Texas parole rates rise since new year

Yesterday, Mike Ward at the Austin Statesman had a story on recently rising parole rates ("Parole rates surge to avoid unsupervised released," May 16, based on trends reported on Grits in April. His story opens:

Texas' parole rate for convicted felons has reached new highs in recent months, with the approval rate topping 40 percent this spring after hovering in the high 20s for several years.

The parole rate for violent sex offenders reached nearly 60 percent in March.

Officials say the higher parole rate is partly due to larger numbers of felons imprisoned in the past 20 years who are now reaching the end of their sentences, some meted out during the three-strikes-and-you're-out era of tough-on-crime laws enacted during the 1990s.

Officials are putting more of these convicts on parole to keep them under supervision and in treatment after they get out of prison, rather than have them walk out unsupervised.

The new numbers, obtained Tuesday by the American-Statesman, showed Texas' overall parole approval rates are the highest since September 2001, topping 40 percent in both February and March. The approval rate for April was just under 39 percent, the statistics show.

Here's a accompanying graphic demonstrating the short-term rise, which could be just a demographic blip:

Mike and I were notified of this story by the same source in an email last month, but he's added value to the subject by gathering more back-months of data and interviewing government officials and advocates who speculated on reasons for the recent rise (some of which was presaged in Grits' essay). It should be emphasized, though, that a few months increase doesn't necessarily indicate a long-term trend and there could be many reasons, some perfectly mundane, for the short-term spike.

The numbers, though, do give rise to cautious optimism. Two suggested reasons would likely improve public safety: The decision to release long-term inmates before their sentence is up so they'll be under supervision when they leave, and the Lege funding drug and alcohol treatment in prison, which in turn lets the parole board can condition release on completing it.

This must be welcome news to TDCJ bean counters fretting over budgets, who presently are straining to cover guard overtime and prisoner health costs under their reduced budget. Releasing older inmates serving long sentences, in particular, helps a ton with health care cots.

Texas' largest county jails have depopulated rapidly in the last couple of years. If this short-term parole trend elongates and the Lege continues to support front-end diversion programs, perhaps in the near future Texas will actually witness a smaller prison population as well.

TDCJ flak allegedly faced retaliation for treating blogger as 'media'

According to the Back Gate, a prison-guard run website, Michelle Lyons, the long-time chief flak at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's public relations department, has "resigned after enduring retaliation and harassment by agency officials for several months." (She's been unenviably replaced, says TDCJ's website, by understudy Jason Clark.) The Back Gate reported that:

Michelle emailed us this statement [yesterday] morning;

"When I received the email from Duane [Stuart, a Back Gate blogger] on Friday and when I responded to him and everyone who he had originally copied on the message [ed. note: including state Sen. John Whitmire's office], it set in motion a chain of events. Within a couple of hours, my email account was 'frozen' and I was told I was under investigation. Before I was charged with failing to obey an order, I was told that I should not have responded to Duane because he is considered media. At this point, I would note that some time ago, I was tracking down an answer to a question Duane had asked me and I went to Mr. [TDCJ Deputy Executive Director Bryan] Collier. He asked why I was responding to Duane since "he's not media." It's interesting to me that he wasn't 'media' several months ago, but now he is? At the time, I said that while Duane may not meet the definition of media in TDCJ's own media policy, that he is a TDCJ employee and member of the public and that I respond to as many inquiries I can from the public in addition to those I receive from the media. That's exactly what  I did on Friday. I view it as responding to a message from a colleague about possible federal labor law and privacy violations and including on it my union representative and two state lawmakers. Why is that an issue?"

Michelle went on to say;

"I know that what I've gone through these last six months is similar to what so many other TDCJ employees have had to endure during their own tenures with the agency. I just really didn't understand until it happened to me. I'll never know exactly what initiated the discriminatory measures they took against me with my demotion and pay cut, but I can pinpoint that the retaliation began as soon as I questioned the way TDCJ requires employees to track their time and how they appear to be circumventing federal labor laws through some policies (although an agency policy obviously shouldn't trump federal law). Within two weeks, Mr. Collier told me 'I should have just fired you,' and it only escalated from there."

Fascinating! Certainly Lyons doesn't deserve to face retaliation over responding to legislators cc'd on an email from a blogger requesting information, if that's really the proximate cause. Whoever has her (former) job must play a dicey balancing game between a variety of competing, powerful interests, and I completely understand why - when they've already been told of the issue by Stuart - she'd see fit to let legislators see sensitive information from her first before it appeared on The Back Gate. Hell, that's PR 101.

