Policy Focus Areas

Reimagining Reform: Over the summer of 2024, the Lone Star Justice Alliance convened the Reimagining Reform Workgroup, composed of cross-section stakeholders, advocates, legal practitioners, and justice-impacted youth to reform the Texas youth justice system. Key components included information gathering, identification of potential reforms, consensus building, guided proposal development, and public and stakeholder input.

Health Care for Youth: Texas should promote the mental and physical health of Texas youth by requiring Medicaid enrollment for eligible juveniles at both the county and state level, promoting the expansion of existing mental health workforce programs, and providing for incentives to recruit and retain mental health and substance use professionals.

Second Look: In Texas, youth can serve sometimes 40 years in prison before they are eligible for parole and then the parole process does not consider their youth at the time of the offense as a mitigating factor. Second Look legislation will shorten the time served before parole eligibility, allow the Parole Board to consider the cognitive changes that occur from childhood to adulthood that make them less likely to commit other crimes in the future, and provide an opportunity for youth to prove their rehabilitation.

Mercy for Survivors: Duress is an affirmative defense under the Texas Penal Code. Texas should evolve the Duress defense to include taking a survivors’ situation and history into account, thus making the benchmark comparison a person similarly situated to the defendant. This critical update will benefit survivors of all ages and help reduce the system’s criminalization of victims.

Clean Slate: Texas should update and expand eligibility for arrest and conviction record clearance if a person stays crime-free for a period of time. It’s a proven and successful model to implement commonsense policies that create transformational changes in people’s lives.