In other words, Texas paroles prisoners today at roughly one third the rate as it did just 16 years ago.
“The parole board is not meeting its own guidelines,” said Fabelo. He said that if Texas just followed the minimum end of the guidelines, that would increase the overall parole rate to 31%. That would mean about 2,500 more people released from prison EVERY YEAR. Extended backward, said Fabelo, just meeting these minimums over the past few years would mean Texas would have no overincarceration crisis at all.
Fabelo also said that reducing needless probation revocations combined with parole reforms (and investments in interim-sanctions and DWI facilities) could solve the immediate problems. The 12,240 technical probation revocations in 2006, said Fabelo, will cost the state a total $757.5 million in incarceration costs.
Reducing probation lengths and creating progressive sanctions that give judges alternatives to revocation, said Fabelo, would go a long way toward forestalling the need for more prison building.
Until some of the Judges are replace and the DAs are removed from office, I don't see changes coming. They are out to win and don't care what happens to the person in front of them whose very life depends on their decision.
ReplyDeleteFrom what I can detect, the decisons are made before a trial is begun and Judges get angry if a person pleads not guilty and the case goes to trial. That means they don't get to go home at noon.
Lawyers want to do pleas and therefore they collect the money and don't have to do any research or what they were paid to do. The whole Judicial System is corrupt from every Judge, DA and Lawyer and the deal is made between them before the case begins.
Do something about the penality stage and make Judges earn their money, they just got a raise, make the earn it.