Grits finds the institutional attitude toward blogs described in these excerpts quite telling, if regrettable, confirming a dismissive attitude I've sensed in the past. Bryan Collier doesn't consider blogs "media" so Lyons must couch her actions as "responding to a message from a colleague about possible federal labor law and privacy violations and including on it my union representative and two state lawmakers." IMO, though, she needn't contort in such a manner to justify what she did. The definition of "media" has changed in the last decade and The Back Gate surely qualifies. After all, they broke this story.

See more detail and Stuart's commentary at The Back Gate.

Prison healthcare budget falls predictably short

This news should come as no surprise to Grits readers, but Mike Ward reported in Friday's Austin Statesman ("Report: Texas prison health costs higher than thought," May 6) that:

The cost of providing health care to Texas' 154,000 imprisoned criminals during the next two years will likely exceed the amounts allocated in both the Senate- and House-approved versions of the state budget, a new financial analysis shows.

The report on the University of Texas Medical Branch at Galveston's costs appears to validate the university's earlier assertions that it was losing money on providing the care, and it projects that the prison care could cost $930 million over the next two years — far more than either legislative chamber has appropriated so far.

The new figures counter an earlier "report that triggered intense criticism of the medical school and has prompted a lobbying rush by private companies who contend they can do the job for much less." Bottom line, the latest analysis found that:

In recent years, UTMB and Texas Tech have claimed losses totaling more than $60 million for providing the care, requiring supplemental appropriations several times from the Legislature.

The new financial review projects that the losses will continue for UTMB. Texas Tech costs were not examined.

In 2010, the summary shows, UTMB lost as much as $26.8 million — with actual costs listed at $436.1 million, for which the university was paid only $409.3 million.

During the 2012-13 budget period, the report estimates, the costs for UTMB to provide prison health care could range from $879.6 million to as much as $930 million — depending on whether costs for some physicians, interns and residents are included.

Madden acknowledged that the numbers in the report are significant, "if they prove correct, which I think they will."

This should come as no surprise; it was predictable and predicted; Grits calculated when the budget passed that prison healthcare was underfunded by $126.5 million over the biennium, and here we are, facing projections right at that amount. The lesson: It's possible to significantly cut prison health costs, but not without reducing the size of the prison population. They can't just cut on paper; the state must change policies to reduce costs.

Should TDCJ staff resent giving up Facebook passwords?

The Back Gate posed an interesting question to Texas prison staff and got some animated responses: "Is TDCJ violating your privacy rights by requiring you give them your Facebook password?" Most respondents seemed to be against it and some suspected the agency of ulterior motives: E.g., "This has less to do with keeping us from being friends with former offenders and everything to with keeping an eye on what we might be saying about our own administrations."

Whaddya think? Justified security measure or snooping beyond the purview of a government employer? There are a lot of interesting angles from many different perspectives on that one. How would you prioritize the conflicting values and interests aligned on the question?

Adult, juvie corrections took 39% of state employee reductions in last year

After the Texas Legislature finished its budget cutting last year and the dust finally settled, a whopping 39% of Texas state employee reductions in the last year came from two agencies: the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) and the recently merged Juvenile Justice Department (TJJD).

TDCJ lost 2,035 FTEs (full-time equivalent positions), and TJJD lost 816.5, according to a recent state auditor's report (pdf). All told, according to a summary, "As of the end of the second quarter of fiscal year 2012, agencies reported that they employed 147,100.4 FTEs. That was a decrease of 7,321.6 (4.7 percent) FTEs since the end of the second quarter of fiscal year 2011." TDCJ's staff was reduced by 5%, TJJD's by 23%.

Of course, both these agencies suffer from high turnover among front-line staff, so relatively few of those reductions represent layoffs, particularly on the adult side. But Texas' corrections footprint declined in the last year in more ways than just from the closure of the Central Unit and lowered jail populations: Prisons and jails have gone from a reliably expanding government sector to among the first areas to be cut when Texas policymakers must prioritize in the face of tight budgets. That's a big change in political priorities from just a few short years ago.

In 2013 when legislators again face tough, arguably tougher budget choices even than last session, Texas could not conceivably focus employment reductions as heavily in corrections without closing (probably several) more prison units. For these and related reasons, Grits remains convinced that budgets will stymie the growth of the prison-industrial complex long before any brand of moral outrage might convince state leaders to reduce it.

