Houston

Two years’ worth of data shows how disproportionately the city’s police and prosecutors target certain neighborhoods.

As Texas lifts its COVID-19 restrictions, the city’s jail remains overcrowded and its police and prosecutors continue to operate as normal.

State officials funded by power companies have been warned, since at least 1989, that the power grid was at risk of failure in cold weather. They have consistently failed to act.

In many of America’s major cities, the early efforts to reduce incarceration during the pandemic have been reversed.

On Tuesday, Harris County Commissioners will decide if the D.A. and Sheriff will get more money to continue their neglect in the face of a public-health crisis.

Houston area voters re-elected Gonzalez after he supported bail reform, cleaned up the county jail, and provided aid to incarcerated people living with opioid use disorder.

Fort Bend Sheriff Troy Nehls wants voters to send him to Congress despite his department’s history of jail deaths and allegations of racial-profiling.

While a debate over defunding the police rages in Austin, a new lawsuit reminds its residents that assault cases in the city are routinely ignored.

Lamar Burks has maintained his innocence for nearly 25 years in a murder case that has been marked by conflicting eyewitness accounts and the conviction of a DEA agent on corruption charges.

Videos contradict officers’ claims that they didn’t ‘kettle’ protesters.

The incumbent in the race, Jones’s former boss Kim Ogg, will not support a blanket refusal to prosecute sex workers, her office says.

A series of victories for advocates reflects a shift in the ‘popular narrative’ around bail.

Police are accused of lying to obtain the warrants to conduct military-style raids on the homes of poor people and people of color.

Records show Kim Ogg’s office appeared to misrepresent felony prosecutor caseloads in its $21 million budget request.

After a drug bust involving Houston narcotics officer Gerald Goines turned deadly, questions are being raised about how he operated during his time on the force.

In 2000, Lamar Burks was convicted of murder and given a 70-year sentence. But the federal indictment of a DEA agent and witnesses who say Burks is innocent have raised new questions about his case.

Harris County Judge Darrell Jordan discusses his newly elected colleagues’ decision to withdraw an appeal of a landmark bail reform lawsuit.

Prosecutors denounce bail reform efforts when people miss court dates, but ‘failure to appear’ rates obscure the fact that many who miss court aren’t on the run.

A Texas jail suicide involving a woman who couldn’t make bail in a shoplifting case highlights of the plight of pretrial detainees with mental illness.

An email obtained by The Appeal shows Kim Ogg’s office is intentionally asking for unaffordable bail amounts to hold certain people in jail in Texas.

The Hart family’s apparent murder-suicide drew headlines, but the path to the tragedy started much earlier—in Texas.

Houston has come up with a new way to make life harder for people leaving prison on parole: by forcing the programs that provide them with housing, often paired with job placement and other services, to move outside the city limits. At the end of March, the city council approved an ordinance that imposes new regulations and […]

Harris County District Attorney Kim Ogg made good on a central campaign promise this week, announcing that her office will no longer prosecute “trace cases” that involve trivially small amounts of drugs, or drug residue. In an interview with the Houston Press, Ogg said that although there is still no formal policy prohibiting these prosecutions, her office stopped […]

Two Houston police officers who were accused of going too far with a roadside body cavity search after they thought they smelled weed on Charnesia Corley in 2015 have been cleared by a Harris County grand jury. Deputies William Strong and Ronaldine Pierre were originally indicted in June 2016 after pulling Charnesia Corley over for a traffic […]