our visit at Jan's

Saturday, April 22th, we visited Jan May's place and we got to meet her husband and her husband's son.

Jan lives in south Austin in one of these cute and sprawling suburbs.

Jay's husband is an ex-inmate. He got tattooed in prison, where it's against the law. His son has the same tattoos.

Hunstville, Texas

The Texas Prison System has been headquartered in Huntsville since 1848. Soon after Texas became a state, the legislature chose Huntsville as the site of the first permanent penitentiary. “The Walls” unit was the first prison to be built in Texas and is where executions take place. Today, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice is one of the two largest penal systems in the free world. The total system houses approximately 150,000 offenders in 106 units. Five units are in the city of Huntsville.

Research links

Some interesting links to information on Texas prisons:

http://www.thc.state.tx.us/contactus/cotdefault.html (Texas Historical Commission)
http://www.prisontalk.com
http://www.legal-explanations.com/definitions/probation.htm
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/prisons.htm (US Dept of Justice--Prison statistics)
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pandp.htm (US Dept of Justice--Probation and Parole statistics)
http://www.tdcj.state.tx.us/bpp/ (Texas Board of Parole and Pardons)
http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/bjs/pub/pdf/cap95.pdf (US Department of Justice--Bureau of Justice Statistics)
http://www.tsha.utexas.edu/handbook/online/articles/view/TT/jjt1.html (The Handbook of Texas Online)
http://www.shsu.edu/cjcenter/CMIT/basile.htm (Sam Houston State University, Criminal Justice Center)

explanations on the project

We have met a lot lately Celina and I, and our project on the Texas prisons is taking a good shape now. We have decided to create the multimedia story around three angles :
1. The inmates (2 profiles minimum) and their life as detainees and before it (with interviews of their relatives and personnel from the prison system)
2. Huntsville, a city haunted by the prisons?
3. Factual data on the Texas prison system and interviews of politicians from divergent views.

Today, we went to the Daily Texan (student newspaper on campus), who might be interested in putting our story on their website. And also we checked out some audio/video equipment.
Next step, a meeting with Paulina, a student who is writing her thesis on minorities and the death penalty. Then we plan to interview Veronica, a detainee's relative.

How to report a story for the online media, click here.

The french situation

In France this time. A new release said today that the french judiciary system is not worthy of one from a developed country. A recent scandal called "l'affaire d'Outreau" blatantly showed how the french justice went wrong all the way from the investigation to the trials.
The release, written by Gilles Roblès, denounces the overcrowded prisons but focuses also on the conditions of foreign prisoners. They are detained in shamefully old and unsafe places called "centres de rétention", where the french authorities keep them and decide if they legalize their status or send them back to their countries. The report said chidren were also detained in those "waiting zones".
Finally, the report reminds us of the lack of means, which makes the judiciary process longer and longer and the tribunals more and more crowded.

Some theorical background....

I have found today that there are 4 main theories on punishment : The rational choice, The sociological Determinism, the Biological Determinism and the Conflict theories. They all have an interesting side, I quickly summarize each of them and bring some personal comments.

The biological Determinism theory holds that certain physical caracteristics are likely to determine criminality. The White-caucasian morphology being considered as the ideal type. Surprisingly, some people still refer to that theory toda to explain for instance the overepresentation of the Black minority in prison.

The Sociological Determinism theory claims that sociological factors such as family, peer groups, neighborhood, unemployment, education, poverty and so on produce criminal behavior. Elaborated in the 20's - 30's, this means that factors beyond our control produce criminality, because people are not free to act, they are sociologically determined.
Along this theory, punishment should consists in the rehabilitation and resocialization of criminals. We can argue that application of such a theory has not proved successful since it has been applied to criminal offenders after their act, and not on poverty or bad education in general that produces potential criminals.

The Rational Choice theory* argues that people are consciously rational, therefore, they choose to act criminally. It was developped in accross the 18 and 19 centuries and abandonned after. It is coming back today as "neoclassical" theory. Basically, people weigh the costs and benefits of their action, hence, the punishment should be strong enough for them to make the costs outweigh the benefits. The deterrence is a way for the punisher to "deter" the punished from any new criminal attempt.
*The principles of this theory can apply to economy, international relations...everytime there are actors interacting with each other.

The Conflict theory argues that conflicts are fundamental and inherent of a social life. People fight for their values and norms. Social classes, ethnic groups, religious groups, economic model...there is a dominant norm and those who don't correspond are kicked out. That is why black people are so represented in prison : they don't fit the norm (WASP capitalist...)

For more explanation, go to 360degrees.org

Texas Inmate Families Assocation

Cecile and I went to a TIFA meeting on Tuesday to meet some of the family members of prisoners currently in the system. Bryan Collier, the director of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Parole Division answered questions and explained the process of parole to the families.

Cecile noticed that most of the family members attending the meeting were female. We ran into Pat Perez, who I had met last year. She has two sons, Hector and Leon, who have both been in prison; however, Hector is a success story (he is now a manager at Jiffy Lube) taking care of his two children while Leon is now back in jail again because of a incident involving a stolen car.

We also met Veronica Quiroz, whose father and husband are both in prison. Her father is in maximum security prison because he accidentally shot and killed his friend in a struggle with a third man. He faces deportation after the completion of his sentence because he is Mexican, but all of the members of his family are living in the United States. Veronica said that she was unwilling to make excuses for her father's actions, but hoped that he would be able to stay in Texas after he had served his sentence.