Oldest faith-based initiative in Texas prisons gets no respect

Like Doc Berman, I support and appreciate most faith-based prisoner support, though I don't think prisoners should be treated as a captive audience for proselytizing by anyone.

But I certainly think before Texas launches too many new faith-based programs, we should fully fund the oldest faith-based intiative in the history of Texas corrections: the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's (TDCJ's) Chaplaincy program. Prisons chaplains are the Rodney Dangerfields of faith-based initiatives: They get no respect.

In his new budget, Gov. Perry proposed a new one-thousand bed faith based program starting this spring, declaring:

The Governor believes faith-based programs should be expanded whenever possible in adult correctional facilities to reduce violence and recidivism. Although state funds cannot expressly be used for this purpose, TDCJ will announce an additional 1,000 prison beds in existing units this spring. The Governor supports this and future expansions whenever possible.

Depending on the programming, I might be okay with that, but here's my question: Aren't we putting the cart before the horse? Shouldn't Texas fully fund its Chaplaincy program first?

At yesterday's House Appropriations Criminal Justice Subcommittee hearing (I was listening to it here), Rep. Jim McReynolds said he had constituents who were concerned about the chaplains' budget being cut. TDCJ staff told him (and Chairman Turner confirmed) that Texas' chaplains' program had been slashed by approximately 50% in 2003. That funding has never been restored!

Man, somebody please tell me again how the religious right has taken over Texas state government?

So Texas has gutted its own Chaplaincy program, and now, without restoring it, Gov. Perry wants to create a new "faith based" program that only serves 1/150th of the prisoners, and which will be run by whom? A private contractor? A church of this or that denomination? Chuck Colson?

Shouldn't Texas for starters, in this time of surplus, just double current funding for TDCJ's chaplains' program, if only to get it back to its level of support it had when the state's current leadership took over the reins?

Thanks for Toughin'

Today's criminal justice policies sometimes seem so absurd and counterproductive that there's nothing left to do but make fun of them. So let's!

Go watch this short, work friendly video by cartoonist Mark Fiore right now starring "Sammy Li'l Shiv," giving an animated perspective on how a massive prison-industrial complex makes public safety problems worse instead of better.

And as Sammy says, "Thanks for toughin'! Hooray, and stab away!"

Via Doc Berman and Howard Bashman.

Lose 1,000 inmates in 3 months! Ask me how!

Wait ... listen! What was that? Oh. It was the sound of the other shoe, dropping.

Following up on the last post, when was the last time you ever heard of an American jail reducing its inmate population by 1,000 people in 1-3 months?

That's the scope of the exodus Dallas officials must facilitate or else the Texas Commission on Jail Standards will tell them to stop taking inmates.

Is it possible? Without a doubt.

Dallas' jail population last month was 7,070, according to the latest monthly report from the TCJS. According to those data, 23.9% of Dallas inmates are low-level state jail felons or misdemeanor violators who have not been convicted yet - they're sitting in jail awaiting trial mostly because they cannot afford bail.

To compare with another large metropolitan Texas county, misdemeanor and state jail felony pretrial detainees make up just 10.5% of Harris County's jail population.

If Dallas just reduced those two categories of pretrial defendants to Houston's percentages by giving more of these defendants personal bond, they'd reduce the total jail population by 947 people, nearly making their entire goal.

I also notice that 215 Dallas jail inmates last month were state jail felons serving time in county jail instead of prison as part of their sentence. I haven't looked at these particular cases, but often that means judges are requiring county jail time as a condition of probation (Texas judges can require up to six months jail time from felony probationers). In other words, those probation conditions are entirely in the judges' hands, and they would do well given the current crisis to revisit them.

Not only can this be done, it should have been done a long time ago.

While we're on the topic, this might be a good time to re-link to Grits' best practices to reduce jail overcrowding, and to other Grits coverage about Texas counties' efforts to manage overincarceration at their jails.

MORE: From The Wretched of the Earth, who says the Lege could help the Dallas jail by fixing this problem.

Update from Motel Hell: Fixing the Dallas County Jail

At Dallas Sidebar, Proximo, who works at the Dallas County DA's office, says everyone is pulling together in Dallas to accomplish the Herculean (or perhaps Sisyphian) task of reducing the jail population by 1,000 inmates in the next three months. (The Commission on Jail Standards has said they won't let them take new prisoners after that unless guard-to-inmate ratios are lowered.) But it's ulitmately Sheriff Valdez's problem, he says, and she'll have to take responsibility for it. I offered a suggestion or two in the comments and encourage those interested to go do the same.

Fabelo's Justice Reinvestment presentation online

I'm glad to see that the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition has posted online the presentation that Dr. Tony Fabelo gave recently to last week's joint meeting of the House Corrections and Senate Criminal Justice Committees. The PDF file contains the power point slides Fabelo showed to committtee members summarizing his "Justice Reinvestment" report that I mentioned here.

