Tag: Texas prisons

For the past four years, community activists and civil rights leaders in the Houston area have been fighting hard to establish a civilian review board with prosecutorial power over local police. The board would oversee the activities of a Houston Police Department (HPD) which has had a “love affair” with the use of excessive and lethal force on Houstonians. The problem with HPD is much larger than it appears and affects everyone in Houston.

The Texas prison system, which incarcerates far more Black men than nearly every state in the country, is under scrutiny for spending $750,000 for facilities designed to keep pigs cool in its farming program, while simultaneously forcing inmates to live in such extreme heat that several people have died as a result.