Contemporary Issues in Texas Criminal Justice

In Point of Impact, Eva Ruth Moravec will be spending one year documenting officer-involved shootings of unarmed people in Texas. In this podcast, we discuss her project, the challenges of reporting these incidents, and what we can learn through her investigations.

The private correctional industry has been in the news and pop culture recently, from Orange is the New Black's fourth season story line, to an expose in Mother Jones in which a reporter embedded in a private prison in Louisiana for four months as a correctional officer. I sat down with Bob Libal, Executive Director of Grassroots Leadership, to discuss corporate profits and the prison industry, and efforts toward reform.

People returning to their communities after serving terms in prison often face barriers to obtaining employment, housing, and access to food and education benefits. To help formerly incarcerated people obtain gainful employment, the City of Austin recently passed a Fair Chance Hiring ordinance, which requires employers to wait until late in the hiring process to ask an applicant about his or her conviction or criminal history. We spoke with Susie Bannon, an organizer who helped get the new law passed, to learn more about the measure, what it took to get it passed, and what's next.