Texas Government: Ch. 13

The Houston Police Department, with about __________ officers, is the largest in Texas. Twenty-five police departments in Texas have__________-member police departments, such as Anton, Texas, while still others have closed their police departments altogether.

1. 5300 2. 1

Increasingly, the Texas criminal justice system is sending more individuals to __________ rather than __________. This has led to a(n) __________ in prison construction across the state.

1. drug treatment programs 2. prison 3. decline

Study the following figure to determine whether or not the statement below is accurate. Since 2000, as Texas's population has grown, so too has the number of people in the state's prisons and substance abuse facilities. True pf False

False

Which argument is made by supporters of reforms to the cash bail system in Texas?

Poor people released without paying bail show up for court at the same rates as people who pay bail.

Read the excerpt then answer the question that follows. "Photographs of the era show the prisoners dressed in raggedy striped prison clothing, hoisting the cane stalks from the swampy field into mule-drawn wagons and delivering them to the mills, including the "Imperial Mill." It was the early foundation of the Imperial Sugar Co..."- The Washington Post , July 18, 2018 The description in the excerpt from The Washington Post is most likely referring to which practice in the history of Texas criminal justice?

convict leasing

It can be argued that putting people on probation or into diversion programs for nonviolent crimes rather than putting them in jail makes more sense for the taxpayers for what reason?

Significant cost savings

Bail bondsmen can be best described as being most similar to what?

providers of short-term loans

Unlike other situations where an individual who causes bodily harm or property damage may be sued to recover costs and penalize the individual, police officers are very rarely successfully sued because of the __________ doctrine.

qualified immunity

Which of the following is a struggle that urban police departments and rural police departments have in common?

the need to pay police officers competitive wages and provide benefits

Which of the following are recent ways in which the Texas criminal justice system has been reformed?

Correct: 1. greater emphasis on community supervision 2. compensation for those wrongly convicted 3. expanded drug treatment programs Incorrect: 1. Abolition of the death penalty

Prosecutors from a district attorney's office may agree to a plea bargain with a long probation period instead of jail time for which two reasons?

Correct: 1. Prosecutors want to conserve time and money 2. The defendant is likely to go to jail when failing some term of a long time probation period. Incorrect: 1. The public disapproves of incarceration 2. Prosecutors support creative sentencing guidelines

According to the 2020 Census, The Woodlands, Texas, an unincorporated area in Montgomery County, had nearly 120,000 residents. Communities like The Woodlands-among others-do not have municipal law enforcement because they are unincorporated. Who must small towns and unincorporated areas rely on to provide local police services to the residents?

Correct: County Sheriff Incorrect: state troopers privately contracted security neighboring city police departments

Some Texas counties use a program called "cite and release" as an alternative to arresting those found possessing small amounts of marijuana. Instead of being arrested, violators are given a ticket. Read the following statements and click on those that someone in favor of cite and release would use as an effective argument to someone skeptical of the program.

Correct: 1. It saves money because it costs taxpayers about $120 to arrest and book such offenders and about $53 per day to keep them in an urban county jail. 2. County prisons are often overcrowded already. 3. People who are cited for possession are likely to appear in court as required.

Texas is often viewed as an excessively harsh state when it comes to criminal justice. Which of the following are reasons why?

Correct: 1. The cash bail system is inequitable 2. A large proportion of the population is incarcerated 3. There is extremely high usage of the death penalty Incorrect: 1. Penalties for marijuana possession have increased

Imagine that you are a conservative Republican legislator who, like the majority of the members in the state legislature, supports traditional law-and-order positions as well as low-tax, low-service fiscal policies. What motivation might you have to support reform policies, often associated with more liberal policy goals, that favor probation over prison time?

Individuals are still penalized for their criminal acts, and it saves state funds by avoiding adding to prison populations

A likely cause of the significant number of wrongful incarcerations in Texas is related to which fact?

Judges and prosecutors are elected

Study the information presented in the Who Are Texans? infographic to label which groups are overrepresented on death row, relative to their proportion of the overall Texas population, and which groups are underrepresented.

OVERREPRESENTED 1. African American Texans UNDERREPRESENTED 1. Latino Texans 2. White Texans 3. Other

Place in order the common steps of the criminal justice process once a felony arrest has been made.

arraignment --> posting bail --> grand jury indictment --> trial --> sentencing

In towns like Cut-n-Shoot, Texas, whose police department consists of a chief, assistant chief, and one officer, and towns like Timpson, Texas, which have closed their police departments, the residents are typically most dependent on which other authorities to provide law enforcement?

county law enforcement

The legal system categorizes crimes into different levels of seriousness, and there are several kinds of punishment for those convicted of these crimes. Match each category of crime or punishment to its correct description.

felony: a serious criminal offense punishable by a prison sentence or fine; often subjects a person to state prison misdemeanor: a minor criminal offense usually punishable by a small fine or short jail sentence parole: conditional release from prison for an offender who has served some prison time probation: an alternative to imprisonment in which the convicted person is subject to supervision and specified rules

Based on the passage below, determine which of the following gives the most accurate definition of "probable cause." "Grand juries do not find people guilty or not guilty but instead will vote a 'true bill,' meaning that they find probable cause that the accused has committed the crime, or a 'no bill,' meaning that they do not find probable cause."

reason supported by verifiable facts to believe that a person is involved in the act of a crime