In particular I want to go through the portions about Houston's crime and re-entry patterns in more detail. According to the report, just 10 of Houston's 88 neighborhoods account for almost $100 million in state incarceration costs each year. Fabelo found that 50% of former inmates returning to Houston go back to neighborhoods that account for just 15% of the population. Unsurprisingly, these also tend to be areas with the worst poverty and underperforming schools.

See additional Grits coverage from that hearing:

• Some TX prisons are 62% staffed, trustees doing guards' work
• Whitmire and Madden: Programmatic decisions, not population growth, causing prison overcrowding
• Fabelo: 'We've created the Walmart of prisons in Texas'
• Following Rissie Owens
• Fabelo: Plummeting parole rates, excessive probation revocation boost prison overcrowding
• Texas' high incarceration rate yields lesser crime reductions
• Waiting lists for programs heighten prison overcrowding
• Hearing will highlight new Fabelo report

MORE: Along the same lines, and drawing heavily on Fabelo's work, here's a copy of testimony submitted yesterday by the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition promoting alternatives to more prison building at a House Appropriations Criminal Justice Subcommittee hearing.

Juvie probation investment could save $100 million in TYC incarceration costs

The Texas House Appropriations Criminal Justice Subcommittee took up it initial hearings again this morning. Here's a link to the video, and a few highlights:

Legislative Budget Board staff, testifying on the Juvenile Probation Commission, said that 2,600 students are currently in local Alternative Education Programs in Texas becaue they have been expelled (so the state must pay for them), and 4,100 are there at the option of the local school district. Apparently the agency thinks they're not getting nearly enough resources to manage these problem students: JPC is asking that funding increase of $59 to $90 per student per day in Alternative Education Programs (the total average cost per student is $125 per student per day - counties pick up the rest), but except for Chairman Turner the subcommittee didn't seem too excited about increasing the reimbursement to counties.

The JPC's executive director Vicki Spriggs testified that failures at employee retention had been costing her 62-person agency many experienced staff. She oversees a decentralized system that requires interactions with 5,000 local JPOs, county probation departments, county commissioners courts, local judical councils, etc.. She called on enhancing community supervision for more serious juvenile offenders to divert them from winding up in TYC.

Two weeks ago, JPC sat down with chief juvenile probation officers statewide to ask why are kids being sent to TYC, and they said a lack of services locally is the primary reason. JPC estimated that an $8.3 million investment per year would keep 1,028 kids from going to TYC, resulting in a savings in $100 million in TYC incarceration costs over the next two biennium. The governor's budget only recommended $5.3 million per year for that line item, but Spriggs said that would simply mean more kids wind up in more expensive TYC lockup units.

Spriggs also mentioned their office is flooded with open records requests and abuse complaints from families and needs staff designated to handle those functions. She asked for designated investigators for abuse cases and also for staff with some mental health backgrounds - right now, she said, no one on her staff has that expertise.

New Mexico considers needed eyewitness reforms

We need legislation like this filed in Texas before the March 9 deadline.

Via Bruce Schneier, (where as always the comments are excellent, including to one that pointed to this article on creation of false memories), I was happy to see our neighbors to the west in New Mexico are pushing for reforms in eyewitness identification procedures used by police investigators to ensure greater accuracy. Wrote Schneier:

According to this article, "Mistaken eyewitness identification is the leading cause of wrongful convictions." Given what I've been reading recently about memory and the brain, this does not surprise me at all.

New Mexico is currently debating a bill reforming eyewitness identification procedures:

Under the proposed regulations, an eyewitness must provide a written description before a lineup takes place; there must be at least six individuals in a live lineup and 10 photos in a photographic line-up; and the members of the lineup must be shown sequentially rather than simultaneously.

The bill would also restrict the amount of time in which law enforcement could bring a suspect by for a physical identification by a victim or witness to within one hour after the crime was reported. Anything beyond one hour would require a lineup with multiple photos or people.

Those are sensible reforms that don't put additional hardships on police, although give me my druthers and I'd add that the officer who runs the lineup should not be the primary investigator nor know which person or photo is the suspect. I've long argued at Grits that these types of changes are crucial in Texas to restore confidence in the criminal justice system - especially given our experience with so many recent exonerations based on faulty eyewitness testimony, we need to do this and a whole lot more.

Rissie Owens still won't talk

UPDATE

What does Rissie Owens have to hide?

After a KHOU reporter spent last Tuesday chasing Parole Board Chairwoman Rissie Owens around the capitol seeking comments for this story, her PR person sent him a letter that KHOU posted online saying flatly that she wouldn't agree to be interviewed on camera. Period. The flack did provide some statistics responding to the questions Greenblatt was shouting after Owens as she scurried away from him at the capitol last week, but I thought they were presented in a misleading way. Here's the letter's text:

Mr. Greenblatt:

Chairman Owens asked that I contact you and advise that she regrets that she will be unable to grant you an on camera interview at this time. We do not recall any appointment with you for an interview with her and she does not recall requests for information since your attempt to interview her as she exited a hearing at the Capitol. She will prepare a response to specific questions if requested to do so.

