Monday, November 14, 2011

Prominent committee chairmen leaving House criminal justice posts

House Corrections Committee Chairman Jerry Madden and House Criminal Jurisprudence Chairman Pete Gallego have both announced they won't run for reelection next year, reports the Austin Statesman. Both will be missed by criminal-justice reformers.

A Craddick Republican loyalist, Jerry Madden was the House architect of Texas probation reforms that reduced incarceration rates and avoided new prison construction during the first decade of the 21st century, while Gallego, a West Texas Democrat, was the House author of much of Texas recent "innocence" legislation, including insisting that police departments have written eyewitness ID procedures and requiring corroboration for the testimony of jailhouse informants. I think Gallego may have been the only legislator under the pink dome who actually understood the ins and outs of habeas corpus proceedings. Both men had the kind of tactical know-how only years of experience can bring. As a nationally respected GOP reformer, Madden's voice will be especially missed as chairman. His storied partnership with Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman John Whitmire made possible a series of reform bills that nobody expected but which have saved the state hundreds of millions in incarceration costs during a period of declining crime.

The problem is these are complex topics where every decision affects multiple, disparate institutions from the local to county to the state and occasionally even the federal level. For their first few sessions, most legislators are baffled by what to do on criminal justice subjects beyond whatever seems "tuff," and usually only more seasoned veterans like Gallego, Madden, Ray Allen before him on Corrections, or John Whitmire and Rodney Ellis on the Senate.side demonstrate the cojones to pursue more serious reforms.

My hope is that the Speaker replaces Madden on Corrections with somebody who, like his or her conservative predecessors, is a respected veteran committed to keeping costs down. If that remains the goal, then no matter who replaces Madden, basically the same array of policy choices will confront them: either spending potentially billions to build more prisons or plowing forward along the alternative path Madden and Whitmire began to forge. The pair weren't named Governing magazine's 2010 Public Officials of the Year for nothing.

The House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee, by contrast, while it has passed significant "innocence" legislation, much of it carried by Pete Gallego, has never been on board with de-incarceration reforms passed in other committees. Instead they passed dozens of new crimes and enhancements each session under Gallego's leadership, even as the Lege adopted other measures, mostly through the Corrections Committee, to reduce the prison population.

Criminal Jurisprudence needs to continue its innocence work, but it would benefit from a new small-government focus to consolidate the goddawful mess created by piecemealing together dozens of new crimes and enhancements every session. In many ways, Gallego's not personally to blame that the committee operates that way; the committee has always operated that way, which is how Texas got more than 2,400 felonies on the books. But there needs to be a concerted effort by the next chair to stop creating new crimes and enhancements, and to shift more liability, where possible, back to the civil courts. The next chair of House Criminal Jurisprudence should reconsider past enhancements, and going forward, the committee should follow the advice of the Texas Public Policy Foundation to stop criminalizing business and social behaviors that could be better regulated by other means.

The Legislature will be filled with new faces in key positions in the 83rd session. What that says about the prospects for reform depends largely on the quality of leaders who replace these chairmen and what they're willing and able to accomplish. In any event, certainly in these two committees and probably more broadly, 2013 will see a changing of the guard at the Texas Legislature. Good luck to Madden and Gallego, as well as other departing legislators, as they move to the next chapter of their lives.

MORE: Texas Insider posts Madden's exit statement.

12 comments:

  1. That will be a blow to the advances made in corrections! You can bet that the replacements will be pushing privatization of corrections even further, expanding the market place of prison expansion as well as attempting to privatize the probation sector.

    GET READY TO GET EVEN TOUGHER ON CRIME AND THROW BILLIONS MORE OF TAXPAYERS' MONEY INTO PRIVATIZATION OF ALL ASPECTS OF THE CORRECTIONS SYSTEM.

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  2. They should tinker w drug.free zones. Either
    eliminate it, or failing that, cut the mandatory
    five down to two.

    That.could save quite a bit of money.

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  3. Why not John Whitmire as well? When will that q get the message?

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  4. I am not as convinced about their knowledge of probation. Especially juvenile. They saved tons of money combining TJPC/TYC, but hardly any of the savings went to local departments. They might have just created a new super bureaucracy which will actually slow reform.

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  5. Isn't Madden the one that authored the bill passing healthcare costs on to inmate families - through the $100 fee deducted from the trust fund accounts, funded by families. I know he authored bills that were more favorable to criminal justice reform, but the healthcare bill was a huge step back in my eyes.

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  6. Column in the CrossTimbers Gazette says "Casey's Law" will be a priority next session. copycat to Florida. Unnecessary law to add to the multitude we already have. I don't always agree with Madden or Gallego but their experience did help on some of the issues last session.

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  7. Anon 6:39, the TYC/TJPC merger... was that done to save money or to fix a problem?

    Your counties are the folks who pushed for the healthcare bill for inmates. Counties built bigger jails to make more profit. Paying for healthcare cut into the profits so they pushed legislation to spread the costs to everyone in the state rather than directly to their respective local taxpayers.

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  8. Madden's not running for re-election. Wonder why?

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  9. Anon 8.58 - The inmate medical tax is not levied on county jail inmates, it is only applied to TDCJ inmates.

    I think for all that Madden could have done, for better or worse, he appears to have been a stabilising force within the Lege. Now that he's leaving, we may all wish to have back the devil we know, rather than those who want to "send a message" to the handful of people who might listen.

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  10. SR...
    You are right on your comment regarding the point "sending a message."

    Yes the final bill applied to TDCJ inmates but in its inception many of the county jails thought they would be relieved of health care costs and were some of the biggest proponents of the bill...

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  11. Would like eventually to see the stats on the new $100 cost for inmates'families. May be some inmates that have that money themselves but most will have to rely on family. How many inmates are not going for medical care for not wanting to pay that cost? Has the state made money from it and is it helping with the UTMB/TDCJ negotiations?

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  12. One of the agencies mr madden abolished was today named one of the top places to work in Austin. The other is still covering and hiding broken jaws, beatings of youth on youth and youth on staff .... And as shocking as it may seem in light of their history, still some staff haven't got the message on dealing with the kids
    Guess they won't be getting much recognition as a good and safe place to work!

    How do you run for president with this kind of abuse and stuff still going on .... Guess you keep hoping they never take a close look what you did as governor way back when the abuse was reported to you ...and what you've done since ! You folks in the soon to be back to being full time governors office might want to brush up on the Joe Paterno saga!

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