Sale of Imperial Sugar, Central Unit closure denote end of an era

Picture via 'Leadbelly: Life, Legend, Legacy'

Imperial Sugar is selling out to an international conglomerate the year after the Texas Legislature chose to close the Central Unit (formerly the Imperial unit) which was an early center of convict leasing that made Imperial a lucrative enterprise a century ago, with labor costs not much higher than a slave owner's. Grits finds it ironic that both institutions should dissolve so close to one another, as though their fates were somehow entwined.

In the book Texas Tough (pp. 205-206), historian Robert Perkinson said the Imperial unit's expansion and renaming as the Central Unit came in the face of calls for reform out of New York and "signaled that Texas's penal system would develop on its own terms, rooted in the Texas slavery belt and devoted, above all, to plantation production."

It was at the Imperial/Central unit that Texas Governor Pat Neff supposedly promised Leadbelly, the great murderer-minstrel (pictured), his pardon, famously delivered on the final day of his administration. Now the plantations are gone, the Central Unit has closed, and Imperial Sugar in all likelihood will no longer exist as a brand. For southeast Texas, the sale of Imperial Sugar in some ways provides a capstone for a confluence of events that, taken together, amount to the end of an era. Indeed, one hopes history may some day identify it as a signal point, a prelude to a new era.of deincarceration and even more prison closures. Perhaps it's crazy to imagine, but stranger things have happened, many of  them right there in Sugar Land.

Selected cell-phone jamming may boost prison phone revenue

With the feds seemingly unlikely to approve comprehensive cell phone jamming in prisons anytime soon, Texas is considering a different technology that selectively blocks non-approved numbers, which seems like a much more reasonable and effective approach. Reports the Austin Statesman's Mike Ward, "Instead of jamming cellphone calls around prisons as Texas officials had earlier proposed, the California system would block outgoing cell calls, Web access and text messages by managing the cellphone signals at prisons — and allowing only signals from approved numbers to go through."

In California, the prison phone service provider paid for the new equipment because of massive lost revenue from unused pay phones, and the new technology supposedly has turned that dynamic around:

Efforts to curb cellphone smuggling into prisons have come up short, even though the state has spent millions of dollars on screening devices, surveillance cameras, detection devices and even phone-sniffing dogs.

[TDCJ spokesman Jason] Clark said Texas prison employees last year seized 904 cellphones in prisons or headed there, down from 1,480 three years ago. Prison officials attribute the decline to $60 million in security upgrades.

By contrast, California last year confiscated 15,000 cellphones at its 33 prisons. That's up from just 1,200 five years ago, according to officials.

Dana Simas, an information officer for the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation, said that under a new contract, Global Tel Link has agreed to spend as much as $35 million to install new equipment at each prison within the next three years. The first California unit is to get the gear by October, she said.

The company will pay all costs, Simas said, because it will get the revenue from the pay phones inside prisons that will once again be in demand.

The way the new system works: Each prison will get its own cell tower that will allow prison officials to control all incoming and outgoing calls. All others will not go through.

"After this system goes in, smuggled cellphones will be nothing more than glorified paperweights," Simas said. "A couple of years ago, there were long lines at the pay phones — hours long. By this year, no one was using them, there were so many smuggled cellphones."

Meeting the murderer: Profile of victim-offender dialogue facilitator

See an interesting article from the Christian Science Monitor about a boat builder from Maine who runs a non-profit facilitating victim-offender dialogue (VOD) between violent criminals and their victims or their families, which is an idea derived from "restorative justice" models. It describes how Texas' program launched his interest:

Wilson first grew intrigued with VOD when he was researching an article for Hope, a human interest magazine he published until 2003. In 2000, he attended training led by a pastor named David Doerfler, then with the Texas Department of Criminal Justice Victim Services Division. From the first day he was hooked.

He began working cases in Texas, which operates one of the oldest and largest VOD programs in the country. (At the time, six states offered VOD programs, Wilson says: Today, just over half the state corrections departments in the country support VOD programs.)

The programs are a delicate subject with state correctional officials. Some report widespread satisfaction among participants, but others refuse to discuss VOD at all.

As the mother of a victim, [Janet] Connors welcomed a chance to take part in VOD. "Don't take my choice away," she says. "We [victims] are used to getting upset – our whole lives have been upset. But don't take away my choice to meet with the person who caused me harm."