Regarding the last question I believe you asked her, the Sunset Commission’s Report was referenced as reflecting more violent and sex offenders were being paroled than ever before.

The discussion in the Sunset report to which you refer involves their finding that the Parole Board is allegedly not following its approved parole guidelines. Below is some background on parole guideline information you may find helpful.

The revised parole guidelines consist of two major components that interact to provide a single score. The first is a Risk Assessment Instrument that weighs both static and dynamic factors associated with the offender's record. The other component is Offense Severity class. After both of these factors have been considered, the two components of the guidelines are then merged into a matrix that creates the offender’s Parole Guidelines Score based on the intersection of his risk level and the offense severity rating. Parole Guidelines Scores range from 1 for an individual with the poorest probability for success, up to 7 for an offender with the greatest probability of success.

The higher an offender’s score, the better risk he is predicted to be to complete parole. The guidelines are not automatic nor is the parole guidelines score presumptive as to whether an offender will be paroled. Board members retain the discretion to vote outside the guidelines when the circumstances of an individual case merit their doing so.

Please reference the attached spreadsheet depicting the Board’s voting in FY 2005 with relation to offense type (parole and discretionary MS) and parole guideline levels (parole approval rates only).

As you can see the Board in this past fiscal year ending 8/31/2006 reviewed 26,993 violent or sex offenders and approved for parole only 18.26%. This contrasts their review of 43,401 non-violent/non-sex offender cases, of which they approved 33.53%. Secondly, of those offenders with the low parole guideline scores of 1 and 2 (high risk and high offense severity), they approved 5% of the level 1 scores (37 of 728) and 15% of the level 2 cases (1,346 of 9,004). The criticism of the Board’s use of their guidelines does not involve their low approval rate of violent and sex offender cases, but rather their failure to have a higher approval rate for parole guideline level 6 and 7 cases. The Board retains the discretionary authority to make parole release decisions based on their overall review of each case considered and they have chosen to vote outside their guidelines in some cases when they believe it to be in the best interests of society and for the safety of the public. Many offenders incarcerated for DWI offenses score in the level 6 and 7 guideline level, but most persons incarcerated for such are not in prison for their first DWI conviction, and “in-prison” substance abuse treatment is severely lacking. Many of these cases may be denied parole upon initial parole review despite guideline scores of 6 or 7.

Lastly, please refer to the TDCJ website under “Publications” for TDCJ’s FY 2005 Statistical Report and FY 2006 Statistical Report. There are voluminous statistics there you may find of interest.

Page 21 of the FY 2005 report reflects 10,522 or 32% of the 32,124 offenders received in prison that year were for “Violent” offense types, which was the highest category of new receives. Page 42 of that report reflects that in FY 2005, 5,520 “Violent” offense type offenders were released to parole supervision. This was 18% of the 30,885 total releases from prison to parole supervision.

The FY 2006 Statistical Report, page 22, reflects 10,677 or 32% of the 33,253 offenders received in prison that year were for “Violent” offense types, which as usual is the highest category of new receives to prison. Page 43 of that report reflects that in FY 2006, 5,856 “Violent” offense type offenders were released. This was again 18% of the 32,585 total releases from prison to parole supervision.

From previous information I provided you, the prison system's total population rose steadily each year from 2001 to 2006. The more offenders received each year and the impact of more offenders reaching calculated parole eligibility, results in more parole reviews; however, the statistics over the last two years do not reflect any increase in the parole release percentages of those with violent or sex offenses (18% of the total releases each year).

Troy Fox, Board Administrator

Austin Board Office

Mr. Fox provides some interesting stats, but he's arguing against a straw man. Of course the release guidelines countenance lower release rates for violent offenders than nonviolent ones, so the low release rate for level 1 offenders, for example, proves nothing.

The criticism is that the parole board is MORE likely to follow its guidelines for those offenders than for lower level nonviolent ones. Their release rates for the higher level offenders tend to fall within the guidelines. For level 6 and 7 offenders, they don't. And now we're to the point where those low-level offenders are taking up spaces needed for more violent ones. THAT's the complaint - Mr. Fox is serving up a plate of statistical red herring.

Also, if 32% of people entering prison last year were there for "violent type offenses," doesn't that mean that 68% were for NON-violent offenses? If most people entering prison are nonviolent offenders and the lowest level offenders aren't being paroled according to the guidelines, then THAT's precisely why "the prison system's total population rose steadily each year from 2001 to 2006." Don't you get it, Mr. Fox? That was the Sunset Commission's point! The Parole Board is CAUSING Texas' overincarceration problem.

What a disingenuous response! No wonder Rissie Owens doesn't want to speak on camera.

