Reform this agency or I'll cut you: Jay Kimbrough returns to TJJD

The Governor's "fixer," Jay Kimbrough, is going to resolve whatever's wrong with the Texas Juvenile Justice Department or else whip out his knife and cut anybody who gets in his way. At least part of me hopes so. If he brandishes it just once more at another government official, Kimbrough's would be the most famous Texan knife since Jim Bowie's! Okay, perhaps it won't come to that, but it's nearly the only way this whole TYC/TJJD saga could get any weirder, and when the going gets tough in Texas, the tough frequently get weird.

Kidding aside, the Texas Tribune's Brandi Grissom reports the remarkable news that Mr. Kimbrough will be returning to TJJD. Her story opens:

The man who has become Gov. Rick Perry's problem solver, Jay Kimbrough, is going back to the state's juvenile justice agency, which is facing a crisis again five years after the last time he helped bail the agency out of a major scandal.

"I am pleased that Jay has agreed to help TJJD as we restore legislative, public and employee confidence that Texas is operating facilities that are safe for both employees and youth,” Texas Juvenile Justice Department Executive Director Cherie Townsend said in a press statement on Tuesday.

Kimbrough, who will be on loan from the Texas Department of Public Safety, where he serves as assistant director of homeland security, served as conservator of the Texas Youth Commission in 2007 after investigative news reports revealed horrendous sexual and physical abuse at juvenile lockups. He will act as special assistant for safety and security at TJJD.

Long time readers will recall Kimbrough was briefly assigned to oversee the Texas Youth Commission in the early days after the media reports revealed the agency had covered-up sex scandals and tolerating abusive employees. He left to make way for Ed Owens' disastrous conservatorship, which sought to turn TYC into a mini-adult prison system, bringing in fumbling leadership from TDCJ as well as an adult security mentality heavily reliant on pepper spray and solitary confinement. Repeating that failed approach would be a nightmare.

On the other hand, it was also Kimbrough who authored TYC's initial moves to reduce youth inmate populations, an approach that has worked well beyond anyone's imagination, allowing the state to close multiple youth prison units while juvenile crime has continued to plummet.

So I'm at least slightly sanguine that Kimbrough's appointment won't necessarily spawn a repeat of the unhappy era when Ed Owens and his associates from TDCJ drew down a bevy of lawsuits and near-rebellion among staff. Whether or not it was Kimbrough's intention to foist adult practices onto juvenile corrections, he's now seen that approach didn't work and he's nothing if not a pragmatic man. A fellow as fond as Kimbrough of bold moves can't help but sometimes make a wrong turn, but in my observation he's not the type of fellow to make the same mistake twice. And he may decide the state should double down on the part of his strategy that did work: Further de-incarceration and shifting responsibility for supervising more delinquent youth back to the local level.

Even longer-time readers will recall Kimbrough's "fixer" stint helping the the Department of Public Safety try to rein in Texas' regional narcotics task forces in the wake of 2005 legislation putting them under the command and control of the DPS Narcotics division. Many task forces simply refused to comply, and the Governor's Criminal Justice Division ultimately eliminated their funding entirely in 2006, shifting the federal grant money which for two decades had supported hundreds of narcotics officers to a combination of border enforcement and diversion programming, with an emphasis on specialty courts. In essence, they shifted responsibility for drug-enforcement downstream to the local level much like TYC shifted responsibility for supervising more delinquent youth back to the counties.

At TYC, Kimbrough had good instincts about reducing inmate populations but not about putting Ed Owens and his TDCJ cadres in charge when he left, to the extent that was his call. OTOH, in my view he knocked the drug-task force issue out of the park. And in both instances, one notes, part of his approach was to eliminate failing institutions instead of reform them, which may give a hint as to one possible approach he could take at TJJD along the same lines.

One of the major alternatives being bandied about is to eliminate most of the rest of juvenile detention facilities (they probably can't get rid of the mental health beds) and shift more money and responsibility to counties to manage delinquent youth. If Kimbrough decides Texas youth prisons are completely dysfunctional, as was the case with the drug-task force system, will he similarly recommend a wipe-the-slate-clean approach? At this point nothing would surprise me.

At least formally, Kimbrough has been brought in as an assistant to Cherie Townsend, though a "special assistant" with the Governor on speed dial won't always be perceived or necessarily behave as a subordinate. Hold onto your hats. The agency is no doubt in for another tumultuous year between now and the end of the 2013 legislative session.

TJJD contracts questioned

An audit found poor documentation for much of the construction and other contract spending by the Texas Youth Commission, now the Juvenile Justice Department, reported the Austin Statesman's Mike Ward on Saturday. The story opened:

During the past five years, the Texas Juvenile Justice Department relied heavily on change orders to pay for construction work that was not within the scope of the original contracts and failed to document the changes as required, a new audit revealed Friday.

In addition, the internal audit found that in more than half of the files examined, change orders that required the approval of top agency officials had none.

The audit does not provide detail on the contracts. Officials said Friday that those details were not immediately available.

The agency and its predecessor had more than $35.3 million in construction projects under way or queued up during the period that the auditors reviewed. While they reviewed only nine contracts in detail, such samples are commonly used as an indicator of potentially larger problems.

