to be exposed to the culture of violence and depravity we find in our prisons. They shouldn't have to live with the fear of being sexually assaulted on a daily basis.

The system is clearly broken and is in dire need of fixing.

California sterilizes dozen of female inmates

Over a five-year period, 148 female inmates in California's state prison system underwent sterilization procedures that had not been approved by a state medical committee. The committee's job was to determine whether the procedures were medically necessary.

The procedures were performed at outside hospitals under contract to provide health care services to inmates. Doctors claim no one was coerced but there was at least one inmate who was asked to consent to a procedure while under sedation. Medical directors at the individual prisons recommended and approved the procedures without submitting the requests to the state board.

Now just think about that for a second. Prison medical directors recommended the procedures. We're not talking about a woman going to the doctor of her choosing. We're not talking about a doctor advising a patient how to treat a particular condition. These women weren't afforded a second opinion. The very fact that the person recommending the procedures is in a position of authority as compared to the inmate raises very serious questions.

I suppose it's entirely possible that all of the women wanted to undergo sterilization procedures and that no one was pressured or coerced to do so. It's also possible that some of the women involved were pressured to be sterilized. The truth, no doubt, lies somewhere in between.

"Pressuring a vulnerable population — including at least one documented instance of a patient under sedation — to undergo these extreme procedures erodes the ban on eugenics." -- California Legislative Women's Caucus

But even if we accept the hospitals' claims that no one was coerced, performing the procedures without obtaining the necessary authorization beforehand is very troubling. These women are in custody. They have little autonomy and little discretion. To the State of California, they are nothing but a series of numbers.

Anyone placed in that situation will be vulnerable. Prison de-humanizes people. It robs them of their individuality. It robs them of their self-worth.

It's the reason the detainees at Guantanamo and other facilities operated by the US around the world were subjected to torture day after day. The entire goal was to degrade the inmate and break down his resistance to the point where he would see his torturers as his saviors. Once someone is in that position there is nothing they won't do.

If but one inmate was coerced into consenting to a procedure that she wouldn't have consented to otherwise, that's one too many. In prison, inmates live day-by-day. It's the only way to get through a long sentence. The focus is on the here and now. There is no room for long term considerations. How many of those women thought about their futures outside the walls while they were lying on the table? What happens whey they realize the damage can't be undone?

At least it's not a needle

Police arrest suspect. Police take suspect to jail. Police take suspect's fingerprints when he is booked in for identification purposes. Police collect other scientific evidence for use in solving cold cases.

What's wrong with this picture?

According to Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy and four of his fellow justices, not a damn thing. You see, there's nothing overly intrusive about it. Just take a giant Q-tip and roll it around inside someone's mouth and you have instant DNA sample. No one is getting strapped down. Nothing is being injected in someone's body. And, best of all, now you have a DNA sample you can enter into a database to see if your new guest is implicated in any other crimes that have gone unsolved.

It is so strange, at times, to agree with Antonin Scalia. But, when it comes to Fourth Amendment issues, his goofy textualist philosophy generally works in favor of the accused. Justice Scalia wasn't concerned with the intrusiveness of the collecting of the sample. He didn't care if it was convenient. Justice Scalia had a problem with the fact that the sample would be used as evidence in investigating other crimes.

Oh, did I forget to mention the samples in question were taken without a warrant?

Yesterday the Nine in Robes decided by a vote of 5 to 4 in Maryland v. King, 569 US ___ (2013), that there was no need for the government to obtain a warrant to collect a DNA sample from someone arrested for a crime. Not convicted, mind you, just arrested.

The decision raises questions on various levels. First, since when do we equate a DNA sample to a booking fingerprint? The purpose of fingerprinting those arrested and jailed is for identification purposes. Down the road, should that person be convicted and find themselves on the wrong side of the iron bars again, that fingerprint card from the first arrest and conviction can be compared to the new card to identify those folks who have prior convictions are who are subject to enhanced sentences.

