Life in prison for credit card skimming? How one Texas county took tough-on-crime laws to the next level

“There has definitely been a resurgence of tough-on-crime legislation across the US and in Texas,” said Michele Deitch, director of the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab at the University of Texas at Austin’s Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs. “Legislators always get a lot of political mileage out of filing these bills.”