Of architecture and incarceration culture in Dallas

Dallas Morning News architecture critic Mark Lamster offered up a terrific essay last week (Oct. 3) lambasting "the complex of jails that are the unholy gateway to our city." He referred to the now-vacant Dawson State Jail as a "grim block that looks like some kind of dystopian Lego project." And he rightly lamented "the rambling and almost defiantly ugly Lew Sterrett Justice Center, a dispiriting agglomeration of mud-brown structures that seems designed to dehumanize all who would approach." Really good stuff. Find the essay's opening paragraphs below the jump:

Done deal: TDCJ will close Dawson, Mineral Wells units

It's official: The Texas Department of Criminal Justice will shutter two prison units operated by Corrections Corporation of America - the Dawson State Jail in Dallas and the Mineral Wells pre-parole transfer facility - for a two-year savings of $97 million. The Lege had formally delegated the decision which units to close to TDCJ, but no other facilities ever arose as likely candidates, despite complaints by locals in Mineral Wells that this would hurt the economy. Coupled with the closure of the Central Unit in 2011, that'll put Texas three down from a high of 112 facilities. If the Lege would pass just a few, modest de-incarceration reforms for low-level, nonviolent offenders, a task forestalled this year by the failure of the House Calendars Committee to set such bills for a vote, they could easily close more in 2015.

TDCJ board will decide this summer which two prison units to close

The Fort Worth Star-Telegram today has a story ("Mineral Wells vows to fight devastating closure of prison") about local private-prison backers in Mineral Wells fighting to keep open a prison unit the state doesn't need, touting its pork-barrel benefits creating (mostly low paying) jobs for locals. The article opened:

The uncertainty is troubling many in Mineral Wells.

The question that continues to linger is whether the Mineral Wells Pre-Parole Transfer Facility — a 2,100-bed, privately run minimum-security prison — will close.

State lawmakers last month passed a budget that reduces jail bed capacity by $97.3 million, which is exactly the amount that would be saved if both the Mineral Wells facility and the Dawson State Jail in Dallas were shuttered.

But the budget, which still must be approved by the state comptroller and Gov. Rick Perry, no longer specifically names the Mineral Wells facility as one that must close, due to legislative maneuvering by state Reps. Phil King, R-Weatherford, and Jim Keffer, R-Eastland.

Instead, it calls on prison officials, rather than lawmakers, to decide which prisons to shutter and to base that decision on economic factors.

“It’s not over yet,” King said. “But it’s still an uphill fight.”

Mineral Wells officials say closing the prison — one of the largest employers in the community of around 17,000 — would devastate the small city, putting more than 200 people out of work and drying up the flow of millions of dollars each year from the Nashville-based Corrections Corporation of America.

“We’re going to fight this to the bitter end,” Mineral Wells Mayor Mike Allen said. “We will fully support CCA and do our best to keep it here.”

Since the contract for the Mineral Wells unit ends on Aug. 31, TDCJ must decide this summer whether to renew it or let it expire, which is what Senator John Whitmire wants. The Dawson State Jail is the other prime target for closure but the final say is up to TDCJ's board. That group has two meetings between now and the expiration of the Mineral Wells contract - on June 21 and Aug. 23. At one of those two gatherings they'll have to pull the trigger and decide which two units to close. The easiest thing for the agency would be to follow Sen. Whitmire's lead and close Dawson and Mineral Wells, but you never know.

Report: Deal cut to close two private prisons

Though Grits had heard that the decision over prison closures wouldn't be made until a 9 a.m. meeting of the budget conference committee on Monday, at which I was told to expect "fireworks," Mike Ward at the Austin Statesman reported today ("Deal reported on plan to close two private prison," May 10) that a deal has been struck. His story opened:

Senate and House negotiators have tentatively agreed on a plan to close two privately run state prisons, potentially resolving a political feud that threatened to derail the reauthorization of the state’s criminal justice agency.

Officials confirmed Friday that instead of specifying which two prisons should be shuttered, at a time when the state has more than 12,000 empty prison beds, lawmakers will let the prison system’s governing board decide which facilities to close.

But under new criteria that the Legislature has directed the prison board to use, a Mineral Wells prison that House members have been fighting to keep open will probably still be prime for closure. ...

Lawmakers said wording will be added to the budget bill specifying that two prisons must be closed — without naming them — while removing $97 million in funding, the cost of operating Mineral Wells and Dawson.

