The Listening Tube Welcomes Ken Good

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Hey, the Listening Tube welcomes a guest. I'm Bob Woodley from the Listening Tube. My guest today is bail attorney Ken Good, who is a crusader for law and order as well as an advocate for a realignment of bail systems that don't hold accountable the person charged with a crime, nor some of the people responsible for maintaining peace and security in our communities. Ken and I talk about those responsibilities and how we can change or undo harmful changes to the justice system. Just a note before I go forward by mistake, I use the microphone on my laptop instead of the expensive one right in front of my face. So if it sounds like I'm in a cave, that's why. My apologies. An interview from the listening tube. That's bail reform and electronic monitoring for violent offenders. What do people need to know about it?

SPEAKER_00 1:24

I think the probably the the biggest thing people need to know is that electronic monitoring is a supplement. It is not a replacement. Because, first of all, it's very expensive. It's more expensive on the long term. You know, if it takes four years to get a criminal case resolved, it's going to be more expensive than just hiring a Bell Bondsman for that same period of time. And also it has a lot of false positives. So if your battery runs down, that's reported as a problem. If it is incorrect in where your location, that's reported. So it has a lot of false positive notifications that kind of desensitize the court. And then I think we have examples where defendants learn that if they wait till 5:30 on Friday, they get a three-day head start on running. And so I think those are all reasons why, you know, the activists say that electronic monitoring is can be a replacement. You don't need, you know, scummy little bondsman, but it's not. It's it's proven itself that it's a supplement to what the other alternatives, but it's not a replacement.

SPEAKER_01 2:31

I would hope that a criminal trial does not take four years to be resolved. Is that common or would that be the exception?

SPEAKER_00 2:42

Well, you know, remember we're coming out of COVID. And so there were a lot of, you know, there was like a year where cases were not being resolved, but we're still arresting people. So that creates even bigger backlogs. And so, you know, there's only a couple of ways of getting rid of backlogs. You can either work harder and get some temporary courts to try cases, you can discount the crime so people will have an incentive to plead guilty, or you can dismiss criminal cases. And you know, a lot of times dismissal of criminal cases is is is being done, and criminals see that as a green light to commit more crime. So so yeah, I mean it, you know, until we get these backlogs under control, and I think we're doing that in a lot of locations, but you know, in the urban areas when we're arresting on average 5,000 people during a given period of time, backlogs can can rise quickly.

SPEAKER_01 3:41

Now, Ken, your domain is the state of Texas, where you're a bail bondsman and a bail attorney.

SPEAKER_00 3:48

Well, a bail attorney, but not a bondsman.

SPEAKER_01 3:50

Oh, okay. I'm sorry. Um but what what what's the state of bail policies in Texas right now?

SPEAKER_00 3:57

Texas has gone the opposite direction of some of our urban areas. It has strengthened the criminal justice system, so it's limited the use of simple release for violent offenses. So, you know, we can't just release somebody on certain violent offenses uh on a promise to come back. And so I think that is good. This probably the most important change that Texas has made is a requirement that all judges have to review criminal histories in setting bail for anything that's a class B misdemeanor or higher. I mean, a lot of people would say, well, why wasn't that the the rule before uh the change like six years ago? And the reason why is because Texas didn't have an infrastructure so that they could display the criminal history for the whole state for judges. They could show them the criminal history for the county, but maybe a a a neighboring county, but not for the state. And so as a part of that, they had to set up an infrastructure to do that. But I think that's probably the most important change in the law because I think the biggest indicator of what you're gonna do in the future is what you've done in the past. And so judges are required to take into consideration what your your um criminal history is in setting bail. And I think that's probably very positive. In Texas, according to the Office of Court Administration, approximately 83 to 86 percent of all releases in Texas are on uh private surety bail. So I would say that the private industry and the counties, uh the criminal justice system are very tightly intertwined. And so generally whatever is good for the criminal justice system is good for the bail industry.

