Fabelo's Justice Reinvestment presentation online

I'm glad to see that the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition has posted online the presentation that Dr. Tony Fabelo gave recently to last week's joint meeting of the House Corrections and Senate Criminal Justice Committees. The PDF file contains the power point slides Fabelo showed to committtee members summarizing his "Justice Reinvestment" report that I mentioned here.

In particular I want to go through the portions about Houston's crime and re-entry patterns in more detail. According to the report, just 10 of Houston's 88 neighborhoods account for almost $100 million in state incarceration costs each year. Fabelo found that 50% of former inmates returning to Houston go back to neighborhoods that account for just 15% of the population. Unsurprisingly, these also tend to be areas with the worst poverty and underperforming schools.

See additional Grits coverage from that hearing:

• Some TX prisons are 62% staffed, trustees doing guards' work
• Whitmire and Madden: Programmatic decisions, not population growth, causing prison overcrowding
• Fabelo: 'We've created the Walmart of prisons in Texas'
• Following Rissie Owens
• Fabelo: Plummeting parole rates, excessive probation revocation boost prison overcrowding
• Texas' high incarceration rate yields lesser crime reductions
• Waiting lists for programs heighten prison overcrowding
• Hearing will highlight new Fabelo report

MORE: Along the same lines, and drawing heavily on Fabelo's work, here's a copy of testimony submitted yesterday by the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition promoting alternatives to more prison building at a House Appropriations Criminal Justice Subcommittee hearing.