The Core Blog

In the first two blog posts in this series, Deborah and I described some of the school safety proposals — including hardening schools, bringing back zero tolerance discipline, and increasing the presence of school police officers — that are currently being discussed and debated by school administrators, educators, parents, students, advocates, and lawmakers across the state. Many of us who work on school discipline, school policing, and school safety issues are concerned that these proposals

Last week, a federal district court in Tennessee issued a monumental decision — one that the Texas legislature must take note of if they want Texas to avoid a similar suit. The federal court struck down a Tennessee law that suspended the driver’s licenses of people who failed to pay criminal fines and costs, holding the law was unconstitutional because it had the effect of punishing low-income people more harshly than wealthy people, simply because they did not have the ability to pay.

After Hurricane Harvey, my four-year-old, Sammy, was very worried about natural disasters. We didn’t expose him to much information about what happened, but he caught us watching the news every once in a while. For months he asked me a million questions about storm preparedness—he questioned the qualifications of the person who built our house, he worried about where he should go if a hurricane hit Austin, and he grilled me about the structural integrity

Last month, a moment that mentors have been warning me about for years came to fruition— that moment when your work comes full circleand you find that “everything old is new again.” Like most youngsters, I assumed that when my wise elders predicted this eventuality, they were simply showing their age – grumpy and cynical. I assumed that surely once Texas reeled in policies that proved ineffective and harmful, those policies would be consigned to

While national attention is focused on the regressive and racially discriminatory practice of charging fines and fees in criminal court, until recently this practice has received relatively little attention in the juvenile system. The Policy Advocacy Clinic is part of a small but growing group of advocates and researchers studying the effects of imposing court costs against youth and families. The research emerging from this work shows that such sanctions harm youth and families, and

In Texas, money means freedom. Release from a Texas jail before trial depends on your ability to pay a cash bond or hire a bail bondsman. If you don’t have enough money, you’ll stay in jail until your trial or until you plead guilty. Personal bonds (meaning release without any money payment) are rare in Texas. This means that many of the people in Texas jails are not detained because they are public safety risks

Ms. Jones, a 71 year-old widow and great grandmother who fell on hard financial times, took out a payday loan in a desperate moment.When she could not repay the loan, she asked the business to work with her: “What I thought was going to happen was they would have some kind of sympathy for a senior who was living on a fixed income of Social Security and that they would allow me to make some

Over the past six months, the juvenile justice headlines dominating the news have focused on scandals and dysfunction within the system, prompting changes in Texas Juvenile Justice Department (TJJD) leadership and revitalizing calls for reform of the entire system.With this renewed focus on whether TJJD’s programming, services, and structure are truly rehabilitating youth, we must also take a hard look at how youth are faring in adult facilities, particularly given suggestions that TJJD may transfer

Texas Appleseed is pleased to honor Carrin Patman, chair of the Metropolitan Transit Authority of Harris County, at our upcoming Visionary Society reception on Thursday, March 22, 2018. Carrin has long ties to Texas Appleseed. She served on our board for nine years, rolling up her sleeves to help us change unjust laws and policies that were keeping Texans from recognizing their full potential. Today, she is leading Houston’s efforts to improve transportation options and

Federal dollars for long-term disaster recovery are starting to flow to Texas. Some of the most critical of those dollars, particularly for rebuilding and repairing homes, comes through the Community Development Block Grant for Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) program. For each allocation of CDBG-DR dollars, the State of Texas must publish an Action Plantelling Texans what it will do with the funds. Texas’ first Action Plan, covering the first $58 million of CDBG-DR funds is out

To the outside world, it must look as though Texas’ juvenile justice system is imploding. Not only are media articles appearing on a regular basis about sexual and physical abuse of young people in the Texas Juvenile Justice Department’s secure facilities, we are also reading about overcrowding in Harris County’s juvenile detention facility, and kids being refused time outside at the Dallas County juvenile post-adjudication facility. What should we make of this? How do all

February is the month that municipal and justice courts across Texas traditionally begin their “Great Warrant Roundup” — an attempt to enforce warrants for unpaid fines in low-level misdemeanor cases by showing up at people’s home or workplaces to arrest them. People who cannot pay fines have not historically been offered meaningful alternatives, like community service, in most Texas municipal and justice courts so the warrant roundup has been an unnecessary exercise that harms and