The fingerprints are also loaded into statewide and nationwide data bases that allow law enforcement agencies to compare fingerprints found at the scene of a crime to those taken of folks charged or convicted of various crimes.

The DNA evidence in this case would constitute scientific evidence that could be used against the arrestee in any other case in which there is a hit on his sample. The sample isn't being used for identification purposes, it's being used for investigative purposes. It is being obtained without the slightest showing of probable cause.

This decision, and all the other 5 to 4 decisions in matters concerning our rights under the Bill of Rights, raises questions about the reverence judges pay to the principle of stare decisis. If we are going to use these cases decided by one vote as precedent on which to base our rights, shouldn't we be concerned that in this vast democracy, a right was defined by one person who was not elected and is not accountable to the citizenry?

Furthermore, if a case is decided by but one vote, what does that tell us about the strength of the precedential power of that case? Knowing that the same facts could just have easily led to a different decision if the composition of the court was changed by one justice, should we rely upon those decisions to the same extent we rely on unanimous (or near-unanimous) decisions?

There is nothing magical about the nine who sit in Washington. They are men and women who have decided, based on nothing more than their own political beliefs, that they each know the correct method of interpreting a document written in the late 19th century - a document whose authors could never have imagined how much things would change over the course of 200 years.

Who's to say that Justice Scalia's textualism is any better than the idea that the Constitution and Bill of Rights are living documents that must change with the times? And where does the doctrine of original intent fit in? Does it really make sense to try to analogize the items of our modern society to the items at hand in 1800?

On Johnny Cash and prison reform

I am linking to an article on the BBC News website about Johnny Cash and prison reform. Mr. Cash took up the cause of prisoners during the mid-60's with a series of concerts at penitentiaries across the country. His long held belief was that rehabilitation was more important than punishment and that it made no sense to keep prisoners who had been rehabilitated behind bars.

The article is also a reminder of what kind of hell prisons were back in the 1960's. The article talks about the penitentiary in Cummins, Arkansas - but it could have been the Louisiana penitentiary in Angola, the Mississippi penitentiary in Parchman or Huntsville prison in Texas.

Today, almost 50 years later, we're still debating how to run our prisons. Maybe it's time we start with deciding just what prison is for. We might also consider whether or not some of the numbers prosecutors and courts throw around really make sense. We should also think about the way enhancements are used. Is punishing a misdemeanor offense as if it were a felony just because the defendant had a couple of prior convictions a good idea?

It's more than just a bit ironic that it's the conservatives in the South who are debating whether or not we've gone too far in trying to make everything a crime and in looking for ways to lock folks up longer. While their motive is primarily financial, the fact that it's now up for debate in the reddest of the red states is significant.

The article also gives me another excuse for a clip from the Man in Black himself...

Caged up like animals

Never underestimate the ability of a politician to take an idea and run it so far into the ground that the end result isn't even recognizable. Take the slavish fascination state legislators around the country had with the notion of being tough on crime.

Mandatory minimums. Three strikes and you're out. The war on drugs. And supermax prisons.

You see, believe it or not, some folks behind bars aren't the most well-behaved people on the planet. Just to prove it was no fluke that they got locked up they go and terrorize those around them. Why not? Some of them are in for life - what more could the state possibly do to them.

But the state legislators had an idea. Let's build some prisons just for the really bad guys. We'll lock 'em up in individual cells and keep them there 23 hours a day, seven days a week, 52 weeks a year and how ever many years we can hold them.

Of course new prisons had to be built and, since they were only housing the baddest of the bad, they had to have the same staffing as the regular prisons - even though they could only hold a small fraction of the population. All those construction costs. All those maintenance costs. All that overhead. And all that staff.

Illinois is about to close its supermax prison because the state can't afford to spend the $62,000 a year it costs to hold a prisoner (almost three times the amount it costs to house Joe Inmate). Just think how many school teachers the state could hire with that money. Just think of the improvements that the state could make to schools and other public facilities with that money.

