I don't know the law in Texas but around here the DA has a lot of discretion with how to handle small time offenses like pot possession. We have what's called informally at least a "drug court" and the judge with recommendation from the prosecutors can divert those people to alternatives other than jail. If the DA down there has similar discretion, I can't see how she'd get in any trouble.
Harris County (where Houston is located) has a similar program, STAR (Success Through Addiction Recovery), which includes a drug court as well as diversion to treatment, aftercare, a network of "halfway house" facilities, trauma counseling, and job training/employment assistance.
But there is a finite limit to the number of times you're going to send someone through such a program before it becomes cost prohibitive.
It would be appropriate for a first offense, and maybe even a second or third offense if the drug user demonstrates a willingness to get clean, but after a certain point, or if the drug user is flat out opposed to even the idea of getting clean, then what's the point?
I would have to figure that there are an awful lot of people arrested for possession multiple times where you've got to look at them and their history and say, "Yeah, we'd just be throwing good money after bad with this guy, so let's not put him in the STAR program a fourth time".
And even when that's the case, and it makes the most sense to keep the guy in a criminal court rather than divert to a special drug treatment court, I still don't think your "run of the mill" street level user deserves to go to jail.
I'd much rather the DA announce a blanket approach to all such cases than leave it up to case by case discretion, where you can figure middle class and above people who can spend $20k on a lawyer to negotiate a simple deal get the most benefit, and some poor black kid with a public defender who has 500 other cases more likely gets a jail sentence.
So something like mandatory minimums?
You're aware of how disproportionately those things effect the African American community, right?
No thanks.
I want to the criminal justice industrial complex to ALWAYS have some degree of discretion when it comes to prosecution and sentencing.
For every "black kid with a public defender" who ends up a worst case scenario to also wind up with one who comes out as a best case.
When you're dealing with mandatory sentencing everyone loses.
I'll say it again - the desired end state, for me, is that all Schedule I narcotics are fully legalized and we put this stupid, expensive, and completely ineffective "war on drugs" behind us.
We've lost, end of story, and there is nothing we can do, or ever could have done, to win it.
It was a governmental and law-enforcement-industrial-complex power/money grab from day one and never had any hope of improving "America" in any way.
But until that day comes the best we can hope for is a gradual loosening of the hold that government is keeping on such power.
This policy by the new Houston DA represents a slight loosening.
I'll take it.
Sometimes the best is the enemy of good enough.