Houston Community College Reflective Writing 4 Xuan Huang Govt 2306 Professor Crane August 1st, 2016 In the Texas political environment, the phrase “Hard on crimes” is often a necessity for victory. This mentality in Texas of stern individual responsibility has shaped the attitudes people have toward all criminals often regardless of the entity of their crimes. In this environment, too often are small time criminals turned into hardened criminals not by their own choosing but forced by the prison and pennial system Texas have in place. As distorted as that is, there are sometimes far worse outcomes than over punishing the guilty. In some instances, we punish the innocent. In 2004, a man was put to death in