But there's more to the problem of solitary confinement than the cost of running supermax prisons. There is also the psychological toll complete isolation takes on an individual. We are social beings. We crave to be in the company of others. Just imagine living in your bathroom and only being allowed to leave for one hour a day. How many minutes could you stand before you'd start beating your head against the wall?

Now imagine the effect years of isolation could have on an individual being released back into society. Now let's be honest about this aspect of the problem - most of the individuals in supermax prisons are already serving life sentences and stand very little chance of ever experiencing life on the other side of the walls again. But does that make the punishment any less inhumane?

The Eighth Amendment forbids cruel and unusual punishment. How can complete isolation be considered anything but cruel or unusual? Is there a time and a place for isolating inmates? Yes, of course there is. But, should it be the norm or should that be the outlier?

Prisoners, even the most violent and depraved, are still people. They have families. They have needs and wants. Our prison system does us all a grave disservice when it treats inmates like animals.

On secret prisons and shredding the Constitution

It would appear that the CIA has been operating a secret prison in Bucharest since the days of the Shrub administration.

The prison was used to hold and torture people suspected of terrorism. After the discovery of the basement prison, both US and Romanian officials denied its existence.

Is this what we have become? The US is supposed to be a place where the rule of law is supreme. A place where the Constitution and the Bill of Rights sets limits on what the government can and cannot do. A place where all men are equally presumed innocent before a jury.

But, in the name of security, our government has subverted the Constitution and has declared that the needs of the state outweigh the rights of the individual. Secret prisons. Indefinite detention. Military tribunals.

Is nobody willing to stand up in defense of the Constitution?

The only purpose of having secret prisons is to deny suspects the rights afforded to all of us. You don't need an attorney - all you need is a towel over your head and a steady stream of water. So fucking what if the use of torture against prisoners is outlawed - who the hell knows anyone's there?

I'm fairly certain that a good chunk of the populace doesn't care. They're terrorists - who cares what happens to them. Far too many people buy into the national security state. Far too many people are willing to cede their civil liberties for the illusory promise that the government can keep us safe.

The existence of these secret prisons should bother you. Hell, it should infuriate you. Our government has taken what's left of the Bill of Rights and run it through the shredder. When our government authorizes the torture of an inmate or a detainee or a terrorism suspect (whatever words you wish to use), our government is authorizing the use of torture against you and against me.

Our democracy is only as strong as the laws that constrain the absolute power of the state. There is no check on that power when the government operates in secret. There is no check on that power when the existence of a prison is hidden and denied.

If you don't stand up and demand that our government respect the rule of law, then who's going to stand up when they come for you?

Avoiding the real problem in the Texas prison system

brunch [brʌntʃ] n
a meal eaten late in the morning, combining breakfast with lunch
[from br(eakfast) + (l)unch]

Beginning this past April, Texas prison officials stopped serving lunches on weekends to some 23,000 inmates in 36 prisons. Inmates at those prisons eat "brunch" between 5am and 7am and dinner between 4pm and 6:30pm on Saturdays and Sundays. Officials have also replaced milk cartons with powered milk in a bid to save another $3.5 million.

Now I could spend a few words harping on how Texas prison officials have no clue what brunch is. I don't think there are people lining up outside Le Peep at 5am to grab a table for Sunday brunch. From our friends at Wikipedia:

A meal is not usually considered brunch if it is started before 11 am; such meals would still be considered breakfast. Typically brunch is had between 11 am and 1 pm, close to lunch time but still before. Brunch is usually eaten in the late morning.

Of course calling it brunch makes it sound like it's not so bad to cut out a meal twice a week. After all, it's "brunch." Such an easy-going sound. I have little doubt it's not as cheery as sitting out on the back patio The Court of Two Sisters in the French Quarter eating waffles while the birds fly overhead.

