Trulykath
02-13-2003, 11:45 AM
Prisons nearing capacity yet again
Solutions include paroling prisoners, relying on county jails
By Dave Harmon
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Thursday, February 13, 2003
Eight years after Texas finished the biggest prison building boom in its history, the state's cellblocks are virtually full again. The state has room for a few hundred more prisoners in its 100-plus units, which have about 151,000 beds. The prisons could be full in five weeks, according to the state Criminal Justice Policy Council, which estimates that under current conditions, Texas could have almost 14,000 prisoners waiting for beds by 2008. The prison system, which used $2 billion in voter-approved bond money a decade ago to triple in size, is considered full when it hits 97.5 percent of capacity or 147,683 inmates.
"I think it's most serious, and I don't think most (legislators) realize it," said state Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, the chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee.
The last time lawmakers found themselves with this dilemma, in the early 1990s, it was a full-blown crisis, with as many as 30,000 state inmates in county jails. After voters approved the bond money, the state started breaking ground on 47 units with 100,000 beds. Most of them opened by 1995.
Meanwhile, the state's crime rate started a decade-long nose dive, dropping by a third from 1990 to 2001. But the prisons still filled more quickly than expected as lawmakers passed a series of get-tough crime laws and inmates began serving more of their sentences. The state parole board dropped the percentage of parole-eligible inmates it released from 58 percent in 1992 to 22 percent today.
Now, the Legislature again is looking for options, hoping to avert another crisis in its $2.5 billion-a-year prison system without adding to a state budget shortfall estimated at $9.9 billion over the next 2 1/2 years.
The possibilities include:
Building more prisons. This is regarded as a last resort. Whitmire and his counterpart, House Corrections Committee Chairman Ray Allen, R-Grand Prairie, oppose starting another prison-building program. "We've got all the prisons we need," Whitmire said.
Paroling more prisoners. Key lawmakers and the state Board of Pardons and Paroles agree that the board should look at early release for nonviolent offenders from selected groups, such as females, Mexican nationals, the elderly and those convicted of property and drug crimes.
Gerald Garrett, chairman of the Pardons and Paroles Board, said its members feel the pressure to let out more inmates when prisons fill, but they don't want to abandon their screening process and return to the revolving door of the 1980s and early '90s because 37 percent of parolees are rearrested within two years.
Sending inmates to county jails again. The state paid counties $650 million from 1992-94 to hold inmates, but some counties complained loudly when their jails filled beyond capacity. Some even sued the state.
The state estimates that counties have about 8,000 available beds, and the Criminal Justice Policy Council estimates that the state would need to come up with $38.6 million by 2005 to put state inmates in county jails.
An official with the Texas Conference of Urban Counties said Texas counties would be willing to work out a deal to take extra prisoners.
Spending more on treatment. Whitmire and Allen favor expanding drug treatment and other programs that keep people out of prison, freeing beds for hard-core criminals.
Privatizing. Private companies can house a prisoner for about $35 a day, compared with $44 a day for state-run prisons, said Larry Todd, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
Allen said he'd like to explore such deals for special populations, such as inmates with mental illness. Rep. Jack Stick, R-Austin, a member of Allen's committee, favors more privatization.
Rep. Terry Keel, R-Austin, the chairman of the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee, is leery of giving more business to the private sector. Keel said he's willing to look at the idea, but "it was a dismal failure here."
At the Travis County Community Justice Center, a state jail in East Austin that had been run by Wackenhut Corrections Corp., 12 employees were indicted in 1999 on charges of harassing and sexually abusing prisoners. Many were later acquitted. Soon after, the state took over the jail's operations, terminating Wackenhut's contract.
Whatever path lawmakers choose, Allen said they are wary of making drastic changes.
"This is a very carefully balanced and calibrated system . . . so as we look at short-term, urgent challenges, it's very important that we don't break the system."
Report on House and Senate Hearings - Feb. 11, 2003
The House Corrections Committee met yesterday at 8 am to hear testimony on the state of criminal justice in Texas.
