The following statement was made by Tarsha Jackson, criminal justice director of the Texas Organizing Project, in response to Gov. Greg Abbott’s proposed bail reform bill announced today:
“Once again, Gov. Greg Abbott is taking Texas in the wrong direction with his proposed bill on bail reform.
“Texas has a mass incarceration problem. Thousands and thousands of people have their lives upended every day by a system that treats their poverty as a crime. Even Abbott said people shouldn’t be in jail because they’re poor, but he hasn’t done anything about it.
“The truth is racism is all over this problem and Abbott’s response. The people who are sitting in jail awaiting trial, who are separated from their families, who are losing their jobs and homes because they can’t afford bail are mostly Black and Latino. Abbott doesn’t care about us.
“Also, some of the charges listed by Abbott such as evading police and assault on an officer are often used by police to harass people of color. It’s their word against the officers. The justice system rarely looks at why the officer stopped the person in the first place, and racial profiling remains our dirty secret.
“It’s unfortunate that Abbott has used the tragic death of a trooper to further his agenda of incarcerating even more people of color. This isn’t going to make us safer, as he claims. It’s going to tilt the scales of justice even more against us.
“We don’t need harsher bail guidelines. We need sane, just and humane bail reform. What Abbott proposed today takes us further from that.”
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Texas Organizing Project organizes Black and Latino communities in Dallas, Harris and Bexar counties with the goal of transforming Texas into a state where working people of color have the power and representation they deserve. For more information, visit organizetexas.org.