On texting, driving, fact checking, murder rates, borderline competency and global security

A few, disparate tidbits:

Houston 2011 murder rate nearly as low as Mexico City
The murder rate in Houston is at its lowest since 1965,  (and nearly the lowest since data began to be recorded), with 198 murders last year compared to a high of 701 in 1981, reported KUHF radio. Still, the murder rate of 9.4 per 100,000 is substantially higher than the statewide murder rate of 5.0 in 2010, according to DPS data (pdf). To put that number into perspective, Mexico City's murder rate is 8.3 per 100,000, so in that light 9.4 perhaps isn't exactly being all you can be. Still, Less Murders = Good. MORE: From Kuff.

After death, inquiry finds most youth at Granbury juvie detention in isolation for unjustified reasons
Now that the new Texas Juvenile Justice Department is up and running, there's no time to lose in exercising its oversight function. Reports the Weatherford Democrat, "A state investigation of the Granbury Regional Juvenile Justice Center following the death of a 14-year-old Cleburne boy in October has raised questions about the role of the facility’s non-compliance with detention facility standards in the boy’s death." Said the paper, a TJJD "report released last week found several violations related to keeping the juveniles in isolation nearly all day on Oct. 10 outside of the physical presence of a juvenile supervision officer. The 11 residents of 'Alpha Pod' were kept locked in their rooms most of the day, not allowed to participate in educational and other activities as required and left without the supervision level required during daytime program hours, the TJJD investigation found." Further, "Investigators found that only one of the 11 residents of 'Alpha Pod' was 'confined for a reason justified by standards, namely the resident’s disciplinary seclusion status.'" In other words, 10 of the 11 kids in isolation at the time of the boys death shouldn't have even been there.

Borderline competency: Good question, no easy answers
Asks a prosecutor on the DA Association user forum, "What do you do with those VERY low functioning defendants who are already receiving services from MHMR and whose competency is borderline?... Seems they are getting more plentiful." While one wag replied, "Send them off to law school?," others including John Bradley noted there are no easy answers, particularly in the wake of budget cuts to mental health services in the most recent legislative session.

Constable resigns in lieu of prosecution
The DA in Lubbock won't pursue criminal charges against a local constable in exchange for his resignation and lifetime ban from serving as a peace officer.

H-Town burglar alarm fees don't pay for city services
In Houston, according to HPD's website, "The cost of responding to alarm calls for service in FY2007 was approximately $11.8 million dollars and exceeded the City's total annual revenues in that fiscal year ($7.99 million dollars) derived from permit fees and penalties associated with burglar, panic, holdup and similar alarm systems."

Balko: Anger vs. Lykos stems from 'efforts to change the culture'
Radley Balko suggests that in the Harris County District Attorney primary, "intra-party anger seems to stem mostly from [Pat Lykos'] efforts to change the culture in the Harris County DA’s office." Exactly. There's an odd nostalgia among her most ardent critics which Grits suspects can never be satisfied. It's a new century, and whatever happens in April or November, Johnny Holmes won't be walking through the door anytime soon.

Problem with texting while driving is the driving, not the texting
Fascinating. Fewer teens are driving and studies say cars are no longer the status symbol of freedom that they once were among young Americans, particularly in cities. Texting while driving is bad, argues Lisa Hymas at Grist, but more importantly, "we need to work urgently on making driving less necessary in the first place." Great line from Clive Thompson at Wired: "When we worry about driving and texting, we assume that the most important thing the person is doing is piloting the car. But what if the most important thing they're doing is texting? How do we free them up so they can text without needing to worry about driving?" How's that for reframing the question? I'm still rather amazed that Gov. Perry vetoed the texting while driving ban passed in Texas this year.

Iran, Pakistan, Mexico, None-Of-The-Above: Which is biggest threat to world stability?
This is nuts to me: From any rational American perspective - certainly for those of us living in border states - the biggest threat to stability in 2012 isn't Iran, surely it's from drug violence and instability in Mexico and Latin America, arguably followed by anti-western sentiment in already-nuclear Pakistan, where our troops are entrenched across the border for the foreseeable future. In Grits' book, I'd put high food prices (at least) third on the list. Why downplay instability in a nation that already has nukes, much less massive corruption and bloodshed on the US southern border, to proclaim Iran the ultimate threat? That's the sort of demagoguery that makes people vote for Ron Paul. Which is more dangerous for world security: A nuclear Iran or a starving Africa?

