Opponents of Amarillo halfway house misunderstand their own safety interests

As Texas lurches toward reinvigorating its carceral drug treatment programs after draconian budget cuts eliminated most of them in 2003, gaps in services and NIMBY opposition to transitional treatment centers threaten to stymie some of the legislatively mandated programs, particularly the drug treatment program SAFP (pronounced Safe-P), which stands for Substance Abuse Felony Punishment.

Part of the SAFP program requires a three-month stint in a halfway house before final release, but TDCJ has been unable to find contractors willing to provide that service.

Even when someone is willing to establish and run a new halfway house, NIMBYism frequently crops up to threaten the project. In Amarillo, reports the Globe News' John Kanelis, halfway house up for a vote at a city commission meeting on August 11:

has drawn opposing fire from neighbors, which is the least-surprising - and most distressing - aspect of this debate.

Few people doubt the need to provide a transition for convicts back into civilized society - just don't put 'em anywhere near me!

The Panhandle Truth Squad this spring editorialized against the NIMBYs from their perch as Panhandle populists, calling the movement to oppose the facility evidence Amarillo is a "city without pity."

But IMO what's needed is not "pity" but informed, rational self interest. Amarilloans who oppose the halfway house simply misunderstand where their real public safety interests lie.

What do they think happens if TDCJ can't build any halfway houses, anywhere? Will those prisoners simply "go somewhere else"? Hell no. They'll just be released directly on parole with LESS supervision than they'd see in a halfway house! In that context, opposition to such a facility can only be described as mind bogglingly foolish, stemming from a complete failure to understand their real public safety interests. By opposing this facility, they're really making a de facto argument, if never an explicit one, for releasing drug offenders on regular parole without initial close supervision at all.

So would Amarillo be safer if SAFP released offenders directly without such program? I've seen no data, but Kanelis quoted a local probationer who'd been through a similar facility in Odessa describing his experience and residents' interaction, or lack thereof, with their neighbors:

Brian is adamant about many points concerning the halfway house, especially the control it exercised over its residents.

He was released from the Odessa residence on Sept. 11, 2006 and has lived in Amarillo ever since. Brian is still on probation, but once he completes his sentence successfully, his felony conviction will be removed from his record.

He credits the treatment he received in Odessa, along with SAFPF, for saving his life.

The concerns of residents who oppose the treatment center in Amarillo are misguided, Brian said.

"You don't leave the house except to go to work," he said. Brian worked nights loading trucks for a chain of stores. "I left at 9 each night for work and would return in the morning," he said. He had to attend three Alcoholics Anonymous meetings each week; moreover, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice bused him to the meetings.

"We had lights out at 10 each night," he said, "and we couldn't play loud music."

His point simply is this: The neighbors of the proposed AWARE residence in south Amarillo "won't ever see the people" who live in the house.

Oh, what about the perceived threat to neighbors by residents who fall of the drugs-and-booze wagon?

Brian stifled a chuckle, and then said, "The people who mess up aren't going to stick around. They're going to try to go home - wherever that may be. They would be long gone."

Brian would get weekend passes while living in Odessa. He would come home to spend time with his parents.

And when he returned to Odessa? He had to provide a urine sample to be tested for drugs. "If I came up dirty, then my probation would be revoked," he said. Happily, he stayed clean then and is staying clean now.

Would opponents of this facility prefer if Brian had come straight home to Amarillo without this more intensive level of supervision when he first left prison? If he went immediately back to work for his father's Amarillo business (where he is today and in any event would be inevitably), would the city's residents be more or less confident he was prepared to responsibly exercise his new freedom?

I'm guessing if you asked them in the abstract, everyone opposing this facility would say they want offenders closely supervised upon release, they just don't want them in their neighborhood. The tragically ridiculous and ignorant part of that stance is that the folks in such facilities were their neighbors before they were drug offenders - when they get out, back to your neighborhood is where they're headed, anyway - just with less supervision.

If I were Jewish, this would be a good moment for use of the word, "Oy!" - it expresses a sentiment that doesn't quite have an English equivalent. Sometimes the stupidity is so visceral, it hurts!

Amarillo re-entry site rejected: If not in an industrial area, where could you place these facilities?