SPEAKER_01 5:36

Are bail laws generally state laws, or can they also be made on the municipal level or county level?

SPEAKER_00 5:45

Uh so uh bail bail is regulated by the states, or well, let me change that. So we have each state prosecutes crime, and then we have the federal government that prosecutes crime as well. So we have 51 jurisdictions, 50 states and and then the federal government. I mean, you could throw in the um provinces, you know, territories as well, but let's just make it simple. We've got 50 states and one federal government that all prosecute crime. So bail is regulated by the states, and then bail for the federal government is regulated by the federal government. But with reforms during Reagan's time, and um, you know, the federal government has been has become more of a release detain system. But the but as a result of that, they detain pretrial about 75% of the people arrested. So they hold them pretrial until their case is resolved. The states can't do that, they can't afford that, they don't have the infrastructure to hold 75% of their people uh in in jail pretrial. So uh we are looking and we're using different release mechanisms and they're called different things. I just call, you know, these reforms are pushing uh simple release, it's called different things in different states, but it's just a promise that you'll come back, nothing else, just a prinky promise. And those are are the experiments that we've been trying for the last four or five years that have been just absolute failures.

SPEAKER_01 7:09

And I assume now you're probably not talking about Texas. So you're talking about other states that have enacted these reforms, correct?

SPEAKER_00 7:17

Well, um, yes, except Harris County, Houston, Texas, is following some reforms on misdemeanors only. Uh, and that's a result of a consent decree that was issued by a federal court. But it was really just a settlement between two like-minded sides, the county and some activist attorney sued the county, and so they entered into a settlement and encapsulated it into a consent decree. And the problem is I think all of those substantive rulings of that case have been reversed by the Fifth Circuit, and the Fifth Circuit has even ruled that case should have never been litigated in federal court. But the county has continued to hide behind the consent decree. And so there has been a motion pending to dismiss the consent decree because it's not in compliance with Texas law anymore, and also because of the ruling, the substantive rulings that all have been reversed. Uh the judge just issued a ruling on that, I think Monday uh of this week, and she denied the motion to dismiss. So she uh ruled to keep the consent decree in effect. And so the count uh the the four judges that sought to have it dismissed have filed a notice of appeal. And I would anticipate that the Fifth Circuit will rule on that within the next year. And I I think it's very the chances are very strong that they're gonna order her to dismiss that case. And so then, you know, the even Houston, Texas, Harris County will have to come in compliance with Texas law. So that has been a weird little situation where there's been an ongoing fight between Harris County Commissioner's Court and Tech and the Texas legislature over who sets bail policy. I think that ultimately that will be resolved in in the favor of the legislature.

SPEAKER_01 8:55

What should lawmakers take into consideration when creating bail laws?

SPEAKER_00 9:00

Well, I think changes should be in, you know, um they should not do these experiments that the activists are requesting them to do, because they will come to them and say, oh, this will work, but there's not any studies to show that they're working. So we're doing these experiments. And so if we do a change, it should be building on the things that we know that work, not turning our back on the things that work and trying something brand new. Because the problem that we've seen is even though it's a failure when we try these experiments, the activists will never admit that they were failures. They'll just say we need more time, or they'll even uh re-uh redefine what success is. So, you know, if if their proposal suddenly causes a whole bunch of failures to appear, which is a problem because the criminal case can't go forward without the defendant, which increases backlogs, then they'll redefine what what we should be looking at. Oh, we don't look at failures, should not look at failures to appear. We should only look at willful failures to appear where they intended to miscore. And so to me, that's an that's an example of where they're agreeing that what they're doing is uh doing substantial harm to the system, so much harm that they have to change the terms that we're negotiating or discussing. And when we do that, you know, they don't realize any failure to appear does the same damage to the to the criminal justice system. The case has to be put on hold. We have to wait for them to come back. And then what happens when, okay, they overslap, but then now they're scared, and so now they run. Well, did it now become willful, uh, even though initially it wasn't? It's it's done substantial damage to the criminal justice system.