Rep. Ray Allen, chairman of the committee, began with a warning: "We do not want [to], and we will not, go back to the revolving door' days of prisons in Texas." But he went on to say that the system is in dire trouble, and that the time has come to re-think every aspect of it. "We will begin to envision the kind of criminal justice system we want the state to have," he said; "We're going to start with a clean sheet of white paper." He called on everyone involved in the system to help: "Don't be embarrassed to float new ideas," he said.
Dr. Tony Fabelo, Executive Director of the Texas Criminal Justice Policy Council, was the first to present testimony. Dr. Fabelo began by listing the accomplishments of the state in improving the criminal justice system since 1990. He said that offenders are serving a larger part of their sentences: aggravated violent offenders serve an average of 80 percent, and nonviolent offenders an average of 52 percent. The overall average parole approval rate has been at about 25 percent for the past two years, but for aggravated sex offenders, the rate is less than 3 percent. Partly because of these "tough-on-crime" changes, Dr. Fabelo said that the crime rate has declined by 34 percent since 1990 and the three-year recidivism rate has declined by 36 percent.
But for all that "good news," there's a price to be paid. Because offenders are serving longer sentences and a larger part of their sentences, the prison population generally has increased. Recently, the crime rate has begun to rise again (attributed mainly to the poor economy). As a result, the "operating capacity" of TDCJ (set by law at 97.5 percent of the total number of available beds) will be exceeded not sometime in a few years, but in the next FIVE WEEKS. As of January 31, 2003, there were more than 147,500 inmates in TDCJ. By August of 2004, Dr. Fabelo projects a "backlog" of about 2,400 offenders being held in county jails after sentencing because there will be no room for them in the prisons. The state will be faced with paying the counties some $675 million over five years.
Dr. Fabelo described the criminal justice system as a "Rubik's Cube" made up of many small elements that must be aligned carefully to achieve a desired effect. He warned that moving those elements around without a lot of thought will "mix up the colors" but not solve the puzzle.
He offered both short-term and long-term solutions. Some of the pressure might be released by changing policies regarding various subgroups within the prison population. For example, citizens of Mexico or other countries in Texas' prisons might be deported. Inmates who are
too ill or elderly to pose a risk to the community could be released early. He suggested that the Substance Abuse Treatment Program could be reduced from 9 months to 6 months without harm to its effectiveness, which would free some 2,000 beds that could be used for inmates awaiting
transfer to a permanent assignment.
The long-term solutions Dr. Fabelo offered include improving adult probation, requiring probation to be for shorter terms (currently judges sentence offenders to ten or twenty years of probation even if their actual sentence is only five years), increasing the use of "local
sanctions" such as those imposed by community drug courts. He said that the Parole Board could improve its use of its guidelines. He particularly recommended that the Comprehensive Mental Health Treatment Initiative be expanded and that other steps be taken to improve the
re-entry and reintegration of offenders.
After Dr. Fabelo's presentation, Gary Johnson and other TDCJ administrators spoke briefly. Mr. Johnson has submitted a proposed reduction in the department's current-year budget, as requested by the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Speaker of the House, that would
(among other things) virtually eliminate TDCJ's paltry rehabilitation programs. The committee, however, seemed more interested in hearing what the agency plans to do about its impending overflow of prisoners; neither Mr. Johnson nor his staff had any good answers.
Steve Robinson, executive director of the Texas Youth Commission, have a brief and mostly positive report on his agency. Like TDCJ, TYC has been asked to cut its current-year budget, and has found few places to cut other than its programs.
Gerald Garrett, chairman of the Board of Pardons and Paroles, spoke briefly. He pointed out that, while the overall parole approval rate is around 25 percent, the rate for nonviolent offenders has been closer to 30 percent.
Vicki Spriggs, executive director of the Texas Juvenile Probation Commission, also spoke briefly about her agency's activities.
Ann del Llano of ACLU was the first "public" witness to speak. She complimented Dr. Fabelo's report and urged the committee to consider making the kinds of changes he had recommended. She passed out copies of ACLU's sentencing reform proposal, "Saving Families While Saving Funds."
