With the price of everything going up these days, I'm wondering if there is any consideration by the Legislature to bump up the property crime value ladders. Has anyone heard anything? Is there support for such a move? I know I would support it. I'm seeing more and more cases that are felonies just because the cost to replace or repair the property is so high.
Thanks, Shannon. Before I start down that long and tortuous road I'd like to see what, if any, support there may be for such a move among my fellow prosecutors. Maybe I should try to figure out how to do one of those polls.
Before the 1993 Legislature session, the Punishment Standards Commission tackled that issue as part of the rewrite of the Penal Code. The felony threshold at that time was $750. As you can see, the Commission simply recommended doubling the amount to $1,500 and moved things accordingly. About 20 years had passed since the establishment of the previous value ladder. Six more years before we hit that spot again.
At some point, crime pays if the amount you can steal to stay as a misdemeanant in count jail is worth more than the time you spend confined. Inflation plays a part in this decision but it also should factor in the value of the property/money to the average thief.
While the value ladder has remained the same since 1993, the legisl. has lowered the penalty range for most felony thefts since then. I'm not sure if the State Jail Felony was around in 1993, but I think it came later, and if so, that greatly reduced the penalty range for most felony thefts. Last session they cut the max. time a 3rd deg. thief can initially be put on probation from 10 years to 5.
The creation of the state jail felony occurred in the same legislation that modified the value ladder. Indeed, the state jail felony became the new degree assigned to the $1,500 trigger for a felony theft. The state jail felony, along with the new value ladder, while passed in the 1993 session, became effective 9/1/94 as part of the new Penal Code.
The adjustment of many value-related crimes occurred in that same bill. Some property was designated a felony, regardless of monetary value, because, in Texas, some stuff is just more valuable (guns, cattle, vehicles, oil field equipment, and, lately, copper).
While the recent amendments to the probation laws did reduce the time a defendant for certain third degee felony property crimes could be initially supervised on probation, those bills did not lower the punishment that was available upon revocation.
Having said all that, there has been a general slippage in how property crimes are being treated in the punishment world. Over and over, the chant from the politicians holding the purse strings that we have to be "smart", which has translated into a liberalization on early release for those offenders prosecuted for nonviolent property and drug crimes. That will eventually lead to, if it has not already, a rise in the crime rate for those categories of crimes.
Short of some sort of fraud/embezzlement, don't most thefts involve less than $20,000? Is the proposal primarily to raise the felony threshold (above $1500)? That seems like how we treated burglary of a vehicle; something that I would have opposed as a legislator. As it is, we can always make up our own value ladder anyway (by prosecuting the lesser offense). I am not convinced there needs to be any change.
