Jan. 24, 2007, 9:50PM
The Legislature
Lt. Gov. Dewhurst calling for more prisons
Plan for 5,000 more beds is at odds with a report promoting rehab and reforms

By POLLY ROSS HUGHES
Copyright 2007 Houston Chronicle Austin Bureau

AUSTIN � Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst said Wednesday that Texas needs to build prisons to hold 5,000 new beds, a view at odds with a major report key lawmakers will release next week that will stress treatment programs and prison alternatives.

"We respect the lieutenant governor, but we respectfully disagree with him on this one if he's talking about building maximum-security facilities," said Rep. Jerry Madden, R-Plano, chairman of the House Corrections Committee.

Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman John Whitmire, D-Houston, said Texas could ease crowded prisons and save money by increasing treatment options and returning fewer parolees to prison for minor infractions.

Even if some of Whitmire's suggestions for treating substance abusers are adopted, Dewhurst argues that the state still needs more prison space for a growing population.

"We haven't built any new prison beds in Texas for a number of years, and our population is exploding," Dewhurst said.

"I don't � and the people of Texas don't � want to have dangerous people on our streets, and that's what we're going to prevent. I've been looking at a number of 4,000 to 5,000" over the next four years, he said.

That projection is in line with the budget request by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which wants to add three prisons to hold 5,000 prisoners. That would cost $440 million just for construction, a state expense opposed by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, which advocates limited government.

"We've suggested a number of reforms in terms of probation, parole and sentencing. By adopting those, we would certainly not need more beds," said Marc Levin, director of the foundation's Center for Effective Justice.

Levin said more than 20,000 of Texas' 150,000 prisoners are incarcerated for nothing more than nonviolent drug possession. "If we re-routed those people into community-based drug-treatment programs, we would be able to reduce the number of prison beds we need below what we have now," Levin said.

Whitmire and Madden list several other options, such as shifting drunken drivers out of maximum-security cells and converting other cells for treatment within prison.

They note that 600 nonviolent offenders have been approved for parole. They remain in prison, however, because they've been placed on waiting lists for too few halfway houses.

Levin points out that a technical infraction of parole can land an offender back in prison for an average stay of 2.5 years.

Whitmire and Madden favor more 90-day "safety" facilities, where a parole violator could be locked up and penalized for a minor infraction without landing back in an expensive prison cell for years.

The criminal justice committees in the House and Senate plan to meet jointly next week to hear findings of a major report outlining several alternatives to incarceration.

The report, "Justice Reinvestment," was conducted by the Council of State Governments with support from the U.S. Justice Department. It promises "data-driven" strategies to reduce corrections spending and protect the public, a committee staffer said.

"I think when we have our hearing starting next Tuesday, we will demonstrate to everyone we have adequate capacity if we use what we have correctly," Whitmire said.

District Attorney John Bradley of Williamson County said he supports Dewhurst's call for more prison beds.

"I think his response is right on target if you just simply look at the growth that Texas has seen in new people coming in," he said.

Bradley said treatment is the only way some offenders ever will be rehabilitated, but he disagrees that treatment is enough.

"I completely, philosophically disagree with the premise that someone shouldn't be punished if they have a drug or alcohol problem," Bradley said. "It's very easy for a legislator who doesn't want to build prisons to say in broad strokes, 'There are too many people (in prison) who have drug or alcohol problems.'"

I hope that the legislature listens to The Hon. Lt. Gov. Dewhurst. It is refreshing to see this attitude during a legislative session!

In today's paper:

Prison system: He [Dewhurst] said Texas will need some new prisons. He called it 'counterintuitive' to think that the state would not need more prisons as its population grows but said he doesn't know how many prison beds the state needs.

What is a "90 day safety facility?"

Sounds like code language for "county jail" to me.

If there's a "safety facility" within 150 miles of where I am, it's news to me.

CC

quote:

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Originally posted by Cam C.:
What is a "90 day safety facility?"

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I'm guessing it's an ISF (intermediate sanction facility). That's a TDCJ-run facility that provides "jail therapy", without treatment/rehab, for a shorter period of time than someone would get upon revocation, after which they are put back on parole.

Call it "revocation lite" if you wish.