Wilson spends months meeting with victims and helping them prepare before engaging in dialogue. He also meets ahead of time with offenders, through which he discovered a pivotal irony of our modern penal system: The disassociation of punishment from the events that cause it and the consequent emotional detachment of prisoners.

The jailed offenders receive no shortened sentences or any kind of credit for their involvement. No dialogue occurs if an offender doesn't fully accept responsibility for the crime. What they do get is an opportunity to think more deeply about what they've done.

Wilson also meets ahead of time with offenders. "When I start out [with an offender], many of them will say, 'I don't even know if I have feelings,' " Wilson says. "Of course they have feelings, but that's how far removed they are from them. Describing their feelings is new to them.

"This is the problem with our system: These guys can do their whole sentence without ever having to think or talk about their crime. We do not insist [that] that person think about what they have done."

That last bit is an important observation. Under a restorative justice model, offenders are encouraged to take responsibility for their actions in more meaningful ways. Under the traditional system, the closest anyone comes to taking responsibility comes during the brief moments of a plea bargain before a judge, after which a prisoner may spend decades locked up without being reminded of their offense.

Meanwhile, the VOD program helpfully gives victims an opportunity to confront those who've harmed them and get answers to the many questions that swirl around the aftermath of tragedy. The story reminds me of Howard Zehr's comment that the current criminal justice system denies victims almost everything they need. At a 2007 conference, he argued that if one set out to design a system to create post traumatic stress for a victim, they couldn't do better than a court of law. VOD and other restorative justice approaches aim to  promote a more victim-centered space where their needs can be met, to the extent possible, beyond mere punishment of the perpetrator.

See the website for Wilson's group, Just Alternatives, for more on the subject.

Tax-exempt prison property squeezing Huntsville ISD

There's an interesting article in the Huntsville Item ("HISD looks at ways to reduce expenses," April 2) with a reference to the impact of TDCJ's ownership of vast swaths of property in Walker County on the local school district's tax base:

Because a large portion of land in Walker County is owned by the state through the Texas Department of Criminal Justice or Sam Houston State University, Huntsville schools have a hard time raising tax dollars from the community because of the low amount of property tax available.

“In districts adjacent to federal facilities, like Fort Hood, they can get federal impact aid,” Johnson said. “They recognize that their ability to raise tax dollars locally is limited because a lot of the land is tax exempt. I'm going to suggest that the state consider state impact aid for Huntsville because of the state-owned facilities in this district.”

Johnson said the ability of Huntsville to raise money is limited compared with areas where the land is not tax exempt.

“That's just the situation here,” he said. “What we do know is there's nothing on the horizon saying there's a lot of new money being sent out to schools.”

Grits seriously doubts the state will replicate "federal impact aid" to subsidize local property taxes anytime soon, but what it could, and should do is change narrowly targeted policies to reduce incarceration levels, close more prison units and sell off land near existing developments, shifting more real property back onto the tax rolls.

Did a prisoner repair your government computer? Correctional Industries program said to reduce recidivism

The Houston Chronicle yesterday had a nice little article about TDCJ's Texas Correctional Industries program training inmates to perform computer repair, which unlike picking cotton or working on a hoe squad actually teach prisoners a skill that's marketable when they get out. The story opened thusly:

With stacks of broken computers towering toward the ceiling and intense white-clad technicians frowning over workbenches filled with the machines' electronic guts, this could be any high-tech repair shop in America. Or so you may think until rolls of concertina wire bristling from the walls remind you of where you are.

Welcome to Huntsville's Wynne Unit, home of one of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's two computer repair labs, where each month inmate workers fix or discard up to 250,000 pounds of malfunctioning equipment.

In Texas, a state whose prison work programs are best known for agriculture and license plates, the computer shops represent the cutting edge of a factory system that produces everything from street signs to mattresses for state college dorms and soap for scrubbing jailhouse floors.

Here's a summary of more common types of TCI labor:

Textile operations remain a big part of prison jobs today. Inmates grow and harvest cotton, then spin and weave it into fabric for use in prison clothing, which they sew. Prisoners each month make 110,000 towels, 120,000 pairs of socks, 85,000 shirts and pants, and 75,000 pairs of underwear.

Prison officials say the cost of inmate clothing purchased through a vendor is $7 to $10; making the same clothing in-house costs about $5.