SPEAKER_01 10:39

Well, how do the the these people who you refer to as activists, how do they justify these experiments and these reforms? In other words, what was what do they say is wrong with the system as it was?

SPEAKER_00 10:54

Let's look at the New Jersey plan, as I call it. They came in and said we need to change the way bail is done in New Jersey because the criminal makeup, you know, the racial makeup of the jail pretrial is larger for certain minority groups. And so they said there's systemic racism there. Uh and so they completely redid their pretrial bail situation, essentially uh enacted a whole bunch of sight and release. So that's the way they got their jail population down. And the problem is now, even though the population is slowly going back up, the racial makeup of the jails never changed. So the very premise for why they said we needed the change has the percentages have not changed. They started out by saying that we need we need to change what we're doing because the current system will be held unconstitutional. And so we need something new. The problem is we've had two courts of appeals in the federal system hold the current system constitutional. So now they had to change their arguments to uh, well, we need to be fair. And you know, the criminal justice system isn't intended to treat everybody the same, it's intended to treat everybody individually so that whatever amount of pressure you need and whatever amount of pressure I need to become productive citizens is what's applied to us. When we decide we're going to treat everybody the same, the activists require everybody to be treated like first-time offenders. And the people that are career criminals, gangs, and organized crime, they're the ones that reap the benefits of treating everybody the same.

SPEAKER_01 12:26

So wouldn't uh a reform based on uh a racist accusation be unconstitutional considering what the Supreme Court recently ruled about uh everything from student admissions to all kinds of stuff as far as race is concerned. If they say we need this reform because the current laws are affecting this group of people uh disproportionately, isn't that in itself racist?

SPEAKER_00 13:02

You know, I don't think so, because I I think what they what they come in, let's leave the Harris County case as an example. So when when we do because I think we've got the political arguments, and I don't think the political arguments are intended as constitutional. They're just uh political jargon, focus group, um tried and tested uh uh terms. But in the federal case for Harris County, the argument was made that um the county had violated the due process clause and equal protection clause of the federal constitution because when bail was set by a bail schedule, the defendant did not have an opportunity to say, hey, I can't afford that. And so, I mean, there was an easy fix for that. You have ordered them to have a hearing in that situation. But the problem is the plaintiffs wanted everybody to be released. So they wanted a substantive remedy, even though they had only identified a procedural issue. The sitting judges were always willing to give them a hearing, but they weren't get willing to give them a mandated release for lack of a hearing. And the problem with that is, you know, that case went up on appeal twice before, you know, there was a settlement, and there was a settlement because there was an election, all the sitting judges got defeated, new judges got elected who promised to settle the case. And so the new judges gave the plaintiffs everything they wanted, including a mandate for release. The problem with that is the Fifth Circuit had ruled they weren't entitled to that. And so uh the judge gave them relief in the consent decree that the Fifth Circuit ruled they were not entitled to for as a part of the preliminary injunction, which would also mean they were not entitled to that as a part of the consent decree. And so you could argue that the trial court violated the uh mandate uh of that case, and she violated the law of the Fifth Circuit and gave the plaintiffs relief that they were not entitled to. And so that's going to be an interesting argument coming out, but that's not but that doesn't really respond to your question. But so no one's been arguing that we need to change this because there's systemic racism. They're arguing that what Harris County was currently doing at the time was in violation of the due process clause.

SPEAKER_01 15:08

The listening tube will return at the speed of sound. Send email to thelistening tube at outlook.com. You mentioned uh New Jersey. What are some of the other states that implemented have implemented some of these bail reforms that have not been have not shown any evidence that they work?