Fact check this
Greg Marx at the Columbia Journalism Review has an essay articulating numerous criticisms which have been gelling in Grits' own mind in recent months about so-called "fact checking" services like Politifact and the limits of the framework under which they operate, particularly regarding legal issues. I finished his piece and thought, "Damn, I wish I'd written that," which of course is the highest compliment one writer can pay to another. My biggest frustration with Politifact, et. al.: Grits despises the notion that fact checking should be somehow considered specialty work among journalists, implying that most journalists are mere mouthpieces for special interests who don't provide a significant truth filter between their sources and the public. That may be accurate as a practical, workaday matter, but it's not a model to aspire to.

Roundup: Lightning strikes, news flashes, and principle ducks for cover

A few odds and ends for your holiday reading pleasure:

When lightning strikes
Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley told the Dallas News that the Michael Morton DNA test results hit him like a "lightning bolt." Though they didn't invoke the road to Damascus, they did say the Williamson County DA now "testifies to a conversion." Declaring, “We need to leave the window open a little bit more,” Bradley says he hopes speaking up will influence how other prosecutors approach post-conviction DNA cases: “I finally decided that it was more important that I overcome my concerns about people’s opinions about my shifting of my personal opinions, because I saw that it has public value in helping other prosecutors, I hope, adjust their point of view.” Abel Reyna, are you listening?

Police, distracted driving and civil liability
Austin PD accounts for the largest proportion of payouts in civil suits of any city-owned department in the capital, including the electric utility and the airport. Chief Art Acevedo blamed distracted driving on a significant number of settlements related to automobile accidents involving police officers: “They're in the patrol car environment where there is a lot of things going on. You've got the computer going on, you've got the radio going on. They're looking where they're at. They're looking for violations, they're looking for risks.”

Spillover violence documented in Valley
Law enforcement reports the first, documented example of "spillover" cartel violence in the Rio Grande Valley, if you don't count gang members from the Texas side spilling over to commit violence in Mexico. This event is an important marker, but still a far cry from the absurdist, politicized claims made recently on behalf of Texas DPS and the Ag Department.

Drug violence in Puerto Rico
Lots of interesting detail in this story about which I wasn't aware; you never hear PR violence discussed in any of the "spillover" discussions.

News flash: Prison-industrial complex exists
Conservative columnist Jonah Goldberg offers a "small apology" to his ideological foes, admitting to the existence of "a prison-industrial complex" he'd "long thought" didn't exist. He sees it as dominated by public-employees unions rather than private-prison companies and other such corporate-welfare recipients. For my part, I consider both special interests to be partially culpable for the situation, and many other elements besides. These are not mutually exclusive factors.

MSM scorns principle in criminal-justice debates
A frequent theme on this blog is that, despite how they're framed in the mainstream media, criminal-justice issues seldom fall along partisan nor strictly ideological lines. Nowhere can that be seen more clearly than in the LA Times headline, "Criminal defendants find an unlikely friend in Justice Scalia." The story by David Savage is fairly typical of modern MSM criminal-justice coverage, demonstrating many of its shortcomings all in one place. Notice how, for example, a judgment in favor of the defense (e.g., on Confrontation Clause issues) makes US Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia a "friend" to criminals. All nuance is lost: You're either for criminals or against them, though bizarrely the headline complains of Scalia, "For him, there are no shades of gray." That's the pot calling the kettle black, indeed. The newspaper quotes a law professor explaining, "This is not a left-right split. This is principle versus pragmatism" (though Grits would argue that some of Scalia's most controversial assertions on criminal justice have been profoundly pragmatic). But the issue is presented as though judges basing decisions on principle - as opposed to the convenience of government bureaucrats or the structural biases of the press - is somehow a bad thing. Perhaps, in light of the string of modern DNA exonerations and the lessons learned by John Bradley mentioned above in the top item, 21st-century journalists shouldn't be so quick to dismiss every effort to instill fairness or adhere to principle in the justice system as somehow coddling criminals? Just a thought.