Workers also refurbish public school buses, re-tread tires, produce signs, banners and departmental awards, build furniture, craft shoes and, of course, make license plates

In some cases, writes reporter Allan Turner, "the most valuable lessons taught are simply how to responsibly keep a job. As many as 40 percent of those inmates entering the TCI program have no work experience."

Participants in TCI work have lower recidivism rates, reports the Chron: "Overall in the 156,000-inmate system, he said, up to 24 percent of those released from prison return within three years. Among the inmate workers who stay on the job the longest, recidivism drops to 11 percent."

Texas justice initiatives presaged changing public opinion on reform

Could Texas' closed Central Unit in Sugar Land "symbolize a new approach to justice in America?"

PBS' Need to Know posed that question Friday evening in a 25-minute feature on Texas corrections reforms and the state's closure of its first-ever prison unit in last year, interviewing state Sen. John Whitmire in the bowels of the now-empty Central Unit. "You can't build your way out of the problem," said Whitmire. "If you don't deal with the root causes of crime, you'll never, ever have enough prisons. You'll bankrupt your state." The closed prison unit, said the chairman, is "the evidence we need that we're doing something right, and we're not compromising public safety." At one point, Whitmire said "most" of the 12,000 women locked up in TDCJ probably don't need to be there.

PBS also interviewed outgoing House Corrections Chairman Jerry Madden who recalled how, when he was named Chairman in 2005, House Speaker Tom Craddick called him in and said eight words to him that "changed my life": They were, "Don't build new prisons, they cost too much." Madden estimates that so far Texas' reforms have saved the state around $2 billion.

In a blast from the past, the story quoted Gov. Rick Perry's 2007 State of the State speech, showing a clip where the Governor declared that "There are thousands of non-violent offenders in the system whose future we cannot ignore. Let's focus more resources on rehabilitating those offenders so that we can ultimately spend less locking them up again," he advised to hearty applause. Another nifty quote: "Doing the intelligent thing is not being soft," said District Judge Robert Francis, who runs a reentry court in Dallas.

The reporter marveled that with Texas' reforms diverting thousands from prison, crime rates continued to fall even as incarceration rates declined. And Jeff Greenfield interviewed Adam Gelb from the Pew Center on the States to ask if Texas' "experiment" might become a "national movement." Gelb discussed how conservatives like those who've signed onto the Right on Crime principles are able to get to the same place on the issues as moderates and liberals, often agreeing on outcomes for different ideological reasons.

Relatedly Gelb's colleagues at the Pew Center on the States just released a public opinion poll which affords reason for optimism that the public would support further changes along these lines. Among the top line findings:

• American voters believe too many people are in prison and the nation spends too much on imprisonment.
• Voters overwhelmingly support a variety of policy changes that shift non-violent offenders from prison to more effective, less expensive alternatives.
• Support for sentencing and corrections reforms (including reduced prison terms) is strong across political parties, regions, age, gender, and racial/ethnic groups.

Here's an image providing more detail from the national survey (pdf) of 1,200 likely voters:

Moreover:

For reasons about which we can only speculate, public opinion appears to have shifted on questions of mass incarceration. Asked “Do you think there are too many people in prison in the United States, not enough people in prison, or is the number of people in prison about right?,” The results were:

Too many: 45%:
About right: 28%
Too few: 13%
Don't know: 14%

On average, said Pew, voters think about 20% of US prisoners could be released without harming public safety.

Remarkably, 69% supported the statement, “One out of every 100 American adults is in prison. That’s too many, and it costs too much. There are more effective, less expensive alternatives to prison for non-violent offenders and expanding those alternatives is the best way to reduce the crime rate,” with a whopping 50% saying they "strongly support" it. Among major state budget items, more voters said they were willing to cut prisons (48%) than any other area of government.

Fully 77% of voters agreed that “Our spending on corrections has grown from $10 billion to $50 billion over the last twenty years but we are not getting a clear and convincing return on that investment in terms of public safety,” including 76% of Republicans surveyed.

Equally fascinating is that common tuff-on-crime messages are beginning to lose their appeal. Asked if they agreed with the statement, “People who commit crimes belong behind bars, end of story. It may cost a lot of money to run prisons, but it would cost society more in the long run if more criminals were on the street,” just 25% said they supported it (15% strongly support). The public just isn't buying that common argument anymore, according to these data.

Reports like these give me hope that Texas may continue down a reformist path despite considerable political uncertainty. It's purportedly a Chinese curse to wish on another that they "live in interesting times," but without question we certainly do.

