Texas Criminal Justice Reforms - Lessons for New Zealand?

Perhaps Texas isn’t the first place that immediately springs to mind when you think about criminal justice reform, but did you know that since 2006 Texas has managed to reduce its prison population by nearly 15,000 and its imprisonment rate by over 23%? And that over the same period their crime rate dropped by nearly 45% and their violent crime rate by nearly 20%?

Ben Brooks recently travelled to Texas on a Winston Churchill Memorial Fellowship to find out how Democrats and Republicans have worked together to reduce prison numbers and cut crime rates. He will be at St Luke’s on Thursday 5th September at 7.30pm to talk about his travels and what New Zealand can learn from the Texas reforms.