Monday, July 15, 2019
Texas' 86th Legislative session came to a close last month with criminal justice reform advocates lamenting lost opportunities like the Sandra Bland Act — which died in the House of Representatives thanks to what Texas Monthly called “a fit of idiocy and confusion”— and the failure of marijuana sentencing reform. A session that began with cautious optimism for policies like bail reform, pretrial diversion programming, limiting three-strikes rules, and expanding air conditioning in sweltering prisons ended with bills failing left and right.