Joe Lovelace of the National Association for the Mentally Ill spoke briefly in favor of expanding the mental health programs in TDCJ and TYC, and urged the committee to give more attention to mental health programs for people on probation and parole.
The meeting ended a little before 11 o'clock.
The Senate Committee on Criminal Justice was scheduled to meet at 1 p.m. However, because of the Joint Session to hear the Governor's State of the State Report, followed by a brief session of the Senate, the committee didn't convene until nearly 3 o'clock. Some of the committee members were also scheduled to be at other committee meetings, which made it difficult for Senator John Whitmire, chairman, to maintain a quorum. Before beginning the meeting, Sen. Whitmire echoed the sentiments of Rep. Allen; he called on "everyone in this room with an interest in criminal justice" to contribute "lots of new ideas" but he also warned, "If it costs money, forget it."
Dr. Fabelo gave the committee essentially the same presentation he had given in the morning. He made a somewhat bigger point of saying that people are being kept on probation for very long terms, often much longer than the law requires. In fact, current law permits a judge to
terminate probation early if the offender has not gotten in any further trouble for five years, but judges rarely do so.
Sen. Whitmire said that he thinks part of the problem is that too many probation officers are inexperienced and poorly trained. They are quick to revoke an offender's probation but much too slow to recommend that the probation be terminated. Dr. Fabelo suggested that this could be remedied by making early release mandatory or automatic. Sen. Chuy Hinojosa offered his opinion that sentences throughout the Penal Code are simply too long, that people are being punished for "stuff they did thirty and forty years ago." Dr. Fabelo pointed out that the situation
is made even worse when those offenders are required to serve such a high percentage of their sentences before they become eligible for parole, and then their chances of being approved are still very low. Sen. Whitmire agreed that "we've got a lot of work to do [on sentencing]." He suggested that part of the problem is to better inform and educate judges and juries so that they understand the implications of long sentences.
Sen. Whitmire also suggested that probation might be made mandatory for nonviolent, low-risk offenders, but he pointed out that this could exacerbate the heavy caseloads that probation officers already bear. He also felt that some changes need to be made in parole, both in the
approval rate and in reducing revocations for technical violations, in order to free capacity in the prisons.
Sen. Rodney Ellis asked Dr. Fabelo for specific recommendations. Dr. Fabelo responded with the same list he gave to the House committee. He added that improving the indigent defense system presumably would lead to somewhat fewer convictions of indigent defendants, but he said it's impossible to tell how much effect that would have.
Sen. Ellis wondered if other states are facing the same problems. Dr. Fabelo said that that is the case, and that some states are doing what Texas did fifteen years ago: Moving up release dates to empty prison beds. He pointed out that California, due to a law enacted through the
initiative process two years ago, does not incarcerate any drug offenders; they are sentenced to treatment instead. Senators Ellis and Whitmire discussed some of the implications of this; Sen. Whitmire said, "There's a lot of things that would be cost effective and a good investment," such as more drug treatment outside of the prisons.
Senators Whitmire, Ellis, and Hinojosa continued to discuss ways to reduce the prison population while protecting the safety of the public. Sen. Whitmire said it didn't make sense to him that "We're keeping people in prison for something they did 40 years ago, while we're
cutting the budget for Medicaid and children's health insurance."
Mr. Johnson spoke very briefly. Sen. Whitmire pressed him for an explanation of the effect of the current-year budget cuts that Mr. Johnson has submitted. Mr. Johnson said that every area of the agency will be cut except the number of Correctional Officers. He said that he is proposing to eliminate 200 administrative jobs. But he admitted that these cuts will largely eviscerate the rehabilitation programs in TDCJ. Sen. Whitmire warned him to "be sure the public understands the effect of these cuts you're proposing."
Because the meeting had started so late and the committee members had other obligations, Sen. Whitmire adjourned the session at 4:30 but said "We'll be meeting on a very regular basis to deal with all these problems."