The ISF has a couple of advantages:

1. It avoids using the county jail as a place for holding parolees at county taxpayer expense. In the past, Parole could issue a blue warrant, pick up a defendant, leave him in the county jail for a while and then just drop the warrant. With the ISF, the stay is in a state facility, albeit short of an actual revocation.

2. With the addition of such beds, parolees with "technical" violations are more likely to get some consequences. As you have been reading, there is a push to avoid a revocation for mere "technical" violations (which, of course, include rather serious infractions such as possession of a controlled substance, sex offenders having contact with children, and long-term running away). Parole would use the ISF bed to give the parolee a short stay in confinement to remind him/her of the need to follow the rules, much as is done on a motion to revoke probation amendment to conditions.

If used properly, an ISF is a great tool, so long as it doesn't prevent revocation under appropriate circumstances (whatever those are). It is looking more and more like revocation will be limited to parolees who commit new crimes (and even then probably only felony crimes).

That is a bad plan. Probation and parole are supposed to prevent new crimes. When a defendant is failing to follow conditions, conditions grow likely that a new crime will be committed. Of course, the question is, "When can we be confident we are preventing a crime by revocation?" And what crimes do we want to prevent?

Texas Legislators tackle prison reform
Commission suggests more appropriations for beds, facilities

By Tina Li
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State legislators finalized budget requests in response to an ongoing problem of overcrowded prisons, suggesting increased funding for expanding capacity and improving rehabilitation programs.

The topic of prison reform was discussed by the Sunset Advisory Commission, a group of 12 legislators and public members including Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, John Whitmire, D-Houston, and House Speaker Tom Craddick, R-Midland. The recommendations made by the commission were put into a bill that will be reviewed this legislative session.

Dewhurst said the solution is to build more beds and new prisons. Recommendations ask for $62.9 million for a medium-security, 1,000-bed facility.

"The population of Texas is quickly growing. Whichever plan we decide to use, we need to increase capacity of the prisons in order to insure the safety of all citizens," said a spokesman for Dewhurst.

But building additional prisons is unnecessary when there is plenty of capacity being used inefficiently and incorrectly, Whitmire said.

Often, violent and non-violent inmates are held in the same units, which is an example of the disorganized prison practices in place today, he said. Though Whitmire does not support expansion of facilities, he is in favor of improving treatment programs and better operations as a means of freeing up space.

Simply building additional prisons without providing enough resources for rehabilitation programs won't lower the crime rate, said Nicole Porter, director of the Prison and Jail Accountability Project of the American Civil Liberties Union of Texas.

"Because 99 percent of prisoners return to the community, more treatment programs need to be provided," Porter said. "Rehabilitation programs will reduce crime better then expanding capacity can."

Porter said both California and Pennsylvania strengthened their prison rehabilitation programs and showed lower crime rates.

"The answer is to restore treatment rather than rely on incarceration," she said.

Brian Olsen, executive director of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees/ Correctional Employees Council in Huntsville, agrees with Whitmire.

"Avoiding having to build new facilities is the better option. Extending treatment programs in current facilities costs less," Olsen said.

I just don't see it happening (the building of more prisons). There is too much pressure on the Leg. to use the budget surplus monies for other things, such as property tax relief and health insurance for children. The Lt. Gov. can huff and puff all he wants, but it is the House and Senate committies that control this process and as far as I can determine, NONE of the members of those committies are in favor of building more prisons.

Don't judge the votes by what appears in the media. Many senators and reps actually voice their opinions by their votes, rather than by sound bites.

Rehab seems to help lower recidivism a little, but it is hardly a silver bullet.

The last study that I have found on the effectivness of SAF-P, et al, was the Criminal Justice Policy Council's "Three Year Recidivism Tracking of Offenders Participating in Substance Abuse Treatment Programs," 1999. In his "Note From The Director," Tony Fabelo (the same guy who wrote the report the leg is looking at that says we can use rehad instead of prison) wrote, "of the offenders who completed the IPTC (TDC's in-house SAF-P) in the first group, 34% were reincarcerated after 3 years compared to 42% of the camparison group (those prisoners elgible for IPTC, but did not get the program)."