Leaders in both chambers said an agreement has been reached to close Dawson, but lawmakers who represent Mineral Wells are still fighting to keep their facility open. They argue that closing it would devastate the Mineral Wells economy.

If accurate, this is good news. The story doesn't mention the Jones County facility but if they're closing two units TDCJ likely won't be buying another one. Grits, of course, has been pressing for this course of action for some time.

Two years ago Texas closed a prison for the first time since the state first built one in the 1840s - a nearly century-old unit built to provide cheap labor to a now-defunct sugar plantation. This session it looks like we may close two more-recently built private units. If Sen. Whitmire succeeds in shutting down Dawson and Mineral Wells, or whichever two units end up being closed, Grits believes the goal should be to close four more when the next session rolls around in 2015. Indeed, with relatively modest policy alterations, it's not hard to envision closing more than that over the next few sessions. Incarceration rates have failed to decline with crime rates and over the last two decades, policy has been the main driver of incarceration levels, up or down, far more than crime rates. The Legislature could and should decide to spend less on prisons, starting with this biennium's budget.

Related:

• Texas House edging toward prison closures but doesn't want mentally ill in solitary confinement
• A plea to Texas budget conferees: Close two prisons and don't buy empty cells we don't need
• Budget conferees gather with opposing mandates on prison closures, purchases
• Texas House would buy new prison unit, rebuffs Senate suggestion for prison closures

A plea to Texas budget conferees: Close two prison units, don't buy empty cells we don't need

This is a plea to the ten conference committee members on the budget from both chambers of the Texas Legislature, who for the record are:

• House: Pitts, Crownover, Otto, S. Turner, Zerwas
• Senate: Williams, Duncan, Hinojosa, Nelson, Whitmire

Let's talk for a moment about prisons. First the House and Senate have both agreed in the base budget to fund 5% employee raises for correctional workers. Please don't start slashing at those wage hikes to pay for prison units you don't need. Including the extra money to bail out Jones County, the House decision to buy a prison instead of closing two will cost Texans an extra $116.8 million in incarceration costs over the biennium for those line items compared to the Senate budget. Close the privately-run Dawson State Jail and Mineral Wells pre-parole units as suggested by Senate-side budget writers and tell the folks in Jones County they're on their own, just like so many other counties that built speculative prisons and jails they now can't fill.

Also, know up front that you have likely underfunded prison healthcare by around $50 million or so and will need to come back and fund it with a supplemental on the back end like the Lege did this year. TDCJ/UTMB, et al., have told the Lege what it will cost to provide care to prisoners but even the more generous Senate version of the budget is $55 million shy of the requested amount. Why not just budget what the health care actually costs instead of paying tens of millions on the back end as though it's some big surprise or "emergency?" Incarcerating felons is a core function of state government. Budget what it costs.

Members on the House side, given that your chamber suggested paying for employee raises as well as three extra prison units, you could agree to prison closures, increase prison health care funding to the requested amount, and still call the result a "savings." That would be the truly "fiscal conservative" approach: Reduce spending where feasible but pay your bills in full.

To Senators, each of you has been around long enough to see TDCJ require "supplemental" funds for health care at the beginning of each session year after year. Why intentionally underfund that line item and perpetuate the cycle?

With the two chambers in disagreement on prison closures, it's your decision. Texas made history and received national attention for closing the Central Unit. Grits urges you to follow Chairman Whitmire's lead, double down on that success and close two more. The state doesn't need them and the money is better spent on employee raises, prisoner healthcare, and probation programming.

MORE: A couple of different sites are calling for people to contact conference committee members telling them to close two prisons and don't buy another one, see here and here.

AND MORE: From the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, "Texas shouldn't keep spending on unneeded prisons."

Budget conferees gather with opposing mandates on prison closures, purchases

Earlier this month, Grits had reported, the Texas House approved a budget that rebuffed the Senate's decision to close two private prison units, deciding to keep them and purchase another, empty unit in Jones County that the state doesn't need. On Friday they made it official as representatives of the two chambers head into the conference committee, reported the Statesman's Mike Ward:

The Texas House on Friday voted to buy an unused West Texas prison for $19.5 million, brushing aside growing criticism that the state has 12,000 empty prison beds and is wasting taxpayers’ money.

The decision to leave intact funding for the 1,100-bed Jones County lockup is expected to set up a showdown with Senate leaders, who have openly criticized the House as engaging in pork barrel politics.

