Terry, you often complain about the amounts being appropriated for public safety by the Legislature are too low. Apparently the Governor thinks they are too high. His veto message with regard to a 40.14 million dollar reduction:

"These vetoes delete the fiscal year 2009 appropriation for Contracted Temporary Capacity and the appropriations for Other Support Services at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ). The amount of general revenue funds appropriated to TDCJ grew by almost 10 percent from the 2006-2007 biennium. Much of this substantial increase will support probation, parole, and substance abuse treatment. To the extent this funding reaches our non-violent offenders and reduces recidivism, I support it because it will reduce the future prison population. Yet, I cannot ignore the fact that, during the biennium, the average number of incarcerated offenders is only expected to grow by 2 percent and the average number of offenders under active parole supervision or adult probation is only expected to grow by 5 percent. In that context, a 10 percent increase is unreasonable and is reduced by this veto."

Where will the missing prison guards come from now?

Implicit in the Guv's veto statement is the assumption that current capacity is fine, and therefore an increase in funding that is more than expected demand in the next 2 years is waste.

But it's my understanding that presently the I.D. is at or over capacity, so keeping funding at a level that only accounts for the expected increase will not solve this problem.

So I expect that parole revocations will be slowed down, and granting parole will be speeded up, to prevent serious over crowding. This will result in more crime.

What is interesting is that the actual number of index crimes has been declining, in spite of the growth in state population, and the number of people sent to I.D. has likewise been increasing. One reason cited is that there are more crooks sent directly to TDC, rather than first going to probation, and then to the Big House. Apparently we are having a lot of repeat offenders go thru the system again, and they tend to get a ticket straight to Uncle Bud's, rather than getting a chance be on probation again.

I think that's another indication of the especially hard-core nature of Texas inmates. I think we give felons more chances to straighten up with our long probations than other states do, and those that are eventually revoked and sent to the joint, are therefore a more hard core group.

"I think that's another indication of the especially hard-core nature of Texas inmates."

So does that mean that our felons are more "hardcore" than those of, say, North Dakota, Minnesota, Missouri, California, or practically every other state in the union? ALL of these 40+ other states have much lower rates of incarceration and much lower crime rates.

So what's so special about Texas?

This "lock 'em up" mentality is just plain nuts! Yes, there are people who do need to go to prison. But I do not believe that as many people need to go for as long as they have been going. That is why I try to put as many people on probation as I can, if I feel that they and society will benefit from it.

What is it that we in Texas are doing so very wrong? How can it be that states like Minnesota, New York, ect. can lock up less people as a percentage of their population, yet still have crime rates far lower than us?

According to the DOJ, eleven states exceeded the national prison incarceration rate of 491 per 100,000 residents, led by Louisiana(797), Texas(691), Mississippi (660), and Oklahoma (652). Seven states, led by Maine(144), Minnesota(180), and Rhode Island(189), had rates that were less than half the national rate.

So RTC, what do your victims think about your generous probation policy?

The beauty of the Texas system is discretion. Not every county in Texas is yet governed by a mathmatical formula decided by some governmental wonk as to what is the "proper" incarceration rate. Seems to me the community (through judges and juries) might get to have something to say about it.

It's funny, because liberals will swear there is no connection between an incarceration rate and a crime rate, except when both rates are low.

There are many differences between us and, say, New York. That whole border thing might be one factor. Number of urban centers. Blah, blah, blah.

If New York and Texas were so comparable, why do they elect a Clinton and we elect a Bush?

My basic philosophy is that our law provides that the punishment for certain conduct is "by imprisonment." See e.g., Sec. 12.34 of the Penal Code. I realize that the Code of Criminal Procedure provides the imposition of sentence should be suspended when "in the best interest of justice, the public, and the defendant" or where "the best interest of society and the defendant will be served." What I fail to comprehend is why we threaten imprisonment, but so often make it an idle threat. If imprisonment is bad or improper, why not decriminalize the conduct? The Penal Code says the punishment "shall" be imprisonment and that punishment should follow certain conduct. It should not say that unless more often than not it means that.

Economic considerations and rehab programs are no doubt valid reasons to avoid incarceration. But, it seems to me some period of incarceration should be swiftly imposed if we are to operate upon the idea that penalties ever "deal with" the problem. See Sec. 1.02 of the Penal Code. Our penalties have become meaningless to most persons (defendants, victims, prosecutors) because we do everything possible to avoid them most of the time and when they are finally imposed they are disconnected from the conduct and usually greatly watered down. Moreover, the penalties are very unequally applied. The system should do better.

I suspect Texas's inmates are more hard core than most states. I prosecuted briefly in N. Mex., which, like virtually every state in the union, considers probations to be final convictions. In N.M., if a Def. is convicted of a felony, and he has a prior conviction--even tho it was a successfully completed probation--he must do a year in prison because of the prior, in addition to the sentence he gets for his new offense.

The result of this policy is that people who in Texas would never step foot in prison, are routinely sent to prison in N.Mex. Additionally, the penalty ranges start ramping up with each probation, rather than with each probation that ultimately ends in pen time.

My impression is that this system is fairly common. I think it results in an influx of people who are not as hard core as the Texas system, which tends to give probationers more chances.

But locking up lots of felons does work in lowering the crime rate.

Texas did not build a new prison between 1965 and 1987, even tho the population was increasing, and crime was increasing. I don't know what this policy was called at the time, but a later generation of legislators would call this "Being Smart On Crime," or what I call the BSOC Policy.

During the heyday of the BSOC Policy (1964--1987), the rate of index crimes per 100K population rose almost every year. In 1964 the crime rate was 2,217 index crimes per 100K pop. and it peaked in 1988 at 8,018/100K population.

The BSOC Policy ended in late 1987, when the 1st of many new prisons came on line. Between 1987 and 1997, TDC beds rose from 40,277 to 138,641. Since 1997, no new prisons have been built, but additional beds have been built or contracted out, so that today TDC has something over 150,000 beds. What is interesting is that since the massive expansion of TDC, the crime rate has dropped almost every year, going from 8,018/100K pop. in 1988 to 4,857 crimes per 100K pop. in 2005--an almost 40 per cent drop.

Of course, all this costs money. TDCJ gets about 1.7 per cent of the state's operating budget. Even if you add in the cost of service on debt for the bonds to build the prisons, the TDCJ spends less than 2 per cent of the state's operating budget.