{"id":335431,"date":"2025-12-08T20:52:10","date_gmt":"2025-12-08T20:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/business\/legal\/prosecuting-crimes-of-poverty-isnt-the-same-as-combating-a-crime-wave\/"},"modified":"2025-12-08T20:52:10","modified_gmt":"2025-12-08T20:52:10","slug":"prosecuting-crimes-of-poverty-isnt-the-same-as-combating-a-crime-wave","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=335431","title":{"rendered":"Prosecuting crimes of poverty isn’t the same as combating a “crime wave”"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

\nThe following is a guest blog post co-authored by Elizabeth Rossi of Civil Rights Corps and Amanda Woog of the Texas Fair Defense Project. Their organizations are among the civil rights groups involved in bail litigation against Harris County. Related: this discussion of the District Attorney’s claims to be fighting a “crime wave” in Houston harken to this analysis of media coverage of crime and jails from a century ago<\/a><\/b>. Sometimes, the more things change, the more they stay the same.<\/i><\/p>\n
The Chronicle\u2019s recent editorial<\/a> \u201cHow Harris County prosecutors are trying to stop Houston\u2019s crime wave,\u201d casts District Attorney Kim Ogg\u2019s office as engaged in some heroic task of ferreting out the County\u2019s most dangerous \u201ccriminals,\u201d when in fact the DA is funneling millions of dollars toward the prosecution of poor people charged with crimes of poverty. Without a shred of evidence, the Chronicle adopted the DA\u2019s party line, asserting that \u201cmore prosecutions means more justice and a safer community.\u201d<\/p>\n

Expert research — including some paid for by the County — shows that’s not true.<\/p>\n

The County hired national experts at the Justice Management Institute last summer to address exactly this question. JMI assessed the backlog and concluded that the safest and most fiscally responsible solution to the backlog would be \u201cto dismiss all non-violent felony cases older than nine months,\u201d with certain exceptions for cases like DWI, so that the DAO could devote its resources to prosecuting violent cases. The experts at JMI pointed out that only 42% of all felony cases (not just \u201cviolent\u201d crimes) closed in 2019 resulted in a conviction. The other 58% resulted in dismissal, deferred adjudication, or acquittal. And even among the 42% of cases that resulted in conviction, the majority involved people who were released immediately into the community on probation. The idea that the DAO is rescuing Houston from a \u201ccrime wave\u201d by prosecuting years-old theft-by-check cases and other poverty crimes is laughable. <\/p>\n

But the Chronicle ignores this information. <\/p>\n

The paper also ignores a recent academic study<\/a> by researchers finding that non-prosecution of low-level offenses can lead to less crime without any negative effects on public safety. Ogg has offered no answer to these findings. And now she is asking for millions of dollars more to fund 22 additional prosecutors to conduct intakes — which will bring even more people into the broken system, exacerbating a problem that Ogg created. <\/p>\n

The DAO is to blame for this tragedy. Ogg has enormous discretion to decide whom to prosecute, and most of the cases that Ogg is now begging for resources to resolve shouldn\u2019t even be in the system. Evidence and research show that expanding the wasteful punishment bureaucracy through initiatives like the DA\u2019s \u201ctriage\u201d program does nothing for public safety, but does a lot to expand the government\u2019s control over and surveillance of poor people and Black and Brown people, exacerbating poverty, separating families, and making it more difficult for people to find jobs and housing – all conditions that tend to increase future crime, not decrease it.<\/p>\n

Ultimately the Chronicle piece is hailing prosecutors as heroes for solving a problem that they created and that they can end without spending a single penny more. Ogg doesn\u2019t need more money to do her job. Instead, Harris County needs to invest that money in proven solutions to public safety issues– programs like violence interruption, mental health, youth programs, non-carceral crisis response, streetlights, and other interventions that prevent harm before it occurs — and should stop spending millions of taxpayer dollars for the DAO to prosecute crimes of poverty from 2016.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following is a guest blog post co-authored by Elizabeth Rossi of Civil Rights Corps and Amanda Woog of the Texas Fair Defense Project. Their organizations are among the civil rights groups involved in bail litigation against Harris County. Related: this discussion of the District Attorney’s claims to be fighting a “crime wave” in Houston […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[97],"tags":[20671,5422,27741,4771,6346,155573,2466],"dealstore":[],"offerexpiration":[],"class_list":["post-335431","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-legal","tag-combating","tag-crime","tag-crimes","tag-isnt","tag-poverty","tag-prosecuting","tag-wave"],"yoast_head":"\nProsecuting crimes of poverty isn't the same as combating a "crime wave" - Som2ny Network<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=335431\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Prosecuting crimes of poverty isn't the same as combating a "crime wave" - Som2ny Network\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"The following is a guest blog post co-authored by Elizabeth Rossi of Civil Rights Corps and Amanda Woog of the Texas Fair Defense Project. 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