The House approved the purchase in House Bill 1025, a supplemental appropriations measure, by a 129-9 vote.

“We’ll look forward to a discussion with the Senate,” said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Jim Pitts, R-Waxahachie. “This is just putting it out there for discussion. This is not the final version of the bill.”

From the story, it sounds like Rep. Sylvester Turner, who's on the conference committee, isn't a fan of the Jones County unit, and Chairman Pitts is open to omitting excess capacity from the "final version." If Senate conferees stick to their guns - and with John Whitmire among conferees, you'd expect them to - there's a decent, bettor's chance Texas may end up closing units this time instead of pointlessly expanding capacity, as the House has suggested. Here are the lists of House and Senate budget conferees, respectively:

• House: Pitts, Crownover, Otto, S. Turner, Zerwas
• Senate: Williams, Duncan, Hinojosa, Nelson, Whitmire

Surprising opposition has arisen in the House to closing the Dawson State Jail and the pre-parole facility in Mineral Wells, as the Senate has suggested. Besides the obvious, pork-barrel reasons (Corrections Corporation of America runs both facilities and its champions don't want them shuttered), it's been suggested that the Dawson State Jail in particular services women from the Dallas area disproportionately. That's true to a small extent, but the Hutchins State Jail takes even more inmates from Dallas, presently operates under capacity and could take the extra Dallas inmates and gender-specific programming, if so-directed. The relatively minor, bureaucratic adjustments that would be required to manage the inmate population if Dawson were closed pales in comparison to the extra expense of keeping it open. The Senate essentially paid for a 5% prison guard pay hike by eliminating two private-prison contracts the state doesn't need. If those units stay open, as the House envisions, and the state buys another empty unit, the question for conferees becomes, "How does the state pay for wage increases for corrections staff, or do those just go away?" Root for the senate conferees to stand firm on this one and hope for the House side to give into the imperatives of reason and math.

MORE: In another story by Mike Ward on related subjects, he quotes Sen. John Whitmire succinctly summing up the conflict on prisons between the upper and lower chambers. “The people in the House who are for buying a prison we don’t need, and are for keeping two existing prisons open that we don’t need, are the same tea party, fiscal conservatives who campaigned for less government and cutting wasteful spending,” he said. “Everyone wants to cut government waste, but it’s very hard to shut down anything.”

AND MORE (4/29): Patti Hart reported that John Whimire is "irate" over the House's decision to purchase the Jones County facility, and I can understand why. That said, if Chairman Whitmire were "irate" nearly as often as the MSM portray him that way the poor man would surely have suffered a coronary by now. Still, the starting position of the House on prisons in the budget is certainly insensible and frustrating. Where are all the small-government budget cutters when you need them?

Texas House would buy new prison unit, close none, rebuffs Senate suggestion for private prison closures

The House budget matched the Senate's inclusion of $105.2 million for TDCJ correctional officers salary increases of 5 percent, but failed to pay for them with prison closures the way they did on the Senate side..

While the Texas Senate budget suggested closing two prison units in the next biennium, saving $97.3 million, the House budget approved yesterday not only foresees no closure of adult prison units but anticipates spending $19.5 million to buy an  empty unit constructed by Jones County for which the county can find no prisoners. Locals in Jones County and Mineral Wells, where the Senate would close a private facility, have been lobbying for more units than the state needs, but Heaven knows why the House wants to keep open the ignominious Dawson State Jail. Including the extra money to bail out Jones County, the House decision to buy a prison instead of closing two will mean an extra $116.8 million in incarceration costs over the biennium for those line items compared to the Senate budget.

The House also lowered expenditures set by the Senate for prison healthcare by $14.3 million, but that's $55 million below what TDCJ said it needed for the line item, which took a nine-figure haircut in the last biennium. Unless the Legislature significantly reduces incarceration levels, you can bet prison healthcare will cost more than that.

The Texas Juvenile Justice Department would receive $15.7 million less under the House budget than the Senate budget.

The differences must be ironed out in conference committee.

Via HRO and summaries of the House and Senate budgets (all large pdfs).

'Death at Dawson: Why is Texas' worst state jail still open?'

Emily DePrang at the Texas Observer says the question shouldn't be whether the Dawson State Jail in Dallas should be closed, but why in the world, given its shoddy record, the Texas Legislature would consider keeping the privately run prison unit open?

