{"id":283538,"date":"2025-10-07T08:06:11","date_gmt":"2025-10-07T08:06:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/283538\/"},"modified":"2025-10-07T08:06:11","modified_gmt":"2025-10-07T08:06:11","slug":"dallas-county-still-failing-to-report-criminal-court-data","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/283538\/","title":{"rendered":"Dallas County still failing to report criminal court data"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dallas County has failed to report its criminal district court data since May 2023 and hasn\u2019t explained why, leaving an opaque cover over how well or poorly our courts are functioning. <\/p>\n

The state\u2019s Office of Court Administration tracks metrics for Texas counties, including cases pending, convictions, dismissals and many others. Dallas County\u2019s criminal courts reports have been blank going back nearly two and half years.<\/p>\n

The start of the reporting failure generally coincides with the county\u2019s bungled transition to the Odyssey case management system<\/a>. There\u2019s little doubt that software issues are playing some role in the reporting failure, but that excuse is getting stale. Rotting, really. <\/p>\n

Not all judges work equally hard<\/a>, nor are they equally invested in transparency and accountability. It\u2019s possible some of the reporting failures emanate from them, though we can\u2019t say for certain. <\/p>\n

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We don\u2019t have a clear picture of what problems have prevented the county from reporting its data appropriately. Several county officials failed to respond to requests for an explanation about the Odyssey system and missing reports.<\/p>\n

Among them are District Clerk Felicia Pitre and Chief Information Officer Justine Tran, whom we attempted to reach multiple times. Presiding Criminal District Judge Audra Riley and Local Administrative District Judge Andrea Plumlee also did not respond to inquiries.<\/p>\n

Too bad we don\u2019t have local officials who are willing to explain what they\u2019re doing with taxpayer dollars. <\/p>\n

In fairness, there is a blip of a bright spot. Dallas County is up to date with a different kind of report<\/a> required under a 2023 law, though these reports are simpler and not nearly as comprehensive as the type the county is still failing to submit. <\/p>\n

One of the upsides to electing judges is that voters can hold them accountable at the ballot box. A downside is that voters usually choose judges based on party alignment or something other than performance. That\u2019s where hard facts and data need to come in. We really have few ways to judge our judges, and county officials appear to be in no rush to help us.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s all well and good that Dallas County is providing partial information, but it\u2019s still falling far short of the full reporting requirements. And that should be the minimum standard. <\/p>\n

There were 15,656 active cases pending before Dallas County\u2019s criminal district courts at the end of December 2019. By the end of December 2022, that number was 22,211. Up until May the following year, it seemed like the county was making progress<\/a> toward getting the number of cases under control. But the data cuts off at that point, so who really knows? <\/p>\n

You would think nearly two and a half years would be enough time to address significant reporting issues. Not so with Dallas County. Here, we apparently prefer to sit on our problems for years with no explanation. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dallas County has failed to report its criminal district court data since May 2023 and hasn\u2019t explained why,…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":283539,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5135],"tags":[5229,356,1596,7290,6083,358,3187,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-283538","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-dallas","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-courts","10":"tag-dallas","11":"tag-dallas-county","12":"tag-editorials","13":"tag-texas","14":"tag-tx","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-united-states-of-america","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115331857485089378","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283538","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=283538"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/283538\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/283539"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=283538"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=283538"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=283538"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}