SPEAKER_00 15:32

So let's talk about New York. So the way New York went through bail reform is they enacted a list of crimes. And so if your crime that you're accused of is on the list, then you're released on no bail. So you're just released. So it's simple release. It's just New York calls it released on no bail. And because um crime went up dramatically after it went to effect, and the only change was the bail reform, that's what got the blame. And so we now have had three rollbacks, and that's an example of a charge-based release system. So no matter how many times you've been accused of theft in your background, no matter how many times you've convicted been convicted, you get treated the same as a first-time offender because you've been charged with this offense that's on this list that says you're going to be released on no bail. And so they now have rolled that back and made the list smaller three times. And it's still, I think now, still the number one of the number one issues in the governor's election. California has implemented this zip policy of no bail, no zero bail. So you would be released on zero bail. And California kind of had treats all misdemeanors that way. But they have on top of that a um a requirement of the law that you have a speedy trial act. So in in California, they have a really great loophole right now where you get arrested, you get released on zero bail, and you don't show up for court. Well, they're not going to come get you because it's a misdemeanor. We're not going to make you come, we're not going to go to another county and get you because it's a misdemeanor. And so if you just stay away, well, then the Speedy Trial Act can click in and require the court to dismiss the case because it wasn't tried quick enough. And who knows that?

SPEAKER_01 17:16

That's a fancy loophole. And I from what I understand, Illinois is also uh one of your centers of concern.

SPEAKER_00 17:23

Well, Illinois is another example, and you know, they they've gone through the last couple of years saying they've just gotten rid of cash bail. Well, that's not true. They got rid of the private industry probably 15 years ago, and that's when crime started going up. What was left at that time was filing cash bonds or the premium for the cash bond with the court. And so if they failed to appear, that money went to the court. So the court started relying upon those funds as a part of their operational funds. That is what they've just gotten rid of in the last two years. So now they're all simple release. So the Cook County clerk released statistics in the last year's saying there's a 70-75% failure to appear rate uh for simple release uh under these new provisions. And, you know, I mean, compare 75% failure to appear rate versus the private industries less than 10%. You can see the damage done to the criminal justice system overnight as cases get put on hold until defendants return.

SPEAKER_01 18:20

And the came the damage is not only done to the criminal justice system, the damage is also done to the communities in which these repeat offenders are let go.

[Ad] History Analyzed

SPEAKER_00 19:41

Well, where they're outrunning, and you know, and then uh the damage to victims because they're not having their cases resolved, they're not giving resolution, and then you know, the backlogs create pressure to dismiss cases, and then how does how does the public react to that? Because now they're seeing a mistreatment. Um, you know, why would you cooperate with the police then if if the case is just going to be then dismissed? And so it creates a whole it undermines the faith of the public in the criminal justice system and it undermines public safety and it creates huge problems

(Cont.) The Listening Tube Welcomes Ken Good

SPEAKER_00 20:14

for uh the public.

SPEAKER_01 20:16

Are more reforms needed, or do we just need to get rid of the reforms that have already been implemented and go back to the way it was before?

SPEAKER_00 20:27

We need to go back to the way it was before. Um the problem that we have is the the activists are not admitting what they're doing is wrong, it's is is not being successful. They define success differently, you know, if just reducing the jail population is your definition of success, well, you can just release people and and uh you can call that a success. But if you release people, look look at look at California, proposition 4049, where they changed some felonies to misdemeanors, and then prosecutors in our urban areas decided we're no longer going to prosecute theft under $950. Well, if you do that, you can reduce your jail population and you can say crime is down. But the problem is that's not the perception of the public when stores are closing because they can't withstand $25,000 a day in shoplifting, and then you you know you've got the um the federal government and the Nancy Pelosi uh government building saying people should work from home because it's just not even safe to walk from the parking garage to the office building. Those, I mean, that's a big problem, and that's a result of these reforms.

SPEAKER_01 21:34

Well, now you have a a much clearer picture of what this whole bail or no bail system looks like because it's it's what you do. But I would guess that unless you are directly affected by it, the average American may not even know this is an issue. If cashless bail and electronic monitoring are so dangerous to the communities that employ it, why do you think more people aren't speaking out about it?