Dawson State Jail targeted for closure by, well, everyone

Topping the list of potential Texas prison closures is the Dawson State Jail, a high-rise building on the bank of the Trinity River in downtown Dallas. The Texas Tribune reported this week that more than two dozen organizations signed a letter urging legislators to shutter the facility, citing failures in oversight and provision of healthcare. (UTMB provides actual healthcare services at the unit, but an investigative report last year found that staff "did not follow proper procedures by failing to call for help" in a high-profile death case.) In addition, whereas closing the Central Unit took longer than expected to wind down operations, the contract with Corrections Corporation of America to operate Dawson runs out at the end of this fiscal year. So the budget savings would be both more certain and immediate than closing the century-old, state-run Central Unit. No doubt there are other criteria for judging potential prison closures, but Dawson seems to be a likely candidate by almost any measure.

Advocates on right, left, say reform state jail statutes, close more prison units

A pair of stories from the Texas Tribune related to de-incarceration merit Grits readers' attention. First up, yesterday Maurice Chammah had an article on a new report (pdf) from the Texas Public Policy Foundation advocating diversion/probation for most state jail felons. The article opened:

A new report argues that state jails aren't meeting their goal of helping to reduce crime by intensively treating short-term, nonviolent inmates, and it recommends that judges no longer be able to sentence felons to state jails without a rehabilitation plan

The report, published Monday by the Texas Public Policy Foundation, a conservative think tank, says that those convicted of nonviolent felonies and normally sentenced to months in a state-operated jail should instead be released with community supervision. That can include treatment programs, community service, strictly enforced probation conditions and the threat of incarceration if certain conditions are violated. The report's suggestions were based on recent data concerning the number of felons who commit crimes after being released from state jails.

Report author Jeannette Moll wrote that, "state jails are universally failing in their objective." costing nearly as much as full-blown prison cells with higher recidivism rates and little opportunity for rehabilitative programming. A key legislator, though, wasn't willing to go quite so far.

[Texas Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman John] Whitmire says that the proposal echoes much of what he and other lawmakers envisioned in 1993 and that he's open to legislation to address the high levels of reincarceration. “Something between what we do now and what they propose would make sense,” he said.

But he cautions that there are many practical implications on the rest of the criminal justice system to consider before changes can be made. Increasing the number of people on probation will increase the workload for judges and community supervision departments.

For Grits' part, IMO the "practical implications" of Moll's suggestions run the other direction: If Texas reduced state jail incarceration rates enough to close one or two of them,  that money could be much more effectively spent on community corrections programs and to beef up local probation departments (or at least stem the bleeding). It's much cheaper to supervise offenders on probation than in prison, so much so that supervision could be significantly boosted and programming expanded to handle the additional caseload and likely still have money left over. The only way the proposals would harm local probation departments and courts would be if the Lege cut the state jail budget but failed to shift any of the savings to community supervision. (Prison guards would like that money to go to staff raises and prison health care was dramatically underfunded last session, so there will be competition for that money.)

It's worth mentioning that the Lege has adjusted state jail sentences in the past without undue harm to probation departments or courts: In 2003, the Lege passed HB 2668 which mandated probation instead of incarceration on the first offense for less-than-a-gram state jail felony drug crimes. First filed by then-Corrections Committee Chairman Ray Allen, a religious conservative, the legislation successfully diverted thousands of offenders from state jails annually, significantly relieving pressure on the system. Grits has long favored doubling down on that probation-first strategy - not just for drug offenses but other state jail felons - and it's gratifying to see a prominent conservative think tank endorse the suggestion.

Meanwhile, the Trib also has a story by Brandi Grissom echoing a report on Grits last month about the prison guard union's push to close two private facilities - the Dawson State Jail in Dallas and a pre-parole facility in Mineral Wells. The former has been accused of providing inadequate health care while the latter has among the worst contraband problems of any Texas prison unit. The main, new information in the story was Sen. Whitmire's supportive comment regarding additional prison closures.

Grits has written previously that, while private prison units might be the simplest to shutter (and I've long agreed those two should make the list), there are several criteria by which the state could select which prison units to close.