TDCJ is finding it more difficult than you might imagine to give away money. First NIMBYism killed a new treatment center in Austin (supposedly they're looking for a new location), and now another much-needed program has been delayed up in the Golden Spread. Jobsanger rightly condemns the city of Amarillo's rejection of a counseling and treatment facility in a light-industrial zoned area, declaring that the city commission:

let a small group of citizens scare them into doing a rather stupid thing last Tuesday.

The Aware Program, headed by Allen Graves, is a non-profit organization that does a lot of good in the Amarillo area. They do HIV counseling and testing, drug and alcohol counseling, operate a small food bank, run a GED program, and have a program to help juvenile offenders. They offer these services free of charge.

I know Allen and his excellent staff because they work with some of my clients. They are dedicated and competent people, who are willing to work long hours and go the extra mile to make sure their job is done right.

The program was trying to establish a live-in program which would house parolees and probationers who were being released from drug treatment (both prison and community-based programs). They would offer drug, emotional and job counseling to the clients and provide round-the-clock supervision.

The program is badly needed in the Amarillo area, which has very little in the way of aftercare programs. They had been promised a substantial grant from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (around $400,000), and all they needed was the approval of the city commission.

The situation seemed simple to those of us who understood the situation. These clients are going to come back to this area. They could come back under supervision and receive counseling and help, or they could be dumped back on our streets. The choice was a no-brainer.

But a small group of citizens thought they had a third choice. ... Rejecting the rehab program doesn't mean the clients won't come back here. They are from this area, and they're coming back whether the citizens and the city commission like it or not. Only now, they're going to come back without treatment, without counseling, without job training, and without supervision.

It doesn't take a genius to see that this makes our city a more dangerous place, not a less dangerous one.

Though the rejected treatment center in Austin was in a neighborhood near downtown, the Amarillo site was not, making it think it may be impossible to site new facilities in many communities if the Legislature doesn't act to break the NIMBYism logjam. A commenter at Jobsanger added that from the press coverage and debate over the facility, he was under the "impression it was in the middle of a neighborhood. Now that I went to maps.google.com and actually looked, other than outside the city limits, there's probably not any place any more appropriate."

When someone from Amarillo gets out of prison, they're not going to go somewhere else because the city won't let them have services. They're still going to go home. They'll just be more likely to get into trouble again, and wind up back in the criminal justice system. There's little sense to this decision, and a lot of harm caused.

Via Cat's Meow. See also coverage from the Amarillo Globe News and the Panhandle Truth Squad.

Should state break NIMBY logjam thwarting halfway house expansions?

Should the state require local communities to designate areas where halfway houses would be allowed, make communities that reject halfway houses pay for individual placements, or build halfway houses on existing government property?

Those options and more were floated at the Senate Criminal Justice Committee yesterday during testimony by Marc Levin of the Texas Pulbic Policy Foundation. (I'll have more to say about the rest of the hearing soon.) The Statesman's Mike Ward has an account today of the committee's discussion and the problems siting halfway houses, writing that ("Halfway house solution: Build them at prisons," April 3):

committee members expressed shock that two-thirds of the new halfway house beds they funded last year — 200 of the 300 beds — will be in El Paso because there were no alternative sites.

Discussion shifted to the possibility of building new halfway houses on the grounds of existing prisons, especially in and around Houston. That area accounts for about a quarter of all prison commitments in Texas.

The state now has halfway houses in Beaumont, Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, El Paso and Austin — in a lockup near Austin-Bergstrom International Airport and the county-run Correctional Complex in Del Valle. El Paso has two.

Those halfway houses hold 1,400 parole-bound felons.

San Antonio is the largest Texas city without one. ...

In the past 20 years, halfway houses have been a controversial aspect of Texas' prison system, with protests killing every new location aside from one in El Paso that officials said is in a former jail in an industrial area.

Whitmire said there are too few halfway house beds, meaning some convicts must stay in prison for months until a halfway house bed opens up. Then most convicts cannot transition out of prison in their hometown or home county, he said.

Whitmire and other senators advocated a study. Prison officials, while publicly noncommittal, agreed more halfway houses sites are needed. Michelle Lyons, the system's spokeswoman, said the state currently is 255 beds short — down from 500 last year.

"What we are doing now makes no sense," Whitmire told the committee. "Locating them on existing (prison) units makes a lot of sense."