The ostensible purpose of the policy is to reduce the cost to taxpayers of housing over 165,000 inmates at facilities across the state. But instead of making life worse for inmates, why not find a way to reduce the number of people incarcerated across the state? I know, logic - it's not the currency of the realm in Austin.

We can start by taking a more critical look at the ways in which the state enhances criminal acts. It is absurd to send someone to prison for committing an offense that is but a misdemeanor. But that's exactly what we do with theft cases. We enhance a misdemeanor theft to a state jail felony theft - and then, to felony theft. Yes, petty theft is annoying. But should we be sending someone to prison just because they continue to shoplift?

The state needs to come to the realization that prison is not nearly as effective at controlling addictive behavior as counseling. There are far too many folks behind bars for possessing small quantities of drugs. It makes no sense. I have yet to have anyone explain to me how society benefits by incarcerating a crack addict for 10 years.

Next let's get rid of the so-called "Three Strikes" enhancement laws. I get it. The public is frustrated by folks who commit a crime, go to prison, get released and commit another crime. But let's think about proportionality for a second. It makes no sense to sentence someone to life for an offense that, by itself, would net someone no more than 10 years.

Finally, we need to think about the efficacy of imprisoning people who have passed into middle age. The cost of incarcerating people in their later years is drastically higher than for younger inmates. We need to take a closer look at the actual recidivism rates for older inmates and for inmates who have served 10 years of more. Studies have indicated that most violent crimes are committed by people under the age of 30 and that people in their 40's and 50's are far less likely to commit violent crimes.

But, as I have stated before, folks behind bars don't vote and so they are easy targets for politicians looking to score points with voters. Cutting meals for inmates makes for a good soundbite, but if we really want to solve the problem, we have to get beyond soundbites and take a more critical look at the way our criminal (in)justice system works (or doesn't).

See also:

"Bubble in expanding life sentences, LWOP driving TCDJ health costs for older inmates," Grits for Breakfast (Oct. 24, 2011)

Ignoring the problem won't make it go away

Let's build more prisons and fill 'em up with our society's undesirables. That ought to make the world a better place, don't you think?

No? You don't think that's the key to happiness and security and sunshine?

You're right. There are some folks on the other side of the pond that feel the same way. One of them is Will Self, and in this piece for the BBC he notes that prisons aren't very good at either rehabilitation or punishment. And, being that those are the twin goals of the penal system, that doesn't speak very well to efficacy of locking people up because they've done something society doesn't like.

It was Dostoevsky who said: "The degree of civilisation in a society is revealed by entering its prisons." But in contemporary Britain you don't even need to do this, you can simply stand on a street corner and wait for the ghosts to come flitting past in order to appreciate its parlous condition.

As the rate of violent crimes has decreased in this country, the rate of people sent to prison for drug crimes, and other nonviolent offenses, has increased. I once represented a man who had previously been sentenced to 10 years in the penitentiary for being in possession of a couple of rocks of crack cocaine. I have yet to hear anyone who can give me a logical explanation for why it makes sense for us to spend our money to house a drug addict in prison when he would be better off in a treatment program.

And it's not like his "jail therapy" worked as he was arrested again (for possessing three rocks) shortly after being paroled. If anyone can tell me why that makes sense, I'm all ears.

When you lock someone away in prison you're not going to rehabilitate him - particularly in this day when the governor and his henchmen are looking for any piece of low-hanging fruit they can find to cut from the budget. And if they're willing to sit by and watch as school districts lay off teachers or leave classroom positions open, what the hell do you think they'll do to funding for rehabilitation programs for inmates?

I mean, the fair-haired one has to have some money to pay the DPS to provide security for him while he tours the country watching his ill-fated presidential campaign slowly go down the toilet. And what about his wife and kids? You don't seriously expect them to go on vacation without a phalanx of state troopers, do you?

Of course, we aren't quite at the levels enjoyed by our closest allies, those prime exponents of the civilising mission the United States, whose extensive gulag now houses, it is estimated, more African American men than were enslaved immediately prior to their Civil War - but we're getting there.

