Grits reacts every year to the release of TDCJ's annual statistical report with more or less the same level of enthusiasm with which Steve Martin's character greeted the issuance of new phone books in The Jerk. Finally, the report for FY 2015 has been released. Check it out here.
Notably, the report recorded TDCJ housing 148,146 prisoners as of Aug. 31, 2015, down more than 2,000 from the prior year and down 8,000 since 2011, when the inmate population totaled 156,522. (See reports from prior years here - scroll down.) That's low enough to close at least one more prison unit to help with budget savings.*
The annual statistical report gives data on prisons, state jails, probation, and parole for FY 2015, which ended Aug. 31 of last year. So I fail to understand why it takes nearly 12 months to produce this publication. Doing it that way means policy makers must rely on information that's at-a-minimum one-year old, when really TDCJ tracks all these data more or less in real time.
Now that TDCJ is under new management, they should work on getting this document out much quicker in the future. There's no reason a snapshot of data ending August 31 couldn't be released before the new year instead of 11-12 months down the line.
Related: See also FY 2015 data on the Texas judiciary, which the Office of Court Administration released earlier this year. Gathering data from every judge in Texas is MUCH more difficult than a single corrections agency compiling its own information on prisoners' comings and goings. If OCA can produce the annual judicial stats more quickly, there's no reason we should have to wait this long for TDCJ to release its numbers.
* N.b., the inmate population has continued to decline since then. According to TDCJ's "high value data set" (xls), which is a master-list of prisoners updated quarterly, as of this writing (8/10) there are 146,968 inmates locked up in TDCJ.
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9 comments:
Expect less openness and more retaliation from this new administration in TDCJ. The good ol' boys are back in charge of the agency. Brad Livingston was an outsider and for the most part played by the book. Collier will cook the books and doesn't like openness. Collier has a well documented history of retaliating against TDCJ employees for revealing information about the agency.
Where is the documentation?
I worked for Brian Collier and Anon doesn't know him. He is open and truly cares about employees. He backed me up several times when supervisors tried to retaliate against me. I think this will be a great time for TDCJ
I thought Brian's appointment was unfortunate because it represents an endorsement of the status quo, which isn't great, and I expect him to keep his head down rather than exercise leadership on the biggest issues facing the agency. (I'd have preferred a national search, but would be mightily pleased to be proven wrong!) However, I consider him competent, well-meaning, and I haven't seen evidence he'll "cook the books," etc..
For Grits' purposes, the TDCJ LAR which will be released this month will be the first real indication of his leadership. Livingston was unwilling to tell the Lege unpleasant truths during the last budget crunch and they made a big mess of the cuts that is still being untangled.
73k inmates are parole eligible and a mere fraction will see parole if there has been no change in the BPP....How many of these eligible images will be forced to cycle through another year+ for stagnant factors and blanket denials like Nature of the Offence.....73k families affected by an administrain that lacks accountability and is blinded to the harm they are causing by not giving full and fair consideration to inmates that are eligible for parole and who's crime was already taken into consideration when determining their parole eligibilty date. Makes me sick!
I Agree 9:05 makes me sick and mother of one of those inmates and he got a robbery charge for shoplifting at a wall-mart! 7 years been away for 6 and praying he makes parole this time no reason he should not but!!! this is TDCJ
It takes this long because the minions working on the data have to funnel the data through several layers of bureaucracy before it makes it to Collier's desk for final signature. It definitely could be better, but that would take a change in the way things have always been done.
Have you been asleep for the last few years. The last two previous Public Information Officers (PIO) for TDCJ burned him up over his practices after leaving. The state had to settle a lawsuit with one of them and the other former PIO stated the agency "suffers from intellectual incest." Collier was their boss!!!!
Lisa, only Collier can prove people wrong by making the agency more open, backing their employees with adequate pay, end the practice of retaliation, end the good ol' boy system by implementing civil service testing on promotions, and asking the legislature for a budget that is ethical to operate the agency to adhere with modern correctional practices. I bet he won't... So when it doesn't happen, who really knows Collier?
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