Special treatment: 2/3 of inmates would be paroled under lenient standard for defrocked prosecutor

Talk about special treatment by the Texas parole board! According to the Dallas News:

See a man off to prison with a 15-year sentence, you expect him to stay gone awhile. Which is why some in Rockwall are surprised to hear that Ray Sumrow is out on parole after 20 months.

Sumrow, 60, was the sixth-term Republican district attorney in Rockwall when convicted twice in 2008.

Prison and parole officials said Sumrow qualified for parole based on a formula that weighs the nature of his crimes and the sum of "flat time," the actual number of days he served, plus "good time" plus "work time."

Of course, about 2/3 of offenders in TDCJ also qualify for parole when you add up good time, work time, and flat time, so they should be released too, by that line of reasoning. But in cases involving regular inmates, that's not how Texas' parole board rolls. Indeed, if the board was routinely so generous in rewarding good time and work time, the state literally could begin shutting down the majority of prisons tomorrow. However, the Sumrow parole decision was a special favor to a former "Prosecutor of the Year," not a typical example of how parole operates in Texas.

It'd be interesting to do a study of offenders convicted during Sumrow's tenure to see how many of them benefited so much from good time and work time credits. I'd bet the ranch it'd be very, very few.

Commissioner proposes inmate labor to reduce Harris jail crowding

I'm glad to see folks in Houston finally getting serious - really for the first time in years - about finding solutions to jail overcrowding besides building more cells and hiring more guards. Via Kuff, I was pleased to learn from the Houston Chronicle ("Inmate labor plan on the table," Dec. 8) that:

Harris County Commissioner El Franco Lee has proposed that the county consider putting more prisoners to work cleaning local bayous and parks.

The plan would give working inmates three days' credit per day served in jail instead of the two they receive now so they could earn earlier release, Lee said.

“I'm putting it up for discussion because there has been overcrowding and it is an issue that would bring Harris County in consistency with other parts of the state,” he said.

Part of the rationale for extra credit for work details is that it would free up space in the jail as nonviolent offenders get out more quickly.

Terry O'Rourke, first assistant county attorney, confirmed that other parts of the state offer the three-for-one program.

Good for Commissioner Lee. With this proposal, I'm reminded that a recent report (July) from the National Conference of State Legislatures titled "Cutting Corrections Costs: Earned Time Policies for State Prisoners" (pdf) suggested allowing inmates to earn early release through labor or participation in programming as a means of cutting expenses while creating incentives for reform. This shows the same concepts can be usefully applied at the county level.

I have very little doubt that if Harris County uses all the tools available to them, they can solve the jail overcrowding problem without new jail building. As I wrote yesterday, their short-term overcrowding crisis is much more a question of political will than demographic necessity.

"Earned time" in Texas not reducing costs as in other states

Yesterday I ran across a new report (July) from the National Conference of State Legislatures titled "Cutting Corrections Costs: Earned Time Policies for State Prisoners" (pdf), and was somewhat surprised to see Texas listed among states with supposedly more progressive policies for "earned time."

As opposed to "good time" credits that merely reward good behavior (i.e., an absence of misbehavior), "earned time" rewards participation in educational or vocational, substance abuse treatment or other rehabilitation classes as well as work programs. Says NCSL, "Even though some earned time laws offer inmates a fairly small reduction in prison terms, those few days can add up to a significant cost savings across hundreds or thousands of inmates."

What's more, "states with earned time provisions have seen recidivism rates either remain unchanged or actually drop," and the "reduced recidivism results in secondary savings through averted future crime and punishment costs." Said the report:

Studies of earned time have examined the effect on crime rates, recidivism and costs. In New York, for example, the Department of Correctional Services reviewed the state’s merit time program from 1997 through 2006. During that time, 24,000 inmates received six-month reductions in their minimum term, resulting in a savings of $369 million. Another $15 million in savings during a three-year period can be attributed to the need for less capital construction. The recidivism rate for the early-release group was lower (31 percent) than that for inmates serving the full term (39 percent) after three years.

In Texas "good conduct time" and "earned time" are conflated in the same law (see our statute). An appendix to the NCSL report lists Texas as having one of the more extensive programs, but in practice our "good conduct time" statute isn't reducing costs as much as this report predicts.

That's because Texas no longer has mandatory release when inmates' good time and time served equal their sentence (what used to be called "mandatory supervision"), so even if an inmate has earned extra good-time credit, they don't necessarily benefit from the rule - it's still up to the parole board whether they get out. And there's the rub: The current Board of Pardons and Parole has typically failed to follow its own release guidelines and doesn't systematically reward inmates who participate in programming while incarcerated.

According to parole attorney Bill Habern, accrued good time in Texas only benefits non-3(g) offenders (those are people who committed more serious violent crimes), and then its chief function is to expedite an inmate's first consideration by the parole board. But the parole board typically doesn't grant parole on the first try, he said, so in practice it's not actually reducing the prison population much, if at all.

"Good time earned does not shorten the actual length of one's sentence as it did prior to 1976," said Habern. "If a conviction gives rise to a five year sentence, then the offender is going to be under some type of supervision for five calendar years."

The more important function of good time in Texas, Habern opined, is as a sanction that TDCJ can take away from inmates as punishment. To that end, this session the Lege passed HB 93 by Hodge/Hinojosa which allows TDCJ to restore good-time credits taken away for discipline.

I also spoke yesterday with the author of the NCSL study, Alison Lawrence, and she confirmed Habern's interpretation of Texas' law. She said that in some other states good-time credit is actually taken off the overall sentence length and the cost savings estimates in her report are more applicable in those jurisdictions.