UPDATE: From the "Just the facts, ma'am," department, see page 17 of this presentation from Tony Fabelo for a statistical adumbration of how the parole board is more likely to follow its release guidelines for high-risk than for low-risk offenders. Sorry Mr. Fox, that dog won't hunt.

DPS: REAL ID Act would cost $268 million to implement in Texas

DPS head honcho Tommy Davis told the House Appropriations Criminal Justice Subcommittee this afternoon that it would cost Texas taxpayers $268 million dollars over two years for Texas to implement the federal REAL ID Act, including 737 new full-time employees for at least the next five years.

That's a huge sum of money - a LOT more than the $13 million the House Law Enforcement Committee estimated it would cost to implement. Congress has said that if states don't implement the changes by May 2008, their driver licenses will no longer be accepted for a variety of federal purposes, including entry onto airplanes or federal courthouses. But I think that's a bluff - especially since, as Davis mentioned, the federal rules haven't even been issued yet, I think it just can't reasonably happen.

Rep. Debbie Riddle was especially anxious about implementing the REAL ID Act, declaring she wouldn't "sleep better at night" until it was done. To me, this is a boondoggle of epic proportions - especially at a state pricetag of more than a quarter billion dollars!

Several states have already said they won't meet the feds' timeline, and Davis said the federal legislation included "zero" dollars to reimburse states for the cost. As I've written earlier, "maybe Texas should just call the feds' bluff and wait to see if things change under the Democratic Congress."

An LBB rep said the REAL ID Act would cost all states a total of $11 billion, with a "B," while only $40 million has been allocated so far, all to the federal DHS. LBB recommends that Congress be petitioned for money, flexibility and especially more time for implementation. There will also be phase-out costs, they warned, after five years when fewer FTE staff positions and facilities would likely be required.

LBB said implemeting the program would require an additional fee of $15 per driver license and renewal to pay for the program.

MORE from security guru Bruce Schneier analyzing the flaws in the REAL ID program, and why states should reject it. Also, the Lufkin Daily News wants the Lege to reject the program.

DPS Colonel: Perry didn't ask him about agency reorg and he disagrees with it

Col. Tommy Davis of DPS told the House Appropriations Criminal Justice Subcommittee today that no one from the Governor's office had spoken to him before issuing their proposal to move the driver license division from his agency to the Department of Transportation. Davis said DPS had been the custodian of Texas driver license records since the state began issuing licenses in 1935.

Turner asked if there is a good reason for uniformed officers to participate in DPS' driver licenses function. Davis said he disagrees with the Governor's proposal and said that driver licenses are a law enforcement function. He says many people are arrested on warrants when they come in to get their license renewed, so officers need to be there, plus they add an additional layer of security.

Steve McCraw, the Governor's homeland security director, said his office had come up with the idea "in house" in consultation with the Governor without speaking with DPS, but that it was "just a recommendation." He said the Governor directed him to act "like the bomb is going to go off next week," so he thought this should happen immediately. Chairman Turner, though, said he thought it "didn't feel like"a good idea to remove commissioned officers from driver license offices.

TCLEOSE: 770 Texas peace officers currently indicted or under arrest!

More from the House Appropriations Criminal Justice Subcommittee hearing this afternoon:

The Texas Commission on Law Enforcement Officer Standards and Education (TCLEOSE) is the licensing agency, said the director, for 75,000 peace officers and 25,000 jailers in Texas and supervises 280 peace officer academies. They also (in theory) regulate police misconduct (though mostly that means rescinding officers' licenses if they've been convicted of felonies or official oppression).

According to the director's testimony, there are currently 770 licensed Texas peace officers who are either indicted or under arrest, and whom TCLEOSE is monitoring to ensure their license is revoked if they're convicted. TCLEOSE is frustrated that LBB's proposal doesn't fund travel for their staff to monitor these officers.

That's a helluva lot of arrested and indicted cops!! I've never seen a comprehensive study of indicted or arrested Texas officers, but I had no idea the numbers were that high.

Huge federal reimbursements to DPS boosted agency budget

LBB just told the House Appropriations Criminal Justice Subcommittee that the Texas Department of Public Safety's budget declined 40% from 2005 to 2006 primarily because of federal reimbursements for 2005 expenditures due to Hurricanes Katrina and Rita. DPS is a huge agency with around 7,500 employees, so that's a big influx of money.

Wouldn't it be interesting to see an audit of how those funds were spent? What lessons could be learned through such an audit that might help do a better job next time? I mean, remember all those motorists stranded on the highways during Hurricane Rita? However they spent the money, obviously it was a) a huge amount and b) could have been spent more effectively.

Notes from House Appropriations Criminal Justice Subcommittee hearings, part one

Here's theLiveStream for the House Appropriation Criminal Justice Subcommittee going on right now. You can also see video from this morning's meeting, and also from their hearing yesterday, for those who are interested. They took invited, preliminary testimony only, discussing LBB recommendations regarding criminal justice related agencies. More later but here are a few highlights so far.