TDCJ Ombudsman public conference in Huntsville, March 24

Thanks to Texas Voices' Mary Sue Molnar for alerting me to TDCJ Ombudsman's upcoming "Public Awareness - Corrections Today (PACT) conference in Huntsville Saturday week. This "is a free daylong conference open to the public that is held every other year in Huntsville. This year's conference is scheduled for March 24, 2012, at the Sam Houston State University, George J. Beto Criminal Justice Center." According  to the description on TDCJ's website, the conference is:

structured to also benefit offender family members and advocates, as well as the general public, community leaders, criminal justice volunteers, and jail and prison ministries. It provides attendees with direct access to information about TDCJ programs, services, and policies and procedures. Participants have the opportunity to learn about virtually every aspect of the TDCJ, and how best to help those that are incarcerated or on parole.

As a part of the conference's agenda, informative presentations and panel discussions are held on varying topics. There are exhibit rooms where agency representatives are on hand to distribute brochures and information about their programs and have one-on-one discussions. Staff members are available throughout the conference to interact with attendees and answer questions.

The PACT Conference routinely focuses its main presentations on parole, incarceration, rehabilitation and health care. Topics timely in nature, such as agency organizational changes, or new programs and initiatives, are also highlighted. Representatives from the Board of Pardons and Paroles participate in the conference to address issues relating to the parole approval process. There also is an exhibit room dedicated to the GO KIDS (Giving Offenders' Kids Incentive and Direction to Succeed) initiative. This exhibit room includes resource tables for organizations that provide assistance to strengthen the bond between incarcerated parents and their children.

Presentations for this year's conference will feature programs related to operational matters of Correctional Institutions, Parole, Rehabilitative Programs, Community Justice Assistance, Health Services, and the Reentry and Integration divisions, as well as the Windham School District and the Board of Pardons and Paroles. ...

This agency's business is truly a people business and, as with any business, communication with your constituency is essential to being successful. The TDCJ PACT Conference provides an outstanding venue for our stakeholders to familiarize themselves with the agency and to interactively communicate with knowledgeable staff representing TDCJ and other criminal justice agencies. Don't miss this opportunity to join us on March 24, 2012!

Mexico, Central American prison and jail problems make ours look petty

Just to keep Texas' prison and jail problems in perspective, in Honduras 358 or more inmates died last week in a prison fire, while yesterday in Monterrey, an affluent-business oriented town a two-hour drive from the Rio Grande, at least 44 were killed and guards were taken hostage during feuds between rival cartel members housed in the same facility. (According to the Austin Statesman, Los Zetas forces massacred prisoners associated with the Gulf Cartel "then staged a mass escape.") Indeed, for those keeping score at home, it's worth adding to the tally that in December 2010, prison officials helped 140 inmates escape through the front gate of a prison in Nuevo Laredo.

Texas prisons face much different challenges than Mexican or Central American ones. Ours mostly involve paying for the Legislature's mass-incarceration policies and preventing even more expensive prison building, with a little contraband-related corruption around the edges. But unlike in Mexico or, say, California, Texas has enough prison capacity (barely) to house the prisoners it incarcerates. By contrast, the facility which endured yesterday's riot in Monterrey was horribly overcrowded: "The prison, built to house some 1,700 inmates is jammed full with some 2,700 prisoners."

Meanwhile, the escape in Nuevo Laredo assisted by prison officials shows how corruption problems complicate all these other challenges. I don't know what prison-guard pay is in Mexico, but if it's anything like what Mexican cops receive, it isn't much. Mexican prison corruption, though, typically goes much deeper than just line staff.

As for the fire in Honduras, I've heard many a Texas Sheriff grouse about the Commission on Jail Standards flunking their facility's inspection over faulty sprinkler systems and fire alarms, which some (especially rural) jail administrators consider relatively petty violations. But when 358 people die locked up in jail as a fire consumes them, it doesn't seem so petty. And overcrowding played a role as well. Paul Kennedy picked up on the fact that "At the time of the fire there were 856 inmates in a facility designed to hold but 500. Even more appalling is the fact that more than half the inmates at the prison were either awaiting trial or being held as suspected gang members."

This blog focuses on criminal-justice reform in Texas because I live here. But it's important to recognize things could be much, much worse and some of these annoying bureaucratic dicta and inefficiencies that prison and jail administrators complain about actually serve to make everybody much safer. Just look south to see what happens without them.