That's right boys and girls, an 8% drop in the recidivism rate.

SAF-P had HIGER recidivism rates than the comparison group. In the second group, because of admin problems they could not compare all SAF-Pers, but if you add the drop-outs from SAF-P with SAF-P grads, they had together a 44% recicidism rate, compared with 35% of the comparison group which did not get SAF-P.

The report notes that SAF-P was a new program, and was rapidly expanded, and with some tweaking, etc., it's ability to get dopers off of drugs might increase. But from what I can tell, there is no research since 1999 to show us how effective SAF-P is today. And of course, since 1999, SAFP has been shortened from 9 mos. to 6 mos. I wonder if cutting a program by a third might make it less effective.

But Fabelo in his "Note," in the 1999 report made an interesting point, which tells you his mind set. He said, "While the SAFP program was not successful in reducing overall recidivism rates for the 1st 2 groups tracked, the program was cost-effective in diverting offenders from prison. A great proportion of the probationers sentenced to SAFP were sentenced to SAFP for 9 mos. in lieu of receiving prison sentences. Therefore, SAFP unlike IPTC, diverted offenders from a more costly prison sanction which made the program cost-effective in spite of the failure to reduce overall recidivism rates."

In other words, it may not work, but it's shorter than prison, and therefore cheaper than prison.
This is a bean counter's prospective, and therefore he is very popular with the bean counters in the legislature.

Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst, who runs the Senate, has said that he believes the state will need more prison space. He is pushing for legislation that would increase prison time for sex offenders, which could further aggravate the looming space shortage.

But on Tuesday, Dewhurst said he is open-minded about suggestions that would minimize the need for another round of prison-building and was skeptical of the recent projection by the Legislative Budget Board, a bipartisan research office, that 17,000 new beds will be needed.

He was equally skeptical of claims that the state could avoid building any new prisons.

"I believe that number [17,000] is too high," he said. "But it isn't zero."

Expanding TDC by 17,000 beds would be the best money spent by the legislature.

The Lt. Gov. is wrong, we could easily find 17,000 more inmates to sleep in those beds, and in so doing, the rest of Texas would sleep a lot better.

I'm not talking about Boy Scouts who screwed up one time, or probationers who were once 15 minutes late for a P.O. meeting. I'm talking about 17,000 heavy duty criminals, the kind who, no matter how many chances you give them to get on the bit, insist on going back to the Dark Side, the kind who make life miserable for the rest of us. And the crime rate would go down even further.

It's better to have them and not need them than to need them and not have them. If your going to build new prisons, wouldn't it make sense to over build so you have room 10 years down the road? Plus, wouldn't the availability also act in a small way as a deterent. How many felons that have been in trouble before are really all that worried when they come back to court on a not so serious offense b/c they feel pretty confident they aren't going to TDC b/c of the over crowding and even if they do, they won't be there for very long b/c of the overcrowding.
I know this argument doesn't take into account where the $$$ would come from, but don't wait until it's too late.
It reminds me in a way of cities that wait until they've outgrown their highway system before they start building and adding. They already have a traffic problem and then when they try to build/add, the construction just makes things worse b/c they have to close down lanes where there already aren't enough.
I don't imagine the TDCJ guards would complain about haveing an empty wing at a unit.

Whitmire complains that violent and non-violent inmates are kept together, claiming this is an example of poor prison operations.

In fact, it is due to prison overcrowding, and poor planning by the legislature. Prisons can not be run safely at 100 % capacity, because you cannot safely mix all inmates. When a prison is at 100 %, that means the prison admin. must place a prisoner where ever they can find a bed, rather than in a facility that fits the requirements of that prisoner. The result: an utterly non-violent, unstreet-wise, intoxication manslaughter inmate can end up in a max. security Unit, living amongst the most hardened gang members.

We have a right to lock up felons, but the State has a moral responsibility to provide as safe a prison as it can.

quote:

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Originally posted by JMH:
It reminds me in a way of cities that wait until they've outgrown their highway system before they start building and adding.

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Solution: toll prisons. Like toll roads, only better.

A new meaning to "paying for your crime!"

The frequent visitor discount Texas Prison Tags would make developing PC much easier.

The new prison tat: barcodes!