From the hearing this morning (2-7-07):

The Forensic Science Commission doesn't want to be tied to the Department of Public Safety because DPS operates the crime labs the Forensic Science Commission is supposed to be regulating. Right now DPS is in charge both of regulating their own crime labs and operating them. An FSC representative suggested the Attorney General might be a good place to house the commission. He said the commission has been unable to act on complaints by Barry Scheck's Innocence Project and others and aren't being investigated because of a lack of funding.

Col. Tommy Davis of the Department of Public Safety said there are less than 20 crime labs in the state in addition to DPS' 13 labs. DPS is in charge of certification, but they do not investigate complaints against the labs, he said. Davis knew of no entity in Texas that would be responsibility for investigating complaints against labs except the agency that operated the lab, as happened in Houston.

A rep from the Texas Commission on Jail Standards said that currently 11 jails are not in compliance, including Dallas and Houston. Chairman Turner asked what the longest time had been that a jail was out of compliance, requiring variances, etc. The answer: Some small counties with historical jails have never been in compliance and require variances to continue to operate. Harris County has received variances to add beds within the same spaces. Every jail is inspected once per year, TCJS said, and those that are not in compliance receive followup visists.

Currently according to TCJS, there are 84,308 beds available in Texas county jails with 69,286 inmates, including 1,900 state prisoners in contract beds. Turner was interested in how many beds were available for contracting use for TDCJ overcrowding, but TCJS said reaalistically there was very little extra space, especially beds classified for more dangerous offenders like TDJC might send to them. About 20% of jail offenders are identified as mentally ill, and in particular segregating these offenders from the general population makes it impossible to utilize every last bed.

TCJS is seeking funding to hire a "diversion specialist" to help counties seek solutions to local jail overcrowding, and a fourth inspector to cover Texas 254 counties. The diversion specialist would essentially work with counties like a consultant suggesting methods to reduce overcrowding and divert offenders to more appropriate punishments.

And from yesterday afternoon's hearing of the same subcommittee (2-6):

A rep from the Attorney General said the Crime Victims Fund currently has a balance of $57 million, with $13 million in an auxillary fund. They anticipate this biennium spending $104.8 million for payments, $11 million to the AG for overhead, and $2 million to retirement funds, which should leave about $20 million left at the end of the biennium. An LBB representative, however, said the fund will be bankrupt by 2011.

Turner asked, are there organizations being funded that might be considered "questionable" from the crime victims' fund? While offering no specifics, the AG said there may have been validity to those concerns in the past, but not today. That's an interesting exchange - I wonder what they're talking about?

Texas Supreme Court Chief Justice Wallace Jefferson pointed out that funding for the courts in Texas made up only .4% of the state budget. He was there in particular to advocate for a higher budget for the Texas Supreme Court, which has a $4 million annual budget, he said, 93% of which goes for labor costs. However, he said, "Funding limitations are restricting the court's ability to expeditiously dispense justice." Moreover, "When courts are underfunded they are less efficient and less effective," he said, calling for money for additional court staff. (Jefferson also called for judges to be appointed instead of elected, but committee members scoffed at the idea; Jim McReynolds told him, "We have to run for office, too."

The Court of Criminal Appeals has apparently had problems managing its various grants and is asking for money to create a grants administrator. I'd like to know more about that, and there's an audit of those grants that they referenced which I'd also sure like to see. Judge Barbara Hervey testified representing the Court. Last year the CCA disposed of 11,000 cases, she said, and 92% of the agency's court goes toward salary. The CCA has a bigger caseload than the Supreme Court, a staffer said in response to questioning by Rep. McReynolds, which is why it has a larger budget and staff. Sixty five percent of court dockets in Texas, said Judge Hervey, are criminal cases.

CCA has several committees including an educational committee and a grants committees, said Hervey, and she heads the grants committee. They get $20 million in grants to educate judges, defense attorneys and prosecutors. There are presently eight grantees who give judicial education. There is a separate $300K budget for educating on issues of actual innocence.

Morning criminal justice headlines

I've got an early appointment then a busy morning, but here are a few headlines that caught my eye that may interest Grits readers:

Editorial support for stronger probation
The Waco Herald Tribune and the Houston Chronicle both had good editorials supporting Chairmans Madden and Whitmire's proposal for prison alternatives. My friend Ana Yañez Correa explained in the Houston story why the idea has gained traction among lawmakers, "A lot of it has to do with the amount of money that taxpayers are spending on a product that is not reducing criminal activity."

Dallas jail must cut population by 1,000
Dallas County must reduce its jail population from 7,000 ton 6,000, or else increase staffing, or the Commission on Jail Standards will make them stop accepting prisoners in three months. That's a lot of folks. The Morning News reports the County is now regretting its decision several years ago to abolish its pretrial services division. "Judges will release nonviolent low-level offenders with lower bonds, personal recognizance bonds or a notice to appear in court at a later date," reported the News, but do not have the benefit of a systematic analysis of defendants to aid their decisions. Sounds like in addition to hiring guards, Dallas County needs to get its pretrial services section back online, pronto.