SPEAKER_00 22:03

Well, I think people are starting to speak out about it. I mean, you know, we've been through this before in the 60s, where we felt safe or more safe, so we became more forgiving on our criminal laws, we started having more crime, and the two parties couldn't agree on how to address it. One party refused to participate, and so we end up having a backlash, and that's ended up with the reason why Ray, one of the reasons why Reagan was elected, and we had his uh war on drugs. I think that what's been happening, and there's been a backlash against it, and um also immigration policy. I think those go hand in hand. Uh, I think we're finding that they're uh very closely related as as countries uh empty their jail and send them to the United States. And what do you know, they do what they know to do when they get to the United States, and crime goes down when we start deporting those people. So I think that uh we have been through that period, that cycle once again. And I think that's one of the reasons why we have Trump 2.0 is because of that backlash. How long it will last, or whether we'll have a little bumpy road now because of other issues, I think probably the number one issue right now is the price of gas. But we'll see. I Think that it's kind of if we continue on the road we are, the disparity between soft on crime areas and law and order areas is going to compound and get worse. And it's going to be more evident. But you know, the people that historically are the first to raise the red flag on these issues is the people living in those areas because when crime goes up, it goes up quicker on our minorities. So in the end, you know, the when the activists say they're helping these minorities, the reality is that soft-owned crime policies actually hurt those very groups uh more than they do the public in in general as crime increases.

SPEAKER_01 23:52

So they they help the members of the minorities who are committing the crimes, but they claim they're helping the members of the minorities who aren't committing the crimes.

SPEAKER_00 24:04

Yeah. Well, it's like, I mean, I've made this argument before, but what would our elected officials in Illinois, Chicago be doing differently if they weren't in the hands of the gangs? I mean, it just seems like they've turned over Illinois to gangs. They run the city and they meet with them about elections every every year or every two years. And so it just seems like we've turned over Chicago to the gangs and to the gang violence. That's why we have shootings every weekend. And so what would they be doing different if they were fighting for us instead of the gangs? I'm not sure they would. I mean, well, I'm not sure they would be doing anything different if they were in the pocket of the gangs over what they're doing now, which seems to be protecting the gangs.

SPEAKER_01 24:46

Well, those Chicago gangs, they they go back a long way. I mean, even back to the days of Al Capone when the when the mobs ruled Chicago, and then as I can recall back in the 80s when the gangs in in Chicago were so superior to even the gangs in LA, where gangs in LA were still displaying colors, and the gangs in Chicago would simply laugh at their their amateurishness.

SPEAKER_00 25:12

So but isn't one of the lessons of Trump I mean, okay, so I've taught somebody before and they were um they were trumpeting interesting word, uh a class they taught, which is the economics of crime. And essentially they're arguing that it was too expensive to fight crime, so you should decriminalize it and make it legal. But I think in the lesson of Trump in fighting, you know, uh drug trafficking on the on the on the oceans, I think he's made a good argument that we can combat that because he has decreased the uh inflow of uh fentanyl and decreased deaths from fentanyl from what he's doing. And so I mean I I mean I think there's a moral obligation at a certain level, and you can't just say I mean the economics of crime. I just think that that is a um no, it's it's it's a cop-out to justify decriminalization. And and decriminalization doesn't work. Look at what what was going on in Oregon when they do decriminalized all hard drugs for a period of time. And they implemented all these programs to help people.001% went into the programs. So where'd that money go? And then, second of all, they were setting record numbers of overdose deaths. So all law enforcement was doing was getting there to give them Narcan to bring them back to life so that then they can go to their dealer to get their next hit. I mean, that's not law enforcement's job. And so when Oregon was addressing whether to renew those laws, overwhelmingly the public said no or renew the decriminalization. So they went back to criminalizing these crimes. And so I think that that's a really that's a that's a trap set up to try to seek criminal uh decriminalization. And I mean, I just think it's wrong. I mean, it doesn't work. Uh look at California where they didn't decriminalize marijuana, but the the black market is still taking over this market even to this day, and the legalized avenues are going bankrupt. And so the government is now spending pretty much all the money that they're raising from the taxes to try to keep the black market out of the market. And so where's where's the benefit? I mean, I would argue there's not any benefit, and it's a negative on society.

