Initial thoughts on draft criminal justice budgets: Fables from La-la land

Let's take a first-cut look at implications for the criminal justice system in the Texas House and Senate draft budgets released yesterday amidst promises of tax cuts from state officials. (Go here for links to both budgets; the criminal justice/public safety budgets are in Article V.)

First things first, both the House and Senate budgets failed to restore funding cut last session from the prison healthcare budget, despite the fact that the Legislative Budget Board had to agree to additional funding mid-biennium in order to keep the UT Medical Branch in Galveston as their main provider. Both budgeted not only less than the requested amount but lower than the 2013 levels set by the 83rd Legislature for hospital and clinical care, pharmacy, and psychiatric care. That cannot stand at current prison population levels.

Slight cuts were suggested for local probation departments, ignoring TDCJ's request for more funds and probation directors' request to help with rising health insurance costs. Coupled with the suggestion that the state will spend less in 2014 and 2015 to "incarcerate felons" than it did in 2013 - despite rising healthcare and food costs and guard shortages stemming from low pay - these budget figures appear to come straight out of la la land. Both budgets zeroed out TDCJ's line item for facilities maintenance, a suggestion that fails to pass the laugh test. (The agency had budgeted $81 million for maintenance this biennium and requested $97 million for the next one.) Overall, TDCJ would receive roughly $65 million per year less in the next biennium than was budgeted for 2013, a figure that won't be tenable unless something is done to reduce the overall prison population.

The newly formed Texas Juvenile Justice Department would see its budget slashed by about $30 million per year compared to 2013 under both proposed budgets, with the cuts coming from mostly from state-operated secure facilities. The budget substantially reduced the allocation for "basic supervision" by juvenile probation departments, but added the money back in under a new line item titled "Pre- and Post-Adjudication Facilities." Funds for halfway houses and "general rehabilitation treatment" would decline slightly.

Both budgets would slash the Department of Public Safety's budget by around half a billion dollars over the biennium compared to the last one, ignoring recent calls for trooper pay raises. The agency's request for additional crime lab funding to mitigate growing backlogs was also ignored.

The Indigent Defense Commission's request for additional funds to cover unfunded mandates on counties from the 2001 Fair Defense Act was rebuffed in both budgets.

Bottom line: What's been proposed here are not realistic suggestions based on historical costs and caseloads. Grits does believe there are ways to cut public safety and corrections spending, particularly by funding community based diversion programs to offset reductions in much-more expensive incarceration. But these budgets don't reduce spending through smart, strategic thinking but by thoughtlessly hacking at topline numbers without a realistic implementation plan.

Obviously we're at the beginning of the process and budgets at the end of the session will look much different, one would imagine, than these initial proposals. It must be said, however, on the criminal justice front they're not off to an inspiring start.