Solutions include paroling prisoners, relying on county jails
By Dave Harmon
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
Thursday, February 13, 2003
Eight years after Texas finished the biggest prison building boom in its history, the state's cellblocks are virtually full again. The state has room for a few hundred more prisoners in its 100-plus units, which have about 151,000 beds. The prisons could be full in five weeks, according to the state Criminal Justice Policy Council, which estimates that under current conditions, Texas could have almost 14,000 prisoners waiting for beds by 2008. The prison system, which used $2 billion in voter-approved bond money a decade ago to triple in size, is considered full when it hits 97.5 percent of capacity or 147,683 inmates.
"I think it's most serious, and I don't think most (legislators) realize it," said state Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, the chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee.
The last time lawmakers found themselves with this dilemma, in the early 1990s, it was a full-blown crisis, with as many as 30,000 state inmates in county jails. After voters approved the bond money, the state started breaking ground on 47 units with 100,000 beds. Most of them opened by 1995.
Meanwhile, the state's crime rate started a decade-long nose dive, dropping by a third from 1990 to 2001. But the prisons still filled more quickly than expected as lawmakers passed a series of get-tough crime laws and inmates began serving more of their sentences. The state parole board dropped the percentage of parole-eligible inmates it released from 58 percent in 1992 to 22 percent today.
Now, the Legislature again is looking for options, hoping to avert another crisis in its $2.5 billion-a-year prison system without adding to a state budget shortfall estimated at $9.9 billion over the next 2 1/2 years.
The possibilities include:
Building more prisons. This is regarded as a last resort. Whitmire and his counterpart, House Corrections Committee Chairman Ray Allen, R-Grand Prairie, oppose starting another prison-building program. "We've got all the prisons we need," Whitmire said.
Paroling more prisoners. Key lawmakers and the state Board of Pardons and Paroles agree that the board should look at early release for nonviolent offenders from selected groups, such as females, Mexican nationals, the elderly and those convicted of property and drug crimes.
Gerald Garrett, chairman of the Pardons and Paroles Board, said its members feel the pressure to let out more inmates when prisons fill, but they don't want to abandon their screening process and return to the revolving door of the 1980s and early '90s because 37 percent of parolees are rearrested within two years.
Sending inmates to county jails again. The state paid counties $650 million from 1992-94 to hold inmates, but some counties complained loudly when their jails filled beyond capacity. Some even sued the state.
The state estimates that counties have about 8,000 available beds, and the Criminal Justice Policy Council estimates that the state would need to come up with $38.6 million by 2005 to put state inmates in county jails.
An official with the Texas Conference of Urban Counties said Texas counties would be willing to work out a deal to take extra prisoners.
Spending more on treatment. Whitmire and Allen favor expanding drug treatment and other programs that keep people out of prison, freeing beds for hard-core criminals.
Privatizing. Private companies can house a prisoner for about $35 a day, compared with $44 a day for state-run prisons, said Larry Todd, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.
Allen said he'd like to explore such deals for special populations, such as inmates with mental illness. Rep. Jack Stick, R-Austin, a member of Allen's committee, favors more privatization.
Rep. Terry Keel, R-Austin, the chairman of the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee, is leery of giving more business to the private sector. Keel said he's willing to look at the idea, but "it was a dismal failure here."
At the Travis County Community Justice Center, a state jail in East Austin that had been run by Wackenhut Corrections Corp., 12 employees were indicted in 1999 on charges of harassing and sexually abusing prisoners. Many were later acquitted. Soon after, the state took over the jail's operations, terminating Wackenhut's contract.
Whatever path lawmakers choose, Allen said they are wary of making drastic changes.
"This is a very carefully balanced and calibrated system . . . so as we look at short-term, urgent challenges, it's very important that we don't break the system."
Report on House and Senate Hearings - Feb. 11, 2003
The House Corrections Committee met yesterday at 8 am to hear testimony on the state of criminal justice in Texas.