More of this, please: Vocational training for prisoners facilitates jobs on reentry

Prison trusties in Hondo participate in get on-the-job kitchen training at a community food bank, with many hired as cooks upon release. Reported the SA Express-News ("Inmate cooks give back at food bank," Feb. 5):

Most employers are turned off by ex-convict applicants, [TDCJ laundry, food and supply director Tony  D'Cunha] said, but hiring from this program has been “exceptional.”

“This can be a model for food banks nationwide, where the prison system gives back to the community by returning (inmates) to society as taxpaying citizens,” D'Cunha said.

Want to reduce recidivism and long-term costs for incarceration and crime?  More than anything else, transitioning ex-offenders into the workforce makes the rest possible. It'd be nice to see this program not just continued  but scaled up.

TDCJ board chair: Future prison closures possible

Reader Texas Maverick emails to point out this passage from the board minutes (pdf) of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice's August 2011 meeting:

Chairman [Oliver] Bell commented that the closure of the Central Unit has been a positive story and stated he was pleased the current trends have allowed the board and the TDCJ to be able to close a unit. The Central Unit has been studied for closure for the last six to eight years. Crime rates are down and offender populations are relatively flat. If the trends continue, Chairman Bell stated it might be possible more prisons could close in the future.

TDCJ executive director Brad Livinsgston told the board that "the closure of the Central Unit is a success story that the TDCJ can tout." I'm glad that's the board's perception. Given the budget situation, they'll need more of the same in 2013 to avoid prison costs spurring significant tax hikes.

UTMB begins "transfer" of prison health services to TDCJ; are they up to it?

At the Galveston Daily News, Heber Taylor reports that, despite months of negotiation between the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and the UT Medical Branch (UTMB) over providing inmate health care:

there is no agreement.

Dr. David L. Callender, president of the medical branch, let the staff know that the transition has begun to transfer the health services to the corrections department.

The basic problem is money.

The University of Texas System has made it clear its not going to continue to subsidize care for prisoners from university funds.

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice didn’t get the money from the legislature to pay the full cost of the care.

This is not the kind of problem two state agencies can resolve.

Somebody with money simply has to pay the bill.

Ordinary taxpayers should be watching this because the state’s not going to save money by taking the Correctional Managed Care Contract away from the medical branch.

This arrangement is still a good fit in terms of controlling costs. Finding the money to pay for this contract would be cheaper than starting over again with new contractors. 

I don't necessarily believe TDCJ is prepared to take over prisoner healthcare, either from a financial nor a management perspective. Nor did I understand the failure of legislative leadership that allowed this festering problem to linger beyond last session, when it was already coming to a head. Taylor's right - this isn't an issue two state agencies can negotiate away.

In truth, after UTMB was basically told by Senate budget writers they shouldn't end the contract, I'm surprised the university feels they have the authority to back out. They're definitely thumbing their nose at Senate Finance Chairman Steve Ogden, perhaps because he's retiring from the Lege this term and won't be around to haunt them in 2013 for their defiance. (After all the Aggie senator did for UTMB after Hurricane Ike, it's particularly a slap in the face.)

Meanwhile, privatization isn't really an option, either, at current funding levels, even if that's the Governor's preferred option. Various companies (and UTMB, for that matter) want the hospital contract, which is more lucrative, but nobody really wants to contract for clinic-level care unless the Lege ponies up more money.

Bottom line: The Lege this year cut the prison health budget but failed to reduce incarceration levels, meaning demand for services wasn't commensurately cut. Texas already has among the lowest per-prisoner health expenses in the country and it's unlikely the budget can be lowered as long as we incarcerate nearly 160,000 people. The cost of overincarceration has finally caught up with Texas, and the expense is greater, even, than just TDCJ's budget.

This is a fish-or-cut-bait moment. Before next session, the state must decide how to deliver prison healthcare on a shortchanged budget. But when the Lege meets again in 2013, to avoid nine figures in additional expenditures at TDCJ, they must change policies to reduce the number of people incarcerated. Any other option will yield the same untenable result as the last budget, magnified several-fold.

Kitchen culture behind bars

Several female inmates from TDCJ's Mountain View unit have published a prisoner cookbook describing methods for (sometimes illegally) cooking with commissary items. Interesting.

"Old Behind Bars"

From a Human Rights Watch press release:

Aging men and women are the most rapidly growing group in US prisons, and prison officials are hard-pressed to provide them appropriate housing and medical care, Human Rights Watch said in a report released today. Because of their higher rates of illness and impairments, older prisoners incur medical costs that are three to nine times as high as those for younger prisoners.