SPEAKER_01 27:34

Now you mentioned the police, and I have to wonder then, what where are the police in in this argument? What why don't we hear from the police unions, uh, the rank and file about, you know, they're out there doing the job on the street, making these arrests, only to see their hard work basically just be tossed back out onto the street?

SPEAKER_00 27:58

Well, I think we are hearing from them, but I think their ability to speak is being muted in these soft on crime areas. They're being told not to speak. They're being told that, you know, we don't have they're being told, I think softly, we don't have your back, or that's the message they're receiving. But I mean, look at Harris County, uh, the Houston Police Officers Union did a study of these personal bonds, just reviewing one week's docket of cases and found a s over 75% failure to appear rate from that week, and they released that report. So I mean, they I think historically law enforcement are is the place we go to for statistics about crime. But during this period of time of change, which now is being rolled back, the activists have all you know denigrated the law enforcement. Oh, don't listen to them. You can't listen to them. They're the ones that receive this money. They they they have an incentive to misrepresent it when historically that's who we look to for these statistics. So now we're supposed to look to just the activists who are who I would say are issuing pseudoscience studies or pseudo-studies, uh, claiming that what they're doing is working when it's absolutely not.

SPEAKER_01 29:08

If the places that have cashless bail were to abandon it and re resume the bail system as it were before, should we still keep the electronic monitoring part, or would that somehow be an infringement on a person's rights?

SPEAKER_00 29:26

Well, I uh the way I think about electronic monitoring is it's a supplement. Uh, you know, there's bondsmen that use an electronic monitoring device as a requirement for someone released on bail for them.

SPEAKER_01 29:39

Okay.

SPEAKER_00 29:40

So I think it can be a supplement, but it can't be a replacement. First of all, it's just too expensive. And by itself, the the high positive rate. I mean, there's an example from Houston where a guy was arrested and accused of killing his wife and his unborn child. I mean, they already had two children, but she was pregnant with their third child, and he killed the allegation is he killed her and killed the child, unborn child. He's been waiting for trial for eight months. During that time, he grew out his hair, he grew out a long beard, and what do you know? Friday at 5 30 month before trial, he heads to Canada, picks up a fake passport in route, gets to Canada and gets on a plane. So he cuts off his GPS monitor at 5 30 on Friday, goes to Canada, gets on a plane, flies to Turin, Italy, and Turin, Italy discovers that he's traveling on a fake passport before Harris County even figures out that his GPS monitor's been cut off.

SPEAKER_01 30:41

Well, that's uh that's something, isn't it? Now, is it only the judges who can decide whether or not an accused criminal is granted bail?

SPEAKER_00 30:50

Yes, in Texas. Uh there's some maybe a couple of exceptions, but yes. And when we say judges, I would say a magistrate. And a magistrate in Texas can be anybody from a mayor all the way up to the uh Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Texas. Um, you know, ver there's the verb magistration, and then there's the noun magistrate. Most of the magistrating is done by JPs in Texas. But in our urban areas, we have people who are hired as judges that that's all they do is magistrate all day long. They do the initial appearance, they set bail. And so that uh so that's why we have a lot of confusion. Texas just passed a um a statute in this last legislative session that says judges who are magistrates for under this specific provision of the statute, which means they're in urban areas, they cannot magistrate these offenses. And so some of the most uh extreme offenses, they've taken that away from them because they're not elected, and they want elected judges to be resp uh to be held accountable if they set release somebody on a violent offense on a personal bond or a low bail.

SPEAKER_01 32:04

Who are the people advocating for these policies?