Rep. Ray Allen, chairman of the committee, began with a warning: "We do not want [to], and we will not, go back to the revolving door' days of prisons in Texas." But he went on to say that the system is in dire trouble, and that the time has come to re-think every aspect of it. "We will begin to envision the kind of criminal justice system we want the state to have," he said; "We're going to start with a clean sheet of white paper." He called on everyone involved in the system to help: "Don't be embarrassed to float new ideas," he said.
Dr. Tony Fabelo, Executive Director of the Texas Criminal Justice Policy Council, was the first to present testimony. Dr. Fabelo began by listing the accomplishments of the state in improving the criminal justice system since 1990. He said that offenders are serving a larger part of their sentences: aggravated violent offenders serve an average of 80 percent, and nonviolent offenders an average of 52 percent. The overall average parole approval rate has been at about 25 percent for the past two years, but for aggravated sex offenders, the rate is less than 3 percent. Partly because of these "tough-on-crime" changes, Dr. Fabelo said that the crime rate has declined by 34 percent since 1990 and the three-year recidivism rate has declined by 36 percent.
But for all that "good news," there's a price to be paid. Because offenders are serving longer sentences and a larger part of their sentences, the prison population generally has increased. Recently, the crime rate has begun to rise again (attributed mainly to the poor economy). As a result, the "operating capacity" of TDCJ (set by law at 97.5 percent of the total number of available beds) will be exceeded not sometime in a few years, but in the next FIVE WEEKS. As of January 31, 2003, there were more than 147,500 inmates in TDCJ. By August of 2004, Dr. Fabelo projects a "backlog" of about 2,400 offenders being held in county jails after sentencing because there will be no room for them in the prisons. The state will be faced with paying the counties some $675 million over five years.
Dr. Fabelo described the criminal justice system as a "Rubik's Cube" made up of many small elements that must be aligned carefully to achieve a desired effect. He warned that moving those elements around without a lot of thought will "mix up the colors" but not solve the puzzle.
He offered both short-term and long-term solutions. Some of the pressure might be released by changing policies regarding various subgroups within the prison population. For example, citizens of Mexico or other countries in Texas' prisons might be deported. Inmates who are
too ill or elderly to pose a risk to the community could be released early. He suggested that the Substance Abuse Treatment Program could be reduced from 9 months to 6 months without harm to its effectiveness, which would free some 2,000 beds that could be used for inmates awaiting
transfer to a permanent assignment.
The long-term solutions Dr. Fabelo offered include improving adult probation, requiring probation to be for shorter terms (currently judges sentence offenders to ten or twenty years of probation even if their actual sentence is only five years), increasing the use of "local
sanctions" such as those imposed by community drug courts. He said that the Parole Board could improve its use of its guidelines. He particularly recommended that the Comprehensive Mental Health Treatment Initiative be expanded and that other steps be taken to improve the
re-entry and reintegration of offenders.
After Dr. Fabelo's presentation, Gary Johnson and other TDCJ administrators spoke briefly. Mr. Johnson has submitted a proposed reduction in the department's current-year budget, as requested by the Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Speaker of the House, that would
(among other things) virtually eliminate TDCJ's paltry rehabilitation programs. The committee, however, seemed more interested in hearing what the agency plans to do about its impending overflow of prisoners; neither Mr. Johnson nor his staff had any good answers.
Steve Robinson, executive director of the Texas Youth Commission, have a brief and mostly positive report on his agency. Like TDCJ, TYC has been asked to cut its current-year budget, and has found few places to cut other than its programs.
Gerald Garrett, chairman of the Board of Pardons and Paroles, spoke briefly. He pointed out that, while the overall parole approval rate is around 25 percent, the rate for nonviolent offenders has been closer to 30 percent.
Vicki Spriggs, executive director of the Texas Juvenile Probation Commission, also spoke briefly about her agency's activities.
Ann del Llano of ACLU was the first "public" witness to speak. She complimented Dr. Fabelo's report and urged the committee to consider making the kinds of changes he had recommended. She passed out copies of ACLU's sentencing reform proposal, "Saving Families While Saving Funds."