• Private facilities which can be decommissioned more rapidly and with less expense than state facilities.
• Older facilities, especially those built prior to 1920, which can cost more than twice as much per inmate to operate than newer units.
• Rural units with staffing levels habitually below 70%. (I'd start with the Connally Unit in Kenedy County and the facilities in Lamesa and Dalhart.)
• Units with the worst records on interdicting contraband.
• Units with the most heat-related deaths and/or hospitalizations.
• Units located in areas with water shortages.
• Units previously built in rural areas which are now in suburban growth corridors with higher property values so that operating a prison is no longer the highest, best use of the property. (The Central Unit, which the Lege closed last session, fell into this group.)

There is some overlap among these categories, and where that's true the arguments for closure become even stronger. Taken together, those criteria suggest a pool of perhaps 15-20 units from which the Lege could reasonably contemplate closure. Closing just 2-3 more units this session would be quite a big deal; IMO, with a few key policy adjustments, the state could close 5 or 6 without harming public safety. (Florida recently closed seven.) The union has suggested prioritizing closure of privately run facilities, and there are good reasons to suggesting closing those two units. But they aren't the only viable options if legislators decide to seriously confront these questions.

Normally one thinks of conservatives and public employee unions as inherently at loggerheads, but it's fascinating to see how these proposals dovetail: Implementing Moll's suggestions would reduce incarceration pressures and make the union's goal of closing units and consolidating staff far more palatable.

RELATED: See a fact sheet (pdf) from the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition related to Texas' state jail system.

TDCJ renews contract for state jail budget-cut candidate

Damn it. Robert Wilonsky at the Dallas Observer reports that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice has renewed the contract with Corrrections Corporation of America to operate the Dawson State Jail in Dallas for the next seven years.

I'd considered Dawson a good candidate for potential closure because it's located in an area where the city has proposed a major redevelopment project and the local chamber of commerce types wanted it gone. (Legislation approved last year would allow TDCJ to trade the land to the city for a comparable piece of property within 20 miles of the facility.) What's more, the building isn't particularly suited for the purpose: it's a high-rise built in a river bottom where TDCJ must pay for air-conditioning in the summer, making its per-prisoner costs higher than other, comparable facilities.

This is a function of TDCJ refusing even to countenance the possibility of prison closures to save money. The agency has said they'll cut programming, medical care, and eliminate up to 7,300 staff before considering closure of a single unit. That's not a realistic (or safe) suggestion, but as long as legislators allow the agency to set the budget cutting agenda, they're clearly going to prioritize maximum spending on bricks and mortar while focusing cuts on their employees and treatment and diversion programs. If legislators want those priorities changed. budget writers must do it themselves - the agency so far has only been willing to suggest highly unrealistic spending reductions that actually would boost costs in other parts of the system.

I wrote earlier this year that TDCJ shouldn't be allowed to make decisions during the interim that lock in long-term spending that the Lege might need to cut, but that's exactly what they've done here. Clearly the state cannot substantially cut incarceration levels without policy changes in addition to line-item cuts in the agency budget. But given that budget cuts must be made, that only argues for legislators to begin changing policies, preferably before the agency takes any more unilateral moves to hem in the Legislature's options for reducing corrections spending.

Related Grits posts:

• Should TDCJ be renewing contracts that might be subject to budget cuts?
• Dallas, Sugar Land locals to TDCJ: Please move
• A/C bills one more reason to close Dawson state jail
• Private prison contract renewals may cost Texas additional millions
• Which prison units should Texas close? Private contracts, security concerns may factor in

A/C bills one more reason to close Dawson state jail

There are quite a few reasons to close the Dawson State Jail in Dallas. One we haven't discussed is to reduce TDCJ's A/C bill. A drawback of having a prison in an urban highrise instead of a more traditional design is that it requires A/C, which otherwise is mostly only available at a handful of medical units. Air conditioning went out recently at Dawson and repairs are reportedly underway - bad for the prisoners, certainly, but also for employees. We're talking about a 10-story high-rise situated in the Trinity River bottoms. What's more, the building is standing in the way of a proposed redevelopment project being pushed by the Dallas City Council, which wants the facility removed. Dawson is a private facility operated by Corrections Corporation of America housing more than 2,000 Texas state jail inmates.

Dawson isn't air conditioned because anybody's soft on state jail inmates there, it's because its placement was political, putting an inappropriately designed and located facility in South Dallas on the misguided premise that prisons were going to bring jobs to rural communities and South Dallas could use jobs, too. Just a few years later, the prison has become an impediment to job creation. Its contract is up for renewal in January.