A few odds and ends that won't make it into their own posts before the blog goes on hiatus for a couple of weeks.
Dallas sued over choice not to train jailers to recognize health problems
A federal judge ruled a lawsuit can go forward against the Dallas County Jail alleging lack of state-required training contributed to the death of a homeless man from pneumonia who died lying on the floor of his cell. "In his ruling in June, U.S. District Judge Ed Kinkeade said testimony showed that Dallas County jailers are not trained to recognize basic medical distress in inmates so that they can notify the medical staff." Further, "Evidence in the case shows that the county and Sheriff Lupe Valdez have deliberately decided not to train jailers to recognize medical problems even though state regulations require it." The Dallas jail was briefly on lockdown yesterday after an inmate escaped; he was recaptured within an hour.
Fort Worth raid hits wrong house
Radley Balko would call this unnecessary death another isolated incident.
GEO lone bidder for mental health unit
Private prison operator GEO Group is the lone bidder to buy a secure mental health facility from Montgomery County.
Walled gardens
The Texas Tribune had an item last week on jail gardens providing vegetables to local food banks.
North to Alaska
Former Texas state Rep. Jerry Madden was recently in Alaska promoting de-incarceration initiatives.
'Blame it on the media'
Violent crime has been dropping for twenty years, so why do polls show the public thinks it's on the rise?
Do neighborhood watch programs work?
Turns out, nobody knows, and there has been astonishingly little valid research investigating the topic.
NSA privacy breaches harm tech industry
If the US doesn't improve its electronic privacy laws it will harm America's cloud computing industry. In fact, it's already starting to happen.
Gohmert on metadata, pot smokers and potato chips
Check out a video of Texas Congressman Louie Gohmert railing against the NSA metadata collection program. He compared the program's ostensible justification to a police officer wanting to pursue pot smokers by investigating stolen potato chips, which it turned out was based on an actual search warrant application he declined to process while working as an assistant district attorney.
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