The 104-page report, “Old Behind Bars: The Aging Prison Population in the United States,” includes new data Human Rights Watch developed from a variety of federal and state sources that document dramatic increases in the number of older US prisoners.

Human Rights Watch found that the number of sentenced state and federal prisoners age 65 or older grew at 94 times the rate of the overall prison population between 2007 and 2010. The number of sentenced prisoners age 55 or older grew at six times the rate of the overall prison population between 1995 and 2010.

“Prisons were never designed to be geriatric facilities,” said Jamie Fellner, senior adviser to the US Program at Human Rights Watch and author of the report. “Yet US corrections officials now operate old age homes behind bars.”

Long sentences mean that many current prisoners will not leave prison until they become extremely old, if at all. Human Rights Watch found that almost 1 in 10 state prisoners (9.6 percent) is serving a life sentence. An additional 11.2 percent have sentences longer than 20 years.

A Texas-based fact-bite from the report: "In Texas, although elderly inmates represent only 5.4 percent of the inmate population, they account for more than 25 percent of hospitalization costs. The healthcare cost per day in fiscal year 2005 for an elderly offender was $26, compared to $7 per day for the average offender.[180] In fiscal year 2010, the state paid $4,853 per elderly offender for healthcare compared to $795 for inmates under 55.[181]"

23% of Texas prison spending outside of TDCJ's budget

According to a new report (pdf) by the Vera Institute, "Texas taxpayers pay an average 23 percent more for state prisons than the state’s annual corrections budget reflects," reports Mike Ward at the Austin Statesman: "The new report by the Vera Institute of Justice, a New York-based research organization that tracks criminal justice trends, calculates the state’s total costs for its adult corrections and prison programs at $3.3 billion — almost $783 million higher than the $2.5 billion annual budget for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice." Wrote Ward:

While Texas’ costs were 23.7 percent higher with the associated additional costs, other states ranged from 1 percent higher (Arizona) to 34 percent (Connecticut). Texas was one of six states — Connecticut, Illinois, Missouri, New York and Pennsylvania — where between 20 and 34 percent of the corrections budgets were outside the prisons system budget.

When all costs are considered, the annual average taxpayer cost in these states was $31,166 per convict, according to the study. In Texas, the cost is $21,390 a year per convict.

See the full report, The Price of Prisons: What Incarceration Costs Taxpayers, here.

Factors outside of TDCJ's budget included employee benefits and taxes, underfunded pension benefits and retiree health contributions, retirement costs, judgments and claims, and statewide administrative costs. I wonder what the folks at the Legislative Budget Board would have to say about Vera's calculations, and whether they need to update their Uniform Cost Report (pdf) on corrections as a result?

Inmates and media: The Prison Show, snail mail and appreciating the Apostle Paul

A coupla interesting stories discussing inmates' relationship to media caught Grits' attention. First, NPR this week had a feature on The Prison Show, emphasizing how the long-running Houston-based radio show focuses on connecting inmates to their families.

"So many people go to prison and those relationships end," [host David] Babb says. "The families will write to them for a while, they'll go visit them for a while and it becomes a burden, it just tends to fades away."

But the show gives prisoners a way to stay connected and the call-ins they get from children are proof of that. One daughter left this message for her incarcerated dad: "Well, school's going great. I don't have any classes with my friends but I'm seeing that as the bright side to make new friends ... And I'm just loving school right now. So I hope you can wish me luck when it comes to all the tests I have to take this year. OK, love you, Dad. See you soon, I hope."

At The Baptist Standard, there's an interesting article suggesting inmates understand the ancients' relationship to the written word more innately and viscerally than those in the free world because of their relationship to snail mail.

Stephen Presley, who teaches a biblical interpretation class at a maximum-security prison near Houston, said the inmates' familiarity with letter writing has given them a unique perspective on the epistles that comprise a large portion of the New Testament.

"I think that (for) those of us who live in a world that's dominated by e-mail and controlled by other forms of technology, sometimes it's hard for us to understand the genre of letter writing—the genre of the epistles," Presley said.

"But for those who live in this world (behind bars), it was so easy for them to comprehend and to almost identify with the early church in the way they would have felt receiving these letters from Paul and how they would have treated the letter, perhaps, even in ways we don't, in terms of reading it from start to finish, reading it closely and observing every word."