When a Courtroom Built for Men Tries to Process Women Every March, we celebrate Women’s History Month by lifting up women who shaped movements, broke barriers, and carried communities on their backs. Yet there’s a group of women whose stories rarely make it into commemorations — the women living inside the criminal legal system. Their… Continue reading The Gendered System
Black Resistance, Black Resilience, Black Care: The Future We’re Building Together
After three weeks of naming the harm — the design, the extraction, the quiet violence baked into the system — it would be easy to believe the story ends there. But Black history has never been only a record of what was done to us. It’s also a record of what we built anyway. What… Continue reading Black Resistance, Black Resilience, Black Care: The Future We’re Building Together
The Modern Courtroom: Chains You Don’t See
When Freedom Costs More Than a Conviction Last week, I wrote about what happens when mental illness and Blackness collide inside a jail — how crisis becomes criminalized, how symptoms become charges, how the system responds with punishment instead of care. But the exploitation doesn’t stop at the jail door. It follows people into the… Continue reading The Modern Courtroom: Chains You Don’t See
Treatment Denied, Arrest Delivered
When Mental Illness Meets Blackness Behind Bars When I wrote through January, I kept coming back to the same truth: so many of the in‑custody deaths we see begin long before anyone steps into a jail. They start with untreated mental illness, with crises that get met by police instead of clinicians, with families calling… Continue reading Treatment Denied, Arrest Delivered
The System Didn’t Break; It Was Built This Way
Every February, America dusts off its favorite Black icons, recites a few safe quotes, shows a few movies with popular Black actors and calls it Black History Month. But Black history isn’t something we visit once a year. It’s something we’re still living — in our laws, in our courtrooms, in our jails, and in… Continue reading The System Didn’t Break; It Was Built This Way
A System Working as Designed
How America Turned Jails Into Psychiatric Facilities — and Called the Deaths Inevitable When the largest psychiatric facility in Texas is a jail, the deaths stop looking like anomalies and start looking like the system working exactly as designed. Another person died in the Harris County Jail this month. Another headline. Another set of familiar… Continue reading A System Working as Designed
Documented. Repeated. Ignored.
That’s Harris County Jail in a nutshell. The inspections, the deaths, the repeated failures — all documented in public records — and yet the system continues to operate below the minimum standard for human safety. This isn’t a system struggling.This is a system refusing to meet the bare minimum required to keep people alive.This is… Continue reading Documented. Repeated. Ignored.
A Jail, Not a Graveyard
There are some things a community should never grow used to. Death inside a county jail is one of them. Yet here we are — watching the same headlines cycle through our feeds, hearing the same recycled explanations from officials, witnessing the same failures repeat year after year. If this were once or twice, maybe… Continue reading A Jail, Not a Graveyard
The Question He Couldn’t Answer — and Why
I’m still planning my blog year — discerning what I want my voice to hold and what I want to pour into. But some stories don’t wait for your calendar. Some moments insist on being named while they’re still warm. And before I could settle into any goals or themes for the year, today reminded… Continue reading The Question He Couldn’t Answer — and Why
Standing in the Gap: Reflections From a Defense Attorney
As I thought about how to close out this year, I kept thinking about the moments that stretched me, steadied me, and pulled me deeper into the work — in the courtroom and beyond it. This year reminded me that practicing law is never just about statutes or strategy, but it’s about people. Real people.… Continue reading Standing in the Gap: Reflections From a Defense Attorney
On (In)justice 