Sunset commission, TDCJ chief endorse stronger supervision instead of prisons

Continuing his excellent coverage from yesterday, the Statesman's Mike Ward had more on the final Sunset Advisory Commission recommendations for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice in both the paper and the Statesman's blog today:

• Prison chief supports more rehabilitation programs
• Sunset panel urges ethics rules for parole commissioners
• Condoms and Kazoos

Perhaps the biggest news was TDCJ head honcho Brad Livingston's endorsement of proposals to use community supervision as an alternative to prison building. "My budget request was predicated on projections last summer," he said, "and the ideas that are being discussed now are along the same lines as we support — just in larger numbers."

See prior Grits coverage of the TDCJ Sunset process.

UPDATE: I just love the Internets. See also all of the responses from the public to an earlier draft of the TDCJ Sunset report; lots of interesting stuff there, expecially from some of the individual commenters.