Different motives, but a shared goal for jails

The day after the Harris County Sheriff ’s Office reported that an inmate had been beaten to death in jail, the county unveiled a $2 million grant from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation to reform its criminal justice system.

Under planned reforms, the county hopes to cut its jail population by 21 percent in three years, according to District Attorney Devon Anderson, a move that is needed not just to ease the burden of jailing people who don’t need to be jailed but also to address racial disparities in the system.

In many ways, Harris County is late to the nationwide movement to create a fairer justice sys- tem. But some advocates are hopeful that support from Anderson, Mayor Sylvester Turner and other officials signals systemic change.

Support for reforms, particularly for how the criminal justice system handles nonviolent drug offenders, has grown both nationally and locally.

“The biggest shift is really on the right wing of the political spectrum,” said Sandra Guerra Thompson, a professor and director of the University of Houston Law Center.

There, she said, politicians are moving away from “tough on crime” policies born out of the War on Drugs. Texas Republicans, in particular, champion reforms as cost-effective.

“You have to appeal to your audience, and in Texas the message that gains the most traction is the cost,” explained Katharine A. Neill, a postdoctoral fellow in drug policy at Rice University’s Baker Institute.

But it isn’t just about the savings for many advocates who are looking to reforms to reduce racial disparities in the system.

Still, change is the goal. Thompson says she welcomes support from any camp “because they’re all right.”

“The people who are saying you’re destroying communities (and) it’s having racially discriminatory impacts, they’re right, and the fact that we are wasting taxpayer dollars, that’s also true,” Thompson said.