By Gabrielle Banks, Houston Chronicle, September 3, 2020
Harris County’s newly revamped system for processing arrestees on minor offenses is working well, according to the first official report: It is preventing needless jailing of poor people without risking more crime.
The monitor’s 76-page report released Thursday found that while fewer people were jailed and more were released on cash-free bonds, incidents of recidivism remained low. The new bail system also nearly obliterated racial disparities in pretrial detention — a key goal of the 2016 lawsuit that placed the country’s second largest urban jail in the spotlight on a major civil rights issue.
Brandon L. Garrett, a Duke University law professor leading the oversight team for the seven-year federal consent decree, framed what he saw in the first six months reviewing court outcomes as a “promising and exciting start.”
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