Our team has been hard at work through the end of summer. Read below for organizational updates, upcoming events, and ongoing campaigns from Texas Jail Project! This summer, we welcomed several new faces to our team. With our community’s generous support, we have been able to hire a full-time community organizer in Tarrant county.

In case you missed it, Texas Jail Project launched Shedding Light – a digital archive of interviews, personal essays, poetry, and records collected from people in county jails and their families during the COVID-19 pandemic, in collaboration with Civil Rights Corps and Zealous. In a time of unprecedented caging and in the middle of a pandemic, we have conducted

Did you know that Texas lawmakers are trying to amend the State Constitution to weaken your right to be presumed innocent when charged with a crime? We need your help today to stop it.  Bad bail bills HB 20 & SB 21 cannot be passed without a constitutional amendment because they are so restrictive they’re literally unconstitutional without it.

More voices at the capitol means more justice in our communities! Working toward that goal, Texas Jail Project is facilitating testimony by people impacted by the criminal justice system, women, those living with disabilities, veterans, and people of color. We hope you’re inspired by their efforts and will join us — see the call to action at the end

We are forging alliances with county stakeholders and courts to promote diversion – at the same time that we’re forming innovative partnerships with grassroots volunteers to provide direct aid to people in county jails! Our East Texas advocate Dalila Reynoso (second from left)  facilitated the release of KM, BF and JB from the Smith County Jail to the RecovHery

Having experienced homelessness and incarceration, Kevin Garrett put himself through college and law school, and in 2018, received a Hogg Foundation fellowship to work at our small nonprofit in Austin. His role as peer policy fellow changed his trajectory while helping transform Texas Jail Project into a more versatile and inclusive organization. Kevin described challenges for families dealing with substance abuse disorder from the perspective of

In 2020 we rose to the challenge – taking on the colliding pandemics of COVID-19 and inhumane jailing, while undergoing our own internal transformation. We’re proud to have taken on big fights in our pursuit of depopulating county jails and demonstrating community based alternatives to incarceration. Texas county jails were the frontlines for this year’s crisis, foregrounding systemic inequities and corruption, from rural county jails with unreported outbreaks to metropolitan superspreader facilities. And we didn’t back down.

Why did Smith County incarcerate Robert Paquin for most of 2020? Texas Jail Project uncovered a multitude of reasons that didn’t make sense, and we took action.  Robert Joshua Paquin turned 19 in the Smith County Jail this year. Despite his medical history, Robert would be on his way to prison now, if it wasn’t for

Did you know that thousands of poor people are getting an extremely low quality of defense – no visits, no investigation, no research, no plan, no hope–in the Houston courts? Click below to listen to people in Harris County Jail telling us about their experiences with their court appointed attorneys: https://twitter.com/TxJailProject/status/1314961594380685313?s=19 Join Texas Jail Project and a powerful

Co-founder Krish Gundu transitioned into the role of executive director this month, and Dalila Reynoso has joined us as community advocate and organizer! Krish Gundu has been a part of Texas Jail Project since co-founding it with three other women in 2006, and as of July, 2020, she has moved into the position of executive