The Dukes of Cameron County?
The Cameron County Sheriff told media in December he had regulators approval to build a tent jail, but now says he never talked to them and the Commission on Jail Standards must have lost the paperwork he mailed in. Yeah right. It turns out there would be no need for a tent jail if Cameron weren't leasing jail space to the feds on an entrepreneurial basis. The Brownsville Herald rightly compared the Sheriff to Roscoe P. Coltrane.

Probation dollars unspent as legislators ask for more
Legislators are seeking answers for why the TDCJ probation department returned $25 million dollars last year that was earmarked for local probation departments. I think it's because of the probation department's flawed, per-probationer funding formula that punishes agencies if probationers successfully complete their probation requirements. As House Corrections Chairman Jerry Madden told the Statesman's Mike Ward, "It could be that programs could not be brought on line fast enough, or the programs were limited for some reason," he said. "I'm not ready to say that $24 million was a problem until I know where the funds came from and why they came back to the state."

Perry criminal justice budget skimps on funding solutions

Here's Gov. Perry's new proposed budget, both the press release version and the whole thing (pdf), and here's what jumped out at me:

Despite his support for treatment programs in today's State of the State speech, the Governor proposed about 90% less money for treatment programs than recent legislative proposals.

I don't see anything in Perry's budget about increased prison guard pay, and nothing about revamping probation funding to make it less reliant on per-probationer stipends. Nothing to assist with local county jail overcrowding. Nothing to address the backlog of mentally ill defendants in county jails waiting for state hospital space to open up.

He even proposed an 11 percent decrease in the budget for the Texas Commission on Jail Standards at a time when Texas is undergoing a jail building boom.

In a chart on p. 35 detailing overall agency increases and budget reductions, Perry actually proposed slashing funding for the Texas Youth Commission by $56 million from their base budget, or about 11% of the total - this for an agency with such massive budget shortfalls that even Senate Finance Chairman Steve Ogden, perhaps that chambers' biggest budget hawk, thinks TYC's funding must be dramatically increased.

Bottom line: Like his speech today, Governor Perry's budget addresses Texas' biggest criminal justice problems primarily by ignoring them. The Legislature cannot afford to do the same.

Committee process starting to crank up at Texas Lege

I noticed several criminal justice related committees have posted their first hearings, starting first thing tomorrow morning:

• House Appropriations Criminal Justice Subcommittee, testimony on LBB recommendations, 8 a.m., Wednesday, 2-7.

• House Corrections Committee, Organizational meeeting, Thursday, 2-8

• House Law Enforcement, Organizational meeting, Monday, 2-12

• House Criminal Jursprudence, Organizational meeting, Tuesday, 2-13

And starting at 8:30 a.m. tomorrow (Wednesday, 2-7), the Transportation and Homeland Security Committee, chaired by John Carona in the Senate, will actually begin hearing bills, including a piece of legislation I've supported, SB 112, that would disallow peace officers from confiscating weapons without cause during a disaster, as happened during Katrina in New Orleans. Frank Corte is carrying the companion bill, HB 258, in the House.

There's another piece of legislation up in the Transportation and Homeland Security Committee tomorrow that I'm much less fond of: SB 153 by Wentworth that would create a new crime if the adult in the passenger seat with an temporary license holder is intoxicated, asleep, or "is engaged in an activity that prevents the person from observing and responding to the actions of the operator." The first two, maybe - but that last clause is far too sweeping and could encompass activities as mundane as speaking on a cell phone, or even looking out for traffic instead of watching the "actions of the operator."

Texas has enough petty crimes on the books. We need fewer, not more of them. I'm sure there's some terrible story about an auto accident that will be told at the hearing, and no doubt the family, whoever it is, experienced a terrible tragedy. But that's what the civil courts are for - the criminal courts shouldn't be involved when the full extent of criminal intent is sleeping or talking on a cell phone.

You can watch all committee hearings for both the Texas House and Senate online, btw, either in real time or archived later, at your convenience.

Oklahoma rethinks incarceration for low-level offenders

While I continue to maintain that that the best thing ever to come out of Oklahoma is Interstate-35, I'm happy to see via Corrections Sentencing that Texas' neighbors to the north are reconsidering mass incarceration for low-level offenders along similar lines to recent Texas proposals.

The biggest difference, their Governor is championing the program personally, proposing $20 million in new drug treatment spending in Oklahama, compared to Gov. Perry's recommendation today for just $14.7 million in treatment spending for much larger Texas, 90% less than what legislative studies say is necessary. As AP reported ("Henry proposes 'smart' public safety plan," Feb. 6):

Gov. Brad Henry on Wednesday proposed to expand his "Smart on Crime" program, which he said would preserve prison space for violent criminals.

