Why is creating new felonies the solution to every social problem? Immigration edition

Talk about cognitive dissonance: AP reports, "Bill would make hiring illegal workers a felony," while the Texas Tribune adds, "But maids are OK."

As if for a second there's remotely enough extra space in Texas prisons or jails to create a new class of "criminal" businesses and entrepreneurs! It's absurd to even imagine. But still, this and other similarly draconian measures are being debated seriously at the same time as $584-$786 million cuts are being demanded at TDCJ. Meanwhile, urban jails are full, but other legislation would require local law enforcement to boost demand for jail beds with immigration violators. Big Government Conservatism is just as expensive as Big Government Liberalism, and with one in 22 adult Texans already in prison, jail, on probation or on parole, the Lone Star State has pretty much already maxxed out on how many people we can afford to lock up. Ask voters in my hometown in Tyler, no liberal bastion, who have turned down four county jail plans in the last several years and will now vote on a fifth proposal in May. For the most part, as the Smith County example shows, folks who don't want higher taxes don't want them for jails any more than they do for Obamacare. So where would we put all the immigration arrestees? Federal courts are backed up and can't process more cases, a situation exacerbated by the fact that border districts like the Texas Southern can't get federal judicial nominees approved in the US Senate.

If implemented as sweepingly as proponents describe, these bills would flat-out swamp the criminal justice system, in much the way that substituting incarceration for mental health treatment has put undue burden on police, jails and courts. Using the criminal justice system to "solve" social problems like immigration, substance abuse, mental illness, etc., ensures  a) the system's failure and b) that other, more on-point solutions aren't pursued. We've already got 2,383 felony crimes on the books, according to the parole board's most recent count.

I realize my position on immigration puts me in the minority. I'm just not that freaked out by immigration, consider it much more boon than bane for the economy, believe most "illegal immigrants" should have been allowed legal access in the first place, and find the notion abhorrent that a nation of immigrants and their children would grow wealthy and then seek to close the doors behind them. Let's set those disagreements aside, though, just for a moment.

Here's what I want to know: As a practical matter, Texas is already talking about reducing prison capacity, and urban jails in Harris, Dallas, Hidalgo, Cameron, and Bexar are packed to the gills. Where, physically, will those arrested and prosecuted go and how will proponents of such measures pay for it? If federal courts can't process current volumes, how will they handle all the new immigration cases local law enforcement is supposed to be bringing them? We're talking about unleashing local law enforcement on potentially millions of otherwise law abiding folk and thousands of Texas businesses who also employ plenty of actual citizens, diverting police efforts from more serious crimes. (Federal prosecutors in Texas have all but stopped pursuing white collar cases to focus on their immigration caseloads.)

Clearance rates for "burglary of a vehicle" are less than 2%, the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee was told on Tuesday, but we're going to divert law enforcement to rounding up illegal immigrants and their employers? Arguably, the reason BOVs don't get solved more often is that law enforcement is already spread too thin, and these types of laws certainly don't help the problem.

Mass incarceration is a rich nation's game, and the bill is due. With one in 22 adult Texans already under supervision of the state criminal justice system, surely there's a limit to how much incarceration may be further used to address social problems like immigration, which historically, at least since Reconstruction, has not fallen under the purview of state courts or local law enforcement. More cops, jails and prisons cannot be the solution to every social problem, but for some reason they're almost always the only ones proposed. More than anything, perhaps it just represents a failure of imagination.