Just let that one stew for a bit.

Sure, there are some folks who need to be locked up because they are unredeemable or because they have committed crimes of such a heinous nature. More and more we are seeing people sent to prison, not because they have committed some heinous crime but, instead, because they have committed enough minor crimes that the state no longer wants to deal with them. When a theft of less than $100 can be enhanced to a felony and the person sent to prison for two years of more - well, the system's not working. 

Contrary to the view of prison as a deterrent and a way of keeping criminals off the streets, almost all enlightened opinion now concurs in the following.

Not only does prison, for the vast majority of those who endure it, not work, either as punishment or as rehabilitation, but there is no escaping the conclusion that it functions as a stimulant to crime, rather than its bromide.

No one's going to argue that it isn't easier just to lock folks away and forget about them. We do that everyday with bills or phone messages we don't want to return. But we're talking about people's lives here. We talking about their lives and the lives of their families. It/s time to re-examine the way we do things in our criminal (in)justice system. It's time we start asking questions. It's time we start asking Why?

We can either fix it or we can sit and watch it collapse under its own weight.

Walking a mile in another man's shoes

Disgraced former federal judge and convicted felon Samuel Kent wants out of prison because of the humiliation, torture and horrors of the place. I don't blame him. I don't wish that existence on anyone. I do find it ironic, however, that as a judge he had no problem sentencing folks to spend years in prison and that now, as an inmate, he realizes how horrid the experience is.

Prosecutors and judges tend to throw out years in prison as if it were a gift; how many of them have spent any time in those hell holes? How many of them have been forced to spend time isolated from friends and family? How many of them have suffered the abject humiliation that prisoners go through on a daily basis?

Click here to read the motion filed by Mr. Kent.

Georgia on my mind

One in thirteen people behind bars, on probation or on parole.
One in seventy people behind bars.
One billion dollars spent every year to lock up offenders.

Are we talking about Texas, China or some Third World country? No. We're talking about Georgia.

“When you have in Georgia 1 in every 70 adults [incarcerated] and 1 in every 13 is in some form of correctional control, that’s big government with a big big G." -- Mark Early, Prison Fellowship

While the national trend is a reduction in jail population, Georgia has bucked that trend and locked more people up. In 2007, Texas saw the light and decided that rather than increasing the amount spent on jails that finding alternative means of sentencing and treatment made more sense. Between 2008 and 2009 the Lone Star State saw a decline of .07% in its prison population while Georgia saw an increase of 1.6%. Over the same period, the numbers of inmates nationwide increased .01%.

Georgia's lock 'em up attitude costs the state $61,000 a year per inmate with an average incarceration period of 3.4 years.

“We have proven that we can be tough on crime and that we can spend $1.2 billion a year doing it. But I think it might be time to transition to being smart on crime.” -- Georgia prison chief Brian Owens.

These numbers don't even reflect the entire picture of the costs of incarceration. How much more does it cost the state to support a family when the breadwinner is locked up for over three years? What about decreased productivity since a good many felons can't get a job after doing their time? How much does it cost to repair a family torn apart by the criminal justice system?

It's so easy to say "lock 'em up and throw away the key," but it's something else altogether to sit down and discuss alternative means of handling the vast numbers of people who walk through the criminal justice system every day.

An inside job?

State law enforcement officials are still searching for convicted child molester Arcade Comeaux, Jr., who escaped from custody while being transported from Huntsville to Beaumont. Apparently, Mr. Comeaux smuggled a gun into the van and took control of it between Huntsville and Houston.

State Senator John Whitmire (D.-Hou.) is up in arms because of the recent scandal involving the smuggling of cell phones onto Death Row.

Here's a little tip for y'all... it's (probably) an inside job. Who else would have the ability to bring guns, cell phones, drugs and other weapons into a heavily-guarded building? Visitors are watched like hawks from the time they enter the grounds until the time they leave, but who's watching the watchers?