Justice solutions proffered at TPPF orientation

This morning I attended the criminal justice policy orientation for legislators and staff put on by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, emceed by TPPF's Marc Levin and including Rep. Jerry Madden, Sen. John Whitmire, Harris County DA Pat Lykos, and Adam Gelb of the Pew Center on the States. Here are a few highlights from my notes.

During the introductions, Levin observed that even though Texas' incarceration rate has declined in recent years, the crime rate currently is at its lowest per capita levels since 1973. He also made the case, which will be familiar to Grits readers, that Texas' depopulation of youth prisons provides a good model for the types of policies that might reduce adult corrections costs.

Madden spoke first. He said he views budget restraints in criminal justice as an opportunity rather than a crisis because reducing expenses was a project in which the Leg was already engaged. Texas has a reputation as tough on crime, he said, but increasingly also as a source of reform ideas. More than a dozen states are attempting to duplicate  Texas' efforts, he said, citing an effort in Georgia to increase spending on treatment while reducing incarceration. Madden says he wants as many offenders as possible to become taxpayers instead of being a tax burden.

There should be risk assessments at every phase of the process, he said, from pretrial to the parole process, to ensure scarce incarceration and/or treatment resources are only used on those who will benefit. There are three types of offenders, he said: Those who will always be back, those who will never be back, and "swingers" who could go either way. Spending treatment resources on the first two groups is a waste, he said, and accurate risk assessments are the key to distinguishing between them and those who would benefit from rehabilitative services.

Next up, John Whitmire praised Harris DA Pat Lykos for working with school districts to reduce criminal referrals for classroom behavior problems. He cited a case in his district where a ten-year old was ticketed for disorderly conduct, and praised Lykos for utilizing pretrial diversion that kept such youth out of the justice system.

Like Madden, Whitmire said he was gratified other states were now looking to Texas as a model on these questions, but he emphasized that there is a "long way to go," and that it "would not take much to slip back to the dark days" of rising incarceration rates. Reiterating his call to exempt criminal justice from spending cuts, Whitmire said it would be impossible to cut $700 million from TDCJ's budget without firing thousands of staff and eliminating treatment programming. He predicted that doing so would expand the prison population because diversion programs are the main thing keeping it from rising. 

About one in five TDCJ inmates, said Whitmire, were clients of the state's indigent mental health system before entering prison. Some 5,500 Texans are incarcerated for repeat DWIs, he said, but most do not receive treatment while inside and leave prison still struggling with alcoholism. He thinks many of the 12,000 women incarcerated in TDCJ needn't be there; many had been abused, he said, and most were incarcerated for nonviolent offenses. For example, said the Senate Dean, TDCJ inarcerates some 300+ women for prostitution - a crime that in many states cannot draw a prison sentence.

Asked by Levin whether he supported closing any prison units at TDCJ, Whitmire said he didn't think of it as "closure" but "consolidation" - this drew a laugh from the crowd.

On juvenile justice, Whitmire said the Texas Youth Commission did not need eight different campuses to house 1,500 youth, which he noted is about the size of an Austin middle school. He also lamented that facilities in rural areas had trouble attracting talent to provide necessary services, suggesting that consolidating youth prisons closer to urban settings would reduce the problem. He said he recognized legislators whose districts encompassed those units would fight to keep them open because of jobs, but the Dean emphasized that criminal justice is "not an economic development component of state government."

Harris County DA Pat Lykos gave a rushed presentation that quite obviously could have stretched out much longer, describing a series of smart-on-crime reforms implemented since she took office. She discussed the pretrial diversion for juveniles mentioned by Sen. Whitmire, declaring that some 3,099 youth have successfully completed pretrial diversion since 2009. She said this was important because anyone who thinks a juvenile record is secret is "kidding themselves." She also expressed frustration that it was impossible to access mental health resources for juveniles without filing criminal charges. The criminal justice system, she said, is too reactive and focuses too little on prevention.

Lykos mentioned that her office has stopped charging people for trace drug amounts on paraphernalia (see here), a decision which resulted in 5,000 fewer state jail felony cases being filed last year, saving money both for local government and state lockups. Under the new policy, the DA won't charge a state jail felony unless the amount of drug possessed is greater than 1/100th of a gram, which is the minimum amount necessary to test for the substance without destroying it all.

With time running out, Lykos rattled off a litany of policy suggestions. She described the need for supervision resources to transition people with mental illness from acute care settings (i.e, inpatient hospital) back to everyday life, declaring that right now folks were just cut loose with a prescription in hand. Lykos still wants a detox center to take drunks and druggies to dry out instead of filing criminal charges. She thinks about a third of homeless people are mentally ill and incapable of taking care of themselves, calling for more long-term care residential facilities. She called for a one-stop shopping site for accessing reentry services and for engaging TDCJ's 15,000 registered volunteers to assist with prisoner reentry. She also mentioned that Harris County now has the capability to use "touch DNA" in burglaries and other nonviolent cases, but were inhibited by a lack of crime lab resources in a town where 25-year old rape kits remain untested.

Adam Gelb of the Pew Center on the States rounded out the panel, revealing results of a detailed national poll and focus groups performed last year to gauge public opinion on various reform measures. My notes on the polling data aren't great (the presentation was a bit rushed) and I've asked Mr. Gelb for a copy of his power point, so hopefully we'll get more detail on that soon. Bottom line: The public supports cutting prisons more than other areas of government, and overwhelmingly agree that length of stay in prison is less important than whether prisoners receive adequate reentry preparation and support. A whopping 75% support reducing nonviolent prison sentences to save money in state budgets. More on this soon, hopefully. (UPDATE: See Pew's poll results here.)

This was a terrific event and well-attended. Thanks to Marc Levin for the invite.