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New Harris DA, Sheriff, judges may finally get serious about jail overcrowding

Harris County officials are coming to grips with the causes of jail overcrowding now that the tanking economy means building and staffing a new jail is not an immediate option.As has been discussed on Grits many times (see below), Harris County's main jail overcrowding problem stems from radical increases pretrial detention: "The number of people in [the Harris County] jail who are awaiting trial has grown by about 64 prisoners a month for the past two years and has more than doubled since 2001," reported the Houston Chronicle ("Harris County taking action to reduce jail overcrowding," Jan. 24).The shortest distance between the two points would be for judges to reduce reliance on bail bondsmen and issue more personal bonds for petty offenders:The new Democratic judges, for example, have indicated they will consider releasing more low-risk offenders on personal bonds, returning to a policy virtually abandoned in recent years when Republicans controlled the courthouse...continue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on January 26, 2009 (boomark / email).