Lawrence forwarded me a copy of her notes on good-time policies in different jurisdictions (uploaded here on Google Documents), from which it's clear there are wide variations in how states run these programs. In Alabama, for example, good-time is not used for determining parole eligibility at all, it only reduces time spent on parole after release. Colorado, by contrast, lets nonviolent offenders use earned time to reduce their sentences up to 25%.

NCSL's purpose in compiling this report was to assist states in finding ways to reduce corrections costs without harming public safety. But Texas would need to alter its statute and parole policies before we gained that kind of benefit.

Good time, reentry debated today in House corrections

Light blogging from me today, but there are several bills up in the House Corrections Committee today aimed at giving the Department of Criminal Justice more tools to manage its inmate population and facilitating reentry to reduce recidivism among ex-prisoners:

• HB 93 (Terri Hodge) Relating to the restoration of good conduct time forfeited during a term of imprisonment.

• HB 94 (Terri Hodge) Relating to the application of laws awarding credit to an inmate for time between release on and subsequent revocation of parole, mandatory supervision, or conditional pardon.

• HB 1711 (Sylvester Turner) Relating to requiring the Texas Department of Criminal Justice to establish a comprehensive reentry and reintegration plan for offenders released or discharged from a correctional facility.

See more detail on HB 1711 in this fact sheet (pdf) from the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition.

Busy committees clear bills on prison rape, parole, TYC, medical release, gun rights, and local jail diversion

Time for Grits' weekly rundown of this weeks' Texas legislative committe action. It's the busiest time of the legislative season, and in the scheme of things the legislation moving this week in the Texas Legislature on criminal justice matters was pretty positive, I'm happy to report. Easily the biggest news was the presentation of Senate and House budgets, the criminal justice implications of which are discussed here.

But lots of other important legislation is moving, too. Here are some of the week's highlights, starting with a slew of bills passed out of the House Corrections Committee (not comprehensive):

• HB 1944 which would create an "ombudsman's" office to receive complaints from inmates about sexual assault and assist in compiling reports, making policies, and ensuring investigations don't fall through the cracks.
• HB 2938 (discussed here) would require parole for certain low-level offenders when they've completed minimum requirements.
• HB 2100 expanding the use of parole for seriously ill patients with high medical costs.
• HB 199 (discussed here) establishing a residential infant care program for mothers who give birth in TDCJ, more than 250 per year.
• HB 429 (discussed here) authorizing a study for options to manage and hopefully reduce increases in elderly inmates' healthcare costs.
• HB 46 expanding opportunities for inmates to earn "good time" as a means of improving inmate discipline.

Meanwhile, Rep. Hodge's HB 43 allowing TDCJ to restore good time as a disciplinary tool, which had previously passed out of Corrections, passed the House this week and headed to the Senate. Congrats to her on passing an excellent bill through the lower chamber.

The House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee passed a couple of very good bills, my favorite of which is HB 2391 by Madden (discussed here) which gives police officers discretion to cite and summons Class A and B misdemeanor offenders at their discretion instead of arresting them and taking them to jail. This will help with local jail overcrowding, keep officers on the street longer doing productive police work, and streamline misdemeanor court dockets clogged with offenders waiting in jail to have their cases heard. This bill's cause is aided by the fact that the idea is supported by jail administrators in Bexar County and also in Midland, Speaker Craddick's home turf.

Meanwhile Criminal Jurisprudence also approved Rep. Escobar's HB 2437, discussed here, which authorizes counties to establish "a pretrial victim-offender mediation program for cases involving a first-time offender arrested and charged under Title 7 of the Penal Code (Offenses Against Property). A county with a population of more than 100,000 would be required to establish a pretrial victim-offender mediation program." This bill, too, will help reduce local jail overcrowding, and I'm glad to see both of them make it out of committee.

Of course, it wouldn't be a Criminal Jurisprudence Committee if they didn't pass at least one criminal penalty increase this week, this time HB 401 which I've called the Congressman Mark Foley Act, enhancing penalties for already illegal text message sexual solicitations of minors by adults. This is pure grandstanding to my mind. The conduct described is already illegal and harshly punished under current law. How much you want to bet some version of it passes the House, anyway?

The House Law Enforcement Committee this week kicked out Rep. Carl Isett's HB 1815 which I've written about favorably, allowing Texans to legally carry a handgun in their car if it's stowed and they're not a felon or otherwise diqualified from doing so. I have high hopes this piece of legislation will make it all the way to the Governor's desk.

In the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, the passage this week of Chuy Hinojosa's SB 103, a major Texas Youth Commission reform bill, made headlines (see prior Grits coverage). Rather than go through the details of the substitute, let me refer you to MSM accounts here, here, and here for more detail. I was also glad to see the committee kicked out Sen. Whitmire's SB 838 which creates intermediate sanctions options for parole violators that should reduce overall parole revocation rates.

As described here, the Senate Health and Human Services Committee this week approved SB 308 by Deuell to allow local governments to operate or approve nonprofit needle exchange programs.

Finally, on the House floor next week (in addition to a bad bill, HB 1422, discussed previously), an important piece of legislation is up on Monday, HB 1178 by Escobar, a slightly different version of which was vetoed by Gov. Perry in 2005 "due to concerns that it would impact traffic court proceedings," according to the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition. "HB 1178 resolves those concerns, by applying only to cases before county and district courts in which defendants are facing confinement in jail." (See prior Grits coverage).

HB 1178 is designed to ensure that defendants are made aware of their right to speak with an attorney before prosecutors seek to question them or negotiate a plea, according to a Texas Criminal Justice Coalition's fact sheet in support of the bill. "The bill also changes current law to ensure that defendants can try to hire a lawyer on their own without losing the opportunity to request appointed counsel if it turns out that they cannot afford to hire a lawyer."

As always, see the capitol website for more details on these and other bills at the Texas Lege.