Nov. 24, Pamela Metzger, director of Deason Criminal Justice Reform Center and a law professor at SMU, for a piece illustrating the inequities in the dispensation of justice in rural vs. urban areas of Texas. Published in the Dallas Morning News: http://bit.ly/2OmsIM5
Drive from Amarillo, one of the biggest cities in West Texas, to Armstrong County, Texas, and you will enter a different world. Armstrong County, with fewer than than 2,000 people, is largely agricultural and, like many rural counties, substantially poorer than its urban neighbor, with a small local budget to match.
And, a report from the Sixth Amendment Center issued this month points out that the very sparseness of Armstrong County means that people arrested for crimes tend to have a very different experience with the criminal justice system than their urban Amarillo neighbors.
Of the three judges in Armstrong County that hear misdemeanor cases, only one is a lawyer. The felony court judge comes for three weeks each year, with his own court clerk, bailiff and transcriber in tow. There is no prosecutor in Armstrong County. All of the attorneys work in Amarillo. Just a handful of law enforcement officers patrol the highways. Only two lawyers are registered in the county. One is dead. . .
By Pamela Metzger
Drive from Amarillo, one of the biggest cities in West Texas, to Armstrong County, Texas, and you will enter a different world. Armstrong County, with fewer than than 2,000 people, is largely agricultural and, like many rural counties, substantially poorer than its urban neighbor, with a small local budget to match.
And, a report from the Sixth Amendment Center issued this month points out that the very sparseness of Armstrong County means that people arrested for crimes tend to have a very different experience with the criminal justice system than their urban Amarillo neighbors.
Of the three judges in Armstrong County that hear misdemeanor cases, only one is a lawyer. The felony court judge comes for three weeks each year, with his own court clerk, bailiff and transcriber in tow. There is no prosecutor in Armstrong County. All of the attorneys work in Amarillo. Just a handful of law enforcement officers patrol the highways. Only two lawyers are registered in the county. One is dead.
The Sixth Amendment Center’s report was sadly not shocking, but only conveyed what any rural resident knows: rural courts are sorely lacking in resources when compared to their urban counterparts.
It’s easy to focus on urban justice when the topic is the subject of media events, prestige television shows and books. But rural Americans are as deserving of equal justice as those living in metro areas. With so few attorneys living in the county, rural counties like Armstrong must draw on resources from the nearest city, meaning that the rural needs are often squeezed out and sidelined for the priorities of urban residents, who have the advantage of proximity.
And often these leftovers just aren’t sufficient, even though they absorb an inordinate percent of the county’s budget. The only defense lawyers are those who are willing to drive almost an hour, without additional pay, to Armstrong County for court. Most hearings are by video, with a broom closet in the sheriff’s office serving as the sound booth. And those waiting in jail because they cannot afford bail may wait weeks, even months, until the next court date. (Unless of course it’s summer or winter, when trials are delayed because of insufficient climate control.)
For two years, the Deason Criminal Justice Center at Southern Methodist University has hosted a cross-section of rural criminal justice stakeholders, including judges and victims, law enforcement and defense attorneys, to glean insights about how to best serve rural communities. Like their urban counterparts, rural communities want their justice system to be fair, compassionate and cost-effective. They want the opportunity to stay in their communities and drive their children to school. They want equal representation in the face of serious time behind bars.
Of course, this requires work. Funders must commit themselves to an equitable version of justice that does not depend on demographics. Counties and states must rethink their allocation of assets. Finally, this report is just the tip of the iceberg. We need to drill down and get real data on how rural courts function. The results might just surprise us with innovations that will better the system for everyone.
We owe rural communities our attention, money and time. Texas is full of these places — the only state more rural than Texas is Alaska. As residents of our state, we should all be concerned about the equality of justice, whether that court is on the dusty roads of Amarillo, in the busy metropolis of Dallas, or the Piney Woods of East Texas. Texas has made great strides in criminal justice reform. Let’s not leave our rural communities behind.
Pamela Metzger is the director of the Deason Criminal Justice Reform Centerand a law professor at Southern Methodist University. The Deason Center runs the Rural Criminal Justice Initiative, which includes the Rural Criminal Justice Resource and a yearly Rural Summit. She wrote this column for The Dallas Morning News.