Politics & Policy
December 1, 2023
Texas Ranks Last in Personal Freedoms, According to the Libertarian CATO Institute
The think tank, founded by a conservative billionaire who supports Greg Abbott, ranks Texas 39 places behind California.
Criminal Justice Reform
Politics & Policy
October 5, 2023
James Reyos Has Always Been Innocent. After Forty Years, the Courts Agree.
On Wednesday, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals declared the 67-year-old Native American innocent of a 1981 murder.
The Stand Up Desk
November 21, 2022
The Exoneration of Anthony Graves Still Resonates
Pamela Colloff reflects on her 2010 story about the shoddy police work and prosecutorial misconduct that put an innocent man on death row.
News & Politics
September 23, 2022
Bearing Witness at Texas’s First Execution by Lethal Injection
In 1982, Dick J. Reavis chronicled the first government-led lethal injection in world history—and the last moments of Charlie Brooks's life.
Politics & Policy
September 7, 2021
Who Killed Criminal Justice Reform in Texas?
Texas was once a model of how to safely and economically move away from mass incarceration. Now the old politics of “law and order” are back.
Politics & Policy
December 5, 2019
How Houston Is Leading the Way on Keeping Poor Defendants Out of Jail
In a landmark legal case, Harris County has agreed to release the vast majority of misdemeanor arrestees instead of locking them up. But reformers aren’t done yet.
Politics & Policy
April 23, 2019
Attacks on the Dallas DA Signal Trouble for the Criminal Justice Reform Movement
Big-city prosecutors are now driving the conversation around mass incarceration, and some lawmakers and law enforcement officials just can’t abide that.