Sunday, February 10, 2013

Elephant in the room: Lege must adjust sentencing to cut TDCJ's budget

Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman John Whitmire wants to end contracts for at least two private prison units and wants the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to find internal savings to cover its extra costs, reported Mike Ward at the Austin Statesman ("Senators to state corrections officials: Tighten your belts," Feb. 7), covering TDCJ's presentation to the Senate Finance Committee on Thursday. Ward quoted Chairman Whitmire, who also chairs the working group doing the "markup" on TDCJ's budget this week, declaring that, “We’ve got to quit, once and for all, running these facilities just because they’re there for economic development purposes ... We need to use taxpayers’ money to fight crime, on the public safety priorities of this state, rather than just on bricks and mortar that in some cases we don’t need.” Hear, hear!

There's an elephant in the room, though, or really, two. First: The Legislative Budget Board predicts prison populations will creep back up in the next few years and TDCJ doesn't control prison population levels. Local DAs, judges and juries decide who goes in and the parole board or the statutes decide who gets out. Though recent trends are mildly encouraging, there's no way around it: The only way to sustainably keep prison populations low enough to reduce capacity long term is if the Legislature adjusts sentencing policies to reduce projected new prison admissions.

Besides, eliminating two private prison contracts won't make up for the extra $102 million Livingston told the committee would be necessary, for example, to cover TDCJ's base prisoner healthcare costs. And that doesn't even consider requests for increased guard pay to counter understaffing at rural units. If the Legislature wants TDCJ to live within its means, they must reverse the trends driving increased prison admissions.

Which brings us to the second elephant in the room: TDCJ's institutional culture prioritizes running prisons over probation and parole, so they'll never suggest the sort of dramatic shift in resources from incarceration to expanded treatment and strengthening community supervision that would be needed to reverse the trends driving the agency's budget crunch. TDCJ officials (perhaps rightly) view those sort of policy decisions as the province of the Legislature and the courts and historically have been loathe ever to suggest statutory changes the Legislature could enact to lessen prison admissions. Instead, they tend to suggest budget cuts to community supervision programs that would set the agency up to fail, requiring increased prison spending later on.

Bottom line: The Legislature must devise its own plan, or rely on experts outside TDCJ to do so, if they want to spend less on prisons. The agency's institutional priorities won't ever allow it to offer the sort of major policy suggestions that might significantly lower prison costs by reducing the number of people incarcerated. To get there will require leadership from the Legislature. Brad Livingston can't do it by himself. He needs marching orders.

9 comments:

  1. Way past due for the legislature to 'get er done.' Over a number of successive sessions the Legislature has dealt with all components of the system except Prosecutors and TDCAA. Until the Lege quits dancing around over-hyped tough on crime, taxpayers should have their wallets in hand ready to continue paying. You can't preach reducing prison costs and continue looking the other way when prosecutors continue to go unchecked..

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  2. Hell, the new DA in Harris County will bump the numbers up all by his lonesome.

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  3. Reduce Recidivism with Rehabilitation2/11/2013 11:29:00 AM

    Education....mental health treatment....independent living skills....training....drug-treatment....will reduce prison costs....and provide more appealing jobs than "correctional officers" that we lack. Teachers, counselors, monitors, staff at drug-treatment facilities, mentors for independent living skills. Incentives for cost-savings measures and implementation would negate the need for more dead-end jobs.

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  4. Reduce the pay of all Correctional Officers. Who cares if Texas is 48th or almost at the bottom on Correctional Officer pay. These dumb butt Officers have gone two years without a pay raise and keep working. Let's go for 50th and see if those dummies still keep working...LOL
    They must be the stupidest of the stupid here in Texas. Right?

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    1. How about you deal with the inmates daily as we do. We put our lives on the line daily for people like you to keep the public protected.

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    2. That guy sounds like the Governor... I guess Governor Oops got to the computer again.

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  5. Legalize marijuana and remove any non-violent criminals from the prison system..technology has better ways to deal with non-violent people better than any prison system could,,and they could be working,paying taxes and stimulating the economy instead of being a drain on state resources.
    The taxes off the marijuana would help the stae budget a lot more than any other source of revenue available and we could sure use the jobs..

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  6. The first comment hits the nail on the head. When first time, non-violent offenders are sentenced to over 20 years and refused parole in spite of model behavior and near perfect compliance with every facet of their incarceration...something's got to give at the foundation of this problem. While TDCJ is a large contributor, they wouldn't be able to to be if our DA's would calm down.

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  7. Maybe if the correctional officers would quit provoking the inmates daily then that would reduce a lot of problems. That old story of putting your life on line daily has gotton old. The officers bring in the contraband and are the ones having sex with the inmates, no one else is doing this. Why want you try this "FOLLOW YOUR OWN RULES" FOR A CHANGE. One reason an inmate turns dangerous, try going for years behaving yourself and only toi be turned down for parole. That right there is another problem. A corrupted parole board. Parole Board could follow their own rules too.

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