“Given that combat veterans’ PTSD issues often manifest in aggressive behavior, it flies in the face of reason not to take violent cases,” said Isabel Apkarian, a former assistant public defender in Orange County. “I don’t know how you have a veterans court without taking those clients.”
So Instead of spending two years in jail, a Marine in an Orange County court gets sentenced to therapy for post-traumatic stress disorder, to counseling for substance abuse and then, to college–special treatment that he would not get in many Texas counties which do not have veterans courts for felons. Or any veterans court at all. Texas Jail Project knows of veterans sitting in jail cells across this state, because their counties don’t ensure timely trials and treatment, let alone create a veterans court. Read here about a different way to help combat veterans charged with criminal acts.

Inmates of Texas county jails are sometimes released late at night without their property or a working phone or access to any transportation—in total darkness. In some documented cases, people had no experience with the area and no idea of their physical location, and in some instances, weather conditions were severe and the individuals lacked shoes or jackets.

The excellent blog called Texas Prison Bidness… http://www.texasprisonbidness.org/ now has an interactive map which has color-coded pins to show exactly which county jails and prisons and immigration prisons are run by private prison companies like CCA and Geo, Inc. Click on a pin and you get the basic info, for example, clicking on Del Rio

By Polly Ross Hughes, Houston Chronicle AUSTIN – A civil rights lawsuit announced Wednesday blames the private corrections system for the 2004 suicide of a South Texas woman found hanging in her cell after reporting that a male inmate raped her. LeTisha Tapia, who died at the Val Verde County Jail in July 2004, was