This topic hits a sore point with me. Much has been made of the online sex offender registry where you can find out how many paroled sex offenders live in your neighborhood, but for every sex offender listed there are many, MANY more parolees out there. They're here anyway. Opposing halfway houses and treatment centers just makes it more difficult for them to succeed on the outside and avoid committing new crimes.

The NIMBY types that come out of the woodwork opposing halfway houses must be among the most foolish on the planet. Texas releases tens of thousands of prisoners every year, and the prisons are chock full, with more entering the system all the time. So in the big picture, felons are coming out whether there's a supervised spot for them or they're couch surfing with friends. The idea that people would rather they're freelancing out there on their own instead of in a semi-supervised facility with support services just boggles my mind.

In addition to Whitmire's idea for halfway houses on prison grounds, Marc Levin proposed changes to the Government code to make it easier to make an application, including eliminating the requirement for a newspaper ad of a certain size for three consecutive days, which in Houston he said costs around $15,000.

Levin also suggested pursuing an idea from a bill by Debbie Riddle that I'd honestly not paid attention to last year, which would have required cities that rejected halfway houses to contribute money into a fund that would pay for community placement. I think that's a spectacular idea. It would put a stop to a lot of this NIMBY nonsense.

NIMBY legislator hounds halfway house out of her neighborhood

Collin County neighbors led by state Rep. Jodie Laubenberg hounded a local halfway house until it finally shut its doors, reports WFAA-TV.

So, Ms. Laubenberg, you'd rather have these folks homeless on the street, perhaps burglarizing your house instead of receiving re-entry services? Where would you have them go? For once the Texas Department of Criminal Justice called a spade a spade:

A spokesperson for the TDCJ told us "there's such a 'not in my neighborhood mentality' that it's impossible for these people to get back on their feet."

"That is absolutely not true. The way you get someone back on their feet and rehabilitated is you put them somewhere where there is accountability, where there is structure," Laubenberg said.

She and the sheriff say they are fine with halfway houses in Collin County, as long as it's in an appropriate place, not a half block away from where kids play.

Uh, so where in any community isn't near somewhere that kids play? Or perhaps we're just concerned with Rep. Laubenberg's kids?

More details on the Madden-Whitmire probation plan

Details on Jerry Madden and John Whitmire's probation overhaul continue to trickle out, though no bill has yet been filed. This afternoon Mike Ward (who's doing a good job covering the story) posted another update on the Austin Statesman website ("New figures show way to ease overcrowding without building new prisons," Jan 10):

A copy of the new projections was obtained this morning by the Austin American-Statesman and Statesman.com.

According to the new projections, a total of 9,500 so-called "diversion" beds would be added to the current corrections system — in programs such as drug treatment centers, special lockups to hold parole and probation violators for short periods, new counseling centers for parolees and halfway houses.

Those additional beds could divert 5,933 criminals each year, at a cost of $142.9 million over a two-year period. The number of beds is higher than the prisoners diverted because not all of the prisoners will be successful in treatment and some will be sent back to prison.

At a time when the state budget is expected to be tight, because of promised property tax rollbacks and ballooning costs in health care programs, among other things, how to address the growing prison population is a top issue for legislative leaders. The newly released projections are expected to figure heavily into legislative hearings expected to begin soon on Texas' criminal justice programs.

Lack of transitional housing contributes to Texas prison overcrowding

The Back Gate has posted a video that TCJC did on YouTube a few months ago about alternative solutions to Texas' prison overincarceration crisis. (I'd posted it here in October, but it's certainly timely to resurrect it.) In the meantime, just today the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition released another short video on YouTube, this time focusing on the need for more transitional housing for felons leaving the Texas prison system:
Think how discouraging it must feel to have been approved for parole but remain in prison because you have no address to be released to? More than 1,000 Texas prisoners find themselves in that circumstance today, says the video, at a time when Texas is renting 1,900 beds.

Thankfully some at the capitol are heeding these concerns. House Corrections Committee Chairman Jerry Madden and Senate Criminal Justice Chairman John Whitmire have recently proposed increasing the number of halfway houses in Texas from 600 to 1,500 as part of a package of incarceration alternatives they're jointly developing.

For the activist-minded Texans among you, it's not too early to make sure your own Texas state representative and senator have seen copies of both these short videos. Let them know you support the coming Madden-Whitmire reform package and oppose new prison building.