News Roundup

Houston news outlet FOX 26 recently highlighted a new report from the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at UT Austin that examines COVID deaths in Texas prisons and jails, where the positive test rate is 490% higher than the rate in Texas as a whole.  There are a number of notable findings in the report, including that 80% of people who died from the virus in jails were pretrial detainees and that nine people died after being approved for parole but before they were released. Slightly more than 10% of the people who have died in association with Texas correctional facilities were staff members.  The full report is available here.  Keep reading for more news. Recount.  As WRAL reports, the race for Chief Justice of the North Carolina Supreme Court is heading for a recount after preliminary results put Justice Paul Newby ahead of Chief Justice Cheri Beasley by a mere 409 votes.  A WCU political science professor interviewed in the article, Chris Cooper, said that statewide recounts of races across the country in recent years have averaged a shift in vote totals of about 430 votes. Decriminalization.  WLOS reported this week that the North Carolina Task Force for Racial Equity is suggesting the decriminalization of possession of small amounts of marijuana.  The recommendation is motivated in part by the fact that there are racial disparities in criminal convictions for possession of small amounts of the drug.  The WLOS report says that studies indicate that 60% of people convicted [...]