Henry said he will set aside an extra $20 million in his executive budget, to be presented to the Oklahoma Legislature on Monday, to finance his program, which stresses drug courts, mental health courts, juvenile courts, drug and alcohol treatment, work programs and restitution.

"For too many years, the state has spent hundreds of millions of dollars warehousing low-level, nonviolent offenders and scrambling to find prison space for the truly violent criminals," the governor said.

"We have to be tough on crime and lock up dangerous offenders, but we need to be smart on crime, too," he added. "That means punishing low-level offenders in a more effective way that protects the public safety without giving them free room and board in a taxpayer-financed prison cell.

Abilene PD requires recording interrogations

Via West Texas Beat, kudos to the Abilene Police Department for installing digital recording equipment in their interrogation room recently after community members accused police of coercing a suspect during an interrogation. An APD spokesman in the local news video said the department wanted to show the community that "in Abilene we don't do that, we just don't do that."

You've got to admit, that's putting your money where your mouth is. Usually in Texas, when coerced confessions are alleged, the next words out of a police spokesperson's mouth after "we just don't do that" is to give an excuse why the department won't record interrogations.

I appreciate that Abilene PD took a proactive step to improve their process instead of just reacting defensively to criticism. Some of the other chiefs in the state would do well to take note of how much that approach can do for community relations.

Beyond the PR value, though, this is a great idea that I think should be required of all departments by statute. The technology is increasingly affordable and in the digital age where the entire world is on YouTube there's just no good reason not to record interrogations from start to finish, made available to both prosecution and the defense.

My guess is cameras would actually help prosecutors more often than defense lawyers, but in cases where coerced or false confessions are at issue, it would provide evidence to avoid what right now are inevitably he-said-she-said disputes.

RELATED: Florida just changed its lineup procedures in response to faulty eyewitness testimony that led to a high profile wrongful conviction, and a blue ribbon California panel recently made similar recommendations.

Perry Pushes Prisons in State of the State

The Houston Chronicle's Clay Robison reports that Gov. Rick Perry will call for new prison building today in his State of the State address. No word on where he thinks Texas will find the guards to run them - inmates are staffing some of the prisons we've got now.

Legislative leaders have proposed ways to avoid building new prisons, but apparently the Governor isn't interested. According to the Chronicle, Perry will suggest investing just 10% of the amount on treatment proposed recently by Rep. Jerry Madden and Sen. John Whitmire.

Here's perhaps the biggest irony: There likely would be no overcrowding problem at all if it weren't for Perry's 2005 vetoes. What's more, the latest research indicates that, at Texas' current incarceration rates, more prisons could actually increase crime.

Earlier estimates found that new prisons would cost taxpayers between $50-75 million per year in debt service for the next 20 years, and another $75 million annually in operating costs, ad infinitum. That's a lot of scratch. Can you think of anything else you'd rather Texas spend the money on?

UPDATE FROM THE SPEECH: More prisons didn't make it into the speech, apparently, and the Houston Chronicle has changed the online story predicting such to say the governor released a budget calling for two new prisons and converting juvie units to adult lockups. I haven't seen the budget yet, but it wasn't in the speech.

Governor Perry made a big deal how the state needed to do more for children of incarcerated parents, and I couldn't agree more. But all he proposed was to continue giving recently allocated federal grant funds to Big Brothers/Big Sisters' Amachi-Texas program. Given the statistic he cited that 70% of children with incarcerated parents in Texas will follow their parents one day into prison, that's a pretty penny ante response to such a large public safety problem. Could that really be the only intervention the Governor could think of to help these kids? Let's hope the Lege has more ideas than that.

Later, the governor said he supports harsher penalties for sex offenders, but that we "cannot ignore" thousands of nonviolent offenders and should focus spending on treatment so they don't return to prison. It was an applause line, but as they panned the crowd I only saw Sylvester Turner stand up for it. That sounds good, but it doesn't really jibe with the Chronicle's report that Perry's budget proposed 10% of the amount advocated by Chairmans Whitmire and Madden. I guess we'll soon see. On criminal justice, though, I'm left with more questions than answers from Gov. Perry's State of the State.

NUTHER UPDATE: Here's the text of the speech. MORE: The SA Express News, which shares a capitol bureau with the Houston Chronicle, still has the original article posted predicting more prisons would be in there. One wonders, if it was there when the article was written, why was prison building removed from today's speech at the last minute? I'd have liked to have been a fly on the wall when they had that conversation.

AND MORE: Mike Ward also predicted on the Statesman's legislative blog, that "Gov. Rick Perry will propose adding 1,600 prison beds to Texas’ already huge system. But," he added, "no new prisons could be the result."

Huh? Perhaps Perry was for new prisons, before he was against them? Wrote Ward:

Perry’s proposal calls for 1,000 additional medium-security beds and 600 more from the conversion of a Texas Youth Commission lockup to hold adults. The 1,000 beds could be for DWI offenders, perhaps using existing facilities that are now holding maximum-security felons, Perry aides say.