Joe Lovelace of the National Association for the Mentally Ill spoke briefly in favor of expanding the mental health programs in TDCJ and TYC, and urged the committee to give more attention to mental health programs for people on probation and parole.
The meeting ended a little before 11 o'clock.
The Senate Committee on Criminal Justice was scheduled to meet at 1 p.m. However, because of the Joint Session to hear the Governor's State of the State Report, followed by a brief session of the Senate, the committee didn't convene until nearly 3 o'clock. Some of the committee members were also scheduled to be at other committee meetings, which made it difficult for Senator John Whitmire, chairman, to maintain a quorum. Before beginning the meeting, Sen. Whitmire echoed the sentiments of Rep. Allen; he called on "everyone in this room with an interest in criminal justice" to contribute "lots of new ideas" but he also warned, "If it costs money, forget it."
Dr. Fabelo gave the committee essentially the same presentation he had given in the morning. He made a somewhat bigger point of saying that people are being kept on probation for very long terms, often much longer than the law requires. In fact, current law permits a judge to
terminate probation early if the offender has not gotten in any further trouble for five years, but judges rarely do so.
Sen. Whitmire said that he thinks part of the problem is that too many probation officers are inexperienced and poorly trained. They are quick to revoke an offender's probation but much too slow to recommend that the probation be terminated. Dr. Fabelo suggested that this could be remedied by making early release mandatory or automatic. Sen. Chuy Hinojosa offered his opinion that sentences throughout the Penal Code are simply too long, that people are being punished for "stuff they did thirty and forty years ago." Dr. Fabelo pointed out that the situation
is made even worse when those offenders are required to serve such a high percentage of their sentences before they become eligible for parole, and then their chances of being approved are still very low. Sen. Whitmire agreed that "we've got a lot of work to do [on sentencing]." He suggested that part of the problem is to better inform and educate judges and juries so that they understand the implications of long sentences.
Sen. Whitmire also suggested that probation might be made mandatory for nonviolent, low-risk offenders, but he pointed out that this could exacerbate the heavy caseloads that probation officers already bear. He also felt that some changes need to be made in parole, both in the
approval rate and in reducing revocations for technical violations, in order to free capacity in the prisons.
Sen. Rodney Ellis asked Dr. Fabelo for specific recommendations. Dr. Fabelo responded with the same list he gave to the House committee. He added that improving the indigent defense system presumably would lead to somewhat fewer convictions of indigent defendants, but he said it's impossible to tell how much effect that would have.
Sen. Ellis wondered if other states are facing the same problems. Dr. Fabelo said that that is the case, and that some states are doing what Texas did fifteen years ago: Moving up release dates to empty prison beds. He pointed out that California, due to a law enacted through the
initiative process two years ago, does not incarcerate any drug offenders; they are sentenced to treatment instead. Senators Ellis and Whitmire discussed some of the implications of this; Sen. Whitmire said, "There's a lot of things that would be cost effective and a good investment," such as more drug treatment outside of the prisons.
Senators Whitmire, Ellis, and Hinojosa continued to discuss ways to reduce the prison population while protecting the safety of the public. Sen. Whitmire said it didn't make sense to him that "We're keeping people in prison for something they did 40 years ago, while we're
cutting the budget for Medicaid and children's health insurance."
Mr. Johnson spoke very briefly. Sen. Whitmire pressed him for an explanation of the effect of the current-year budget cuts that Mr. Johnson has submitted. Mr. Johnson said that every area of the agency will be cut except the number of Correctional Officers. He said that he is proposing to eliminate 200 administrative jobs. But he admitted that these cuts will largely eviscerate the rehabilitation programs in TDCJ. Sen. Whitmire warned him to "be sure the public understands the effect of these cuts you're proposing."
Because the meeting had started so late and the committee members had other obligations, Sen. Whitmire adjourned the session at 4:30 but said "We'll be meeting on a very regular basis to deal with all these problems."