Diversion program reduced new prisoner numbers from revoked probationers

There's good news and bad news in a new report (pdf) detailing the effects of diversion grants to local probation departments from the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ), authorized by the Lege since 2005: The good news is it worked where agencies accepted the grant money. Those local probation departments (CSCDs) reduced felony technical revocations by 14.5% and felony revocations overall by 3.6%, despite their caseload going up by 8%.

But those effects were mostly counteracted by an array of smaller agencies who declined the grants, stuck with their old ways and increased both technical revocations (6.9%) and overall felony revocations (9.1%) over the same period. The overall result, then, was minimal - about a 1% reduction in felony revocations since 2005. That's not bad with probation rolls swelling, but not all that was hoped for, either. Statewide, "In FY2011, there were 23,881 felony revocations to TDCJ, of which 48.5% were a result of technical violations of community service conditions." A little more than a third (36%) of those revoked for technical violations were absconders.

Also, the goal of reducing probation caseloads has not been achieved and fears that declining probation rolls would reduce state funding for local probation departments as a result of grant incentives never materialized. "The felony direct community supervision population increased 8.0% from August 31, 2005 (157,914 offenders) to August 31, 2011 (170,558 offenders)." While the incarceration rate is declining, the number of probationers in Texas is keeping pace with population growth, seemingly unswayed by crime declines over the last decade.

Even so, the grant program did achieve its goal of reducing felony probation revocations to prison. Bottom line: "more felony offenders were under community supervision in FY 2011 than in FY 2005, but fewer offenders were revoked to TDCJ during the same period. CSCDs that did not receive additional diversion funding showed increases in felony revocations to TDCJ."  In other words, agencies that took the diversion funding simply began revoking a lower proportion of the probationers they supervised: "The percentage of offenders revoked within two years of placement decreased from 76.9% in FY 2005 to 67.4% in FY2009 in CSCDs receiving additional diversion funding."

There were a couple of counties that took the money but never seriously tried to achieve the goals of diversion funding. From 2005-2011, felony revocations increased 79.5% in Bexar County (San Antonio) and 99.6% in Collin County (McKinney). Without their bad examples, the results from counties that took diversion funding look even better.

So the idea of using financial incentives to local government to reduce state incarceration rates actually worked. The program's effectiveness was mitigated by local non-participation, but the incentive-laden funding structure for the most part functioned as it was supposed to when and where it was applied. (Grits has argued in the past that it would be an even greater incentive if the state eliminated Bexar and Collin's grant funding for noncompliance, but don't hold your breath for that to happen.)

Problem is, too many other factors mitigate in the other direction, causing prison population projections to creep past TDCJ's capacity over the next biennium. Conceived in 2005, this grant program among other new initiatives helped stave off new prison spending over the last several years. But without doubling down on the concept, those diversion programs likely aren't big or comprehensive enough to do much more than they've done already. Instead, the Lege this spring chose a different path, thus ensuring that much of the state-level dialogue over the next two years surrounding TDCJ will come down to a familiar theme: Build more prisons ... or ... what? The other short-term options are increased parole rates, front-end diversion, or going California.

If history is any guide, part of the solution lies in programs like this one that create financial incentives for counties and local probation departments to help the state reduce incarceration costs. Sending someone to prison is easy; helping them stay in the community and reform is much harder. So it requires incentives for locals to undertake the task, but probation departments have shown through this experiment that many of them are willing to try, if given resources and support, and when they do it can reduce the state's incarceration costs.