In the news: December 2006
Lawmakers looking for bigger prison reform; 12/07/2006
AUSTIN AMERICAN STATESMAN: In a surprise move, legislative leaders on Wednesday scuttled plans to recommend one reform proposal for Texas' corrections programs and moved to study an even more significant overhaul. Among the changes being considered: the re-creation of a separate parole agency, the expansion of drug treatment programs as envisioned a decade ago but never adopted, and the addition of more alternatives for dealing with thousands of low-risk convicts. "The current system is not in sync, and the more statistics I see, the more I understand this is an operations problem and not a capacity problem," said Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman John Whitmire, D-Houston, a member of the Sunset Advisory Commission that was to vote on the recommendations Tuesday.
Parole notices flood the state; 12/07/2006
AUSTIN AMERICAN STATESMAN: Judges, prosecutors and police across Texas got a shock just after Thanksgiving, when their mailboxes filled with notices that tens of thousands of convicts were coming up for parole. All at once, there were 29,000 letters statewide, a torrent when normally just a few thousand are mailed each week. "I got probably 40 or 50 in one day, where I might usually get two or three," Williamson County District Attorney John Bradley said. "I thought they were doing a flood of releases."
New prisons will cost taxpayers money, so be sure they’re needed; 12/06/2006
AUSTIN AMERICAN STATESMAN: State officials want $5.6 billion from the Legislature to run the criminal justice system for the next two years — including $520 million just to build three more prisons and fund drug and alcohol treatment programs. Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, however demands that officials justify the full house they have now before starting new ones and he is absolutely right. Whitmire, chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, thinks there could be thousands of inmates who could be released, thereby sharply reducing the need for new prisons — and saving taxpayers a lot of money.
A quick solution to prison overcrowding?; 12/04/2006
AUSTIN AMERICAN STATESMAN: State corrections officials are recommending building new prisons to alleviate crowding, but new statistics show that thousands of bunks are occupied by the lowest-risk convicts who are eligible for parole — many of whom already work outside security fences as minimum-security trusties. Thousands more are classified as minimum-security, serving time for minor property and drug crimes, and could be good candidates for parole if funding were available for them to complete drug- and alcohol-abuse programs, according to figures by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, which runs the state's prisons.