Jeremy Mazur, senior policy advisor for infrastructure and natural resources, and Luis Soberon, policy advisor for criminal justice, converse about the justice and safety policy implications of Texas 2036’s recent release of the updated report on extreme weather trends on prison inmates and staff. JEREMY MAZUR: Hi, Luis! So one of the big takeaways from…
Expanding educational opportunities for incarcerated Texans is one of the few policy solutions in the criminal justice space that can have measurable impacts on crime, employment and the state’s budget. Texas lawmakers will be forced to grapple with this and other serious criminal justice issues over the next couple of years as the state’s prison…
For the Texas judiciary, 2023 will be recognized as a turning point in how we view court data. A year of significant investments and legislative action culminated in a November meeting of the Texas Judicial Council. This important meeting set in motion promising developments for the future of improving data quality and access to our…
Regulation of law enforcement in Texas made an important step forward this year from being “toothless,” according to one account, to one that meets Texans’ needs for better data and accountability at law enforcement agencies across the state. A series of reforms aimed at improving processes at the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement, the state…
Texas continues to grapple with persistent court backlogs, which result in delayed justice and serious costs to taxpayers and communities across the state. While we can diagnose the basic issues, we have limiting information on what is driving the backlog. The current county-level, aggregate court data collection provides a finite perspective on factors causing delays,…
