Ray Hill, creator of the famously innovative Prison Show on KPFT-FM (90.1), handed over the mike to Anthony Graves, who spent 18 years behind bars on a wrongful conviction, including a number of years in isolation and 12 years on death row.
“It seemed like a perfect fit for me,” said Graves, 47, who was released from prison and declared innocent in August 2010. He had been wrongfully convicted in 1994 of six counts of capital murder in Burleson County.

When Sheriff Garcia stated that more work has to be done to address jailing of the mentally ill, he said a mouthful. But that statement is little consolation to those whose family member dies in that jail.

Houston Community College is working with 205 inmates now, teaching trades and encouraging them to enroll in classes after they are released. We are glad to hear of any classes or training made available to county jail inmates – but we have to ask: are their classes geared to women inmates as well? Females in our jails usually receive fewer opportunities like this.

Houston Sheriff Garcia and other Harris County officials showed up at the quarterly meeting of the Texas Commission on Jail Standards in early November to ask for more than 700 variance beds– beds that allow them to keep more inmates because of special needs and circumstances. Problem is, this situation has been going on for years. Tina Tran, chief of staff for Senator Rodney Ellis, read a letter from the Senator and Representative Garnet Coleman. Read that letter and another from the renowned criminal justice expert Michele Deitch explore the issue of the state granting variances to the Harris County Jail. More importantly, both letters demanded that the Jail Commission stop the practice now. But on Thursday, TCJS commissioners voted to once more grant those beds to Harris County for another 6 months. Read the letters below.

In recent years, the Harris County Sheriff’s Office and the Houston Police Department have improved the way their officers deal with situations involving individuals with mental illness. We have refined and increased training on mental health issues. We have reformed our policies to ensure that we are better prepared to properly handle these encounters.
For its role in the implementation of the Chronic Consumer Stabilization Initiative, designed to help the chronic mentally ill . . . .

Have you heard of any “certified juveniles” in your county lockup? Please send us your information about the experiences of Texas kids in county jails. Certified means that a person under 17 is accused of a crime too serious for juvie, and the court certifies he/she as an adult, so they can be tried as an adult.

by Kenneth Ware,  Houston Chronicle      Relatives of a 72-year-old mentally ill man spent Father’s Day protesting outside the Harris County Jail, where he died five months ago. Community activist Quanell X and two dozen other people marched, chanted and displayed photos of Norman Hicks Sr., who died in January of fatal injuries received inside

Inmates of Texas county jails are sometimes released late at night without their property or a working phone or access to any transportation—in total darkness. In some documented cases, people had no experience with the area and no idea of their physical location, and in some instances, weather conditions were severe and the individuals lacked shoes or jackets.

http://blogs.houstonpress.com/hairballs/2010/11/harris_county_jail_pew.php By Chris Vogel, Thu., Nov. 18 2010 @ 2:31PM Comments (18) ?In an era when locking fewer people up and spending less on jails seems to make sense and is rapidly becoming en vogue, Harris County was increasing its spending and putting more folks behind bars than nearly any other populous county in the

Jail is not meant to be a holiday, but one might expect to at least be treated as a human being. What I witnessed, during my time in the suicide watch section and in general population, was a nightmare, not just in terms of myself, but more in how I saw others treated. My first