The 600 youth commission beds, of course, are already built.

That’s basically the same plan that Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman John Whitmire, D-Houston, and House Corrections Committee Chairman Jerry Madden, R-Richardson, already have proposed as part of their prison reform plan.

Explains Perry’s press secertary Robert Black: “The 1,000 could be for DWIs, yes, or other programs. It doesn’t necessarily mean two brand new prisons.”

Whether Black changed his tune or Robison got it wrong, I think this means the Governor, for now at least, has come down on the side of Chairmans Whitmire and Madden and against Lt. Gov. Dewhurst on the question of more prison building.

But that still leaves the Governor's budget, which doesn't seem to jibe with Black's most recent comments. A capitol source forwards me this short analysis of the Governor's criminal justice budget request, which has not yet been made public. He's asking for:

• $14 million for additional rehabilitation and parole placement options for more than 5,000 prisoners (That amount seems underbudgeted for 5,000 prisoners).
• Authorization for TDCJ to use $125.8 million of existing bond authority to contract with a vendor for the design and construction of two 1,000 bed medium-security facilities (and renovate TYC facilities to accommodate 600 offenders).
• $97.3 million for Contracted capacity, an increase of $34.4 million compared to the 2006-2007 level.

So by those figures, Perry appears much less committed to treatment options than his State of the State made it sound. Indeed, the budget proposal relies heavily on leased prison space, spending $100 million on contract beds from counties and private prisons over the next biennium.

I'm not sure where all this leaves us, because the Legislature makes the budget, not the Governor, in any event. The next move belongs to Chairmans Whitmire and Madden, and to House and Senate budget writers.

FINAL UPDATE: Here's more on Gov. Perry's proposed budget.

Brazos inmates needlessly sleeping on jail floor

"It's pretty common to have people sleeping on the floor" in the Brazos County Jail says Sheriff Chris Kirk, who with the county commissioners hopes to spend upwards of $30 million to build an addition to the jail . Like many other jails in the state, the Brazos jail has trouble handling its regular weekend surge. Reported the Bryan College Station Eagle ("Brazos jail is at capacity," Feb. 4):

In the middle of the week, the jail population usually hovers around its 546-person capacity. That number rises to more than 580 during the weekends, Sims said. The jail population reached its all-time high in July when 601 inmates were confined.

County Judge Randy Sims declared, "My biggest scare is that the bond issue will not pass," Sims said. "What will we do then?" My answer: Use your noggin. There are quite a few other ways to skin this cat.

Indeed, Brazos County's Jail overcrowding is basically a self-inflicted wound caused by politicians who'd rather be "tuff" than sensible about crime and punishment. If the pols put jail bonds on the ballot, I hope Brazos follows the lead of Smith County voters and rejects the new jail.

Here's the key thing to remember: Like most Texas counties with overcrowded jails, most inmates in Brazos County haven't been convicted yet, they're sitting around waiting to go to trial. (Nobody is incarcerated forever in county jail. Ultimately everyone leaves, either to go home or on to go on to state prison.)

A decade ago 30% of jail inmates statewide were incarcerated awaiting trial; today that figure is about 48%. But in Brazos County, a whopping 65% of jail inmates are incarcerated awaiting trial - mostly because they couldn't make bail. (Source: monthly jail population report.) Many of these would be released pending trial in other counties. More than 100 jail inmates out of the 547 in the jail on Jan. 1 were misdemeanor defendants awaiting trial, while another 67 were so-called state jail felons (mostly low-level drug and property crimes), and 186 were higher-level pretrial felons.

From these numbers, I don't think Brazos County remotely needs a new jail right now. (Just reducing pretrial detention levels to the statewide average would free up nearly 100 beds.) What it needs is better jail and court management. A number of counties have created public defender offices to move cases through the system more quickly and eliminate unnecessary pretrial detention, but even that's just one possible solution. As for other options, I've written so much on this topic I think I'll just quote what I said when writing about Nacogdoches' similar jail overcrowding woes:

Many of those people simply don't need to be there - the time to incarcerate most misdemeanants (certainly the non-violent ones) is AFTER they've been convicted, not before. (I know to some in law enforcement that seems like a radical concept.)

The truth is that for many low-level offenders, incarcerating them before trial may worsen public safety, especially if they lose their job because they can't go to work. Offenders' employment status is a key factor in whether or not people commit more crimes, and Texas doesn't pay enough attention to the subject. Holding low-level offenders for weeks or months before trial nearly ensures they'll be unemployed when they get out, even if they wind up sentenced to probation. At the end of the day that makes things less safe for everybody.

Several other counties big and small are addressing the same issue by using pretrial screening programs to identify low-level offenders who should be eligible for release on personal bonds. Another good option would be to follow Tyler's lead and create a day reporting center so many of those low-level offenders could be supervised in the community. For many pretrial offenders, it's not the case at all that they "can't just let them go." In fact, for some of them, the public would be safer in the long run if they did.