SPEAKER_00 32:09

Well, you've got like the MacArthur Foundation, the Vera Institute, or it used to be Vera Institutes, now Vera something else. They're all activist groups funded by you know Soros and other groups, uh the Koch brothers, you know, I would even put right on crime is one of these groups. Uh right on crime, a TPPF are normally considered right-wing think tanks, but on the on the issue of crime, they're not. They're uh, you know, the left and the right have come to the same conclusion and they're left uh solutions. So, you know, these groups are the ones that were advocating for or Prop 49 that decriminal that eventually decriminalized theft under $950 has been a complete failure. They won't even admit that they uh supported it. Supported the New York uh proposals and you know, haven't talked about the rollbacks that have gone on three times. And then oppose the reforms in Texas that strengthen the criminal justice system, even though they'll say, well, we do support it, but we'd like to have these changes made to it. Well, then you don't support it. So I think Soros is a big group. You know, he's been the one uh supporting soft-one crime DAs, he's also been supporting soft-one crime judges, and he's the one pushing these reforms. So, yes, I think that's who's behind it.

SPEAKER_01 33:23

What's the goal?

SPEAKER_00 33:25

Oh, that's a good question. What is the goal? Uh you know, I think it's a um coalition of people of people, and so I think some of the goals differ. Some of the people are true believers, they just want to be soft on crime. Some of the people of this coalition don't believe we should have jail. They call jails cages. So we shouldn't have public safety, or we wouldn't need public safety if we just provide everybody food and a place to live, which is kind of silly because we already have programs to do that now, and we have a uh we have a crime problem. So I think that's part of it. And then you you could argue some of them are troublemakers. Part of the coalition is troublemakers. They want to destabilize and cause, you know, infighting. And so I think that's part of the coalition as well.

SPEAKER_01 34:12

Is there anything an average citizen can do to protect their community from the policies of government and judicial discretion uh promoting sympathy for the criminals instead of the victims?

SPEAKER_00 34:27

Historically, both of our national parties have been law and order uh parties. And so uh we need a reset on one of our parties, and the way you do that is you vote law and order candidates. And so there was a really some really good job uh commercials in Harris County in the last election cycle that just said, you know, highlighted the atrocities uh that were happening, and then said, just vote Republican judges. And uh every uh Democrat that was in office that had a Republican opponent lost. And so, and and Harris County is a strong Democrat county in Texas. So I think those things can be very successful. Soften crime DAs have a short shelf life, they don't last very long, and then they get replaced by law and order candidates. I think that's what's going on. And I think that you know it doesn't last very long because the public demands public safety. And so if they don't feel safe, they will they will change it.

SPEAKER_01 35:25

Well, Mr. Good, that's all I have for you today. Is there anything else you'd like to uh add to our conversation?

SPEAKER_00 35:31

Well, I think if people want more information about me or my group, they can go to pbtx.com, pbtx.com. We have a blog where we highlight criminal justice stories that are important uh to know about. And we also have our own podcast. It there's a link on our menu, or you can just go to thebailpost.com, thebailpost.com. All we do is talk about criminal justice issues and what works and what doesn't work. We want a library of episodes so that lawmakers can go there to find out what will work to make your criminal justice system better and what does not.

SPEAKER_01 36:06

Well, Mr. Good, thank you very much for spending some time with me and the listening to today. I really do appreciate it.

SPEAKER_00 36:12

Thank you for having me.

SPEAKER_01 36:13

I found the conversation to to be uh very interesting. I hope you've enjoyed it as much as I have. Sure. Thank you very much. Thanks again to Ken Good, a Texas bail attorney who's up to date on bail laws all over the country. Those websites again are pbtx.com and thebailpost.com for more information and resources about criminal justice, bail, and bail reform. Thanks again to Ken Good for spending some time with you and me in the listening tube. And thank you for putting your ear to the listening tube. Follow the listening tube at thelistening tube dot com, where you'll also find this week in history and not the headlines. I'm your host, Bob Woodley, for Thou at Infinitum.