Robin McKeever, the agency's deputy executive director, who was previously chief financial officer with purview over contracts, said that eight of the nine contracts examined in the audit had change orders — more than 30 orders, in all.

On Friday, the agency's 13-member governing board approved new policies designed to curb those problems — the latest issue to buffet a department facing a legislative investigation over safety and security lapses at the Giddings State School and other lockups.

Déjà vu at TJJD: 2007 all over again?

Reports Mike Ward at the Austin Statesman:

As the former superintendent of the Giddings State School claimed in a lawsuit that he was fired in March for reporting violations of state law and growing safety issues at the troubled lockup, a legislative inquiry was expanded Wednesday to focus on whether 5-year-old reforms to the troubled system are still working.

"Everything is on the table now as far as I'm concerned," said Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman John Whitmire, a Houston Democrat who authored many of the reforms.

"Based on reports that we have confirmed from independent sources, it would appear that the management of the (Texas Juvenile Justice Department) has not been properly managing or protecting the youth and staff. You could change the names and dates, and it would be 2007 all over again."

If you'll excuse me, please go here to read the rest of Ward's missive, and I'm going to walk outside now to pound my head against the side of a tree.

TYC prescribed drug while Attorney General sued over its off-label use with children

Here's an ironic story from a Dallas TV station that speaks as much to the overmedication of youth in the juvenile justice system as to flaws in Medicaid billing. It opens:

The state won a $158 million settlement last month from a pharmaceutical company that the Texas attorney general said promoted an antipsychotic drug for uses not yet approved by federal regulators.

Attorney General Greg Abbott said Johnson & Johnson marketed Risperdal as the drug of choice for children and the elderly for schizophrenia and dementia even though the Food and Drug Administration had not approved its use in children or the elderly.

Yet while the state was suing J&J, the Texas Youth Commission, one of the state's largest purchasers of pharmaceuticals, prescribed it nearly 3,000 times to youth in the Texas prison system, according to financial documents uncovered by NBC 5.

The state's lawsuit, which was filed in 2006, said the state excessively paid pharmacies that dispensed prescriptions for Medicaid patients for a range of unapproved uses.

Violence rates in youth lockups went up after 2007 juvie reforms

At the Texas Tribune on Sunday, Brandi Grissom and Becca Aaronson had a story about rising violence rates at state youth lockups since the 2007 sex scandal at what was then the Texas Youth Commission:

10 years’ worth of data on the number of physical and sexual assaults and pepper-spray incidents at youth correctional facilities across the state indicates that this serene atmosphere is often disrupted by violence among the youths.

Overall, the rate of confirmed youth-on-youth assaults has more than tripled at the secure juvenile offender facilities statewide in the five years since lawmakers approved those reforms. Attacks on staff members have also increased.

The data do show progress for the reform efforts, including reductions in violence perpetrated by staff and in all types of sexual assaults. Cherie Townsend, executive director of the juvenile justice agency, acknowledged there is room for more work, but she said that reforms are making the facilities safer.

Advocates and experts, however, say the rise in youth-on-youth assaults and attacks on staff indicate there is still critical work to be done.

“It’s really disappointing,” said Deborah Fowler, deputy director of Texas Appleseed, a nonprofit organization that advocates juvenile justice reform. “The implementation has not been what we hoped for.”

In 2007, following reports that staff at what was then the Texas Youth Commission had sexually and physically abused youths in their custody, legislators passed laws intended to improve conditions at the lockups. They gave counties incentives to keep low-level offenders in their communities, where they could be close to treatment services and support systems. Only felony offenders who had failed at other programs would serve sentences at secure state facilities. Lawmakers also prohibited the incarceration of anyone older than 18 at the facilities.

The average daily population at the secure facilities has dropped to about 1,200 in 2011 from nearly 3,000 in 2007.

Several factbites from the story were downright stunning: "The rate of confirmed youth-on-youth physical assaults at state secure facilities grew to 54 assaults per 100 youths in 2011 from 17 assaults per 100 youths in 2007."  And, "Staff assaults by youths have climbed to 37 confirmed assaults per 100 youths last year from a rate of 10 per 100 youths in 2007." Notably, "The data do show progress for the reform efforts, including reductions in violence perpetrated by staff and in all types of sexual assaults." (See various charts and data collected by the reporters in this interactive format.)

Grits suspects, though, that the massive decline in youth prisoners explains most of the increased violence rates, which are reported not as raw numbers but as assaults, etc., per 100 youths. That's because the pool of youth in 2007 were much less serious offenders, as a class, than the smaller group of more hard-core kids who go to youth prisons under the new regime. If the rate of youth on youth assaults tripled and the number of youth incarcerated declined by roughly 2/3, then there are roughly the same number of assaults today as in 2007, just concentrated among fewer prisoners.

In prison as in everywhere else in life, a small subset of offenders accounts for the majority of serious misbehavior, and those troublemakers are precisely the type of youth that still end up in TYC despite the expanded emphasis on diversion, probation, etc.. While youth violence went up, it's also true that the proportion of youth incarcerated for violent crimes as a percentage of the whole increased substantially over the same period. If the number of prey dwindles but you keep most of the predators, you'd expect the violence rate to go up because reducing the number of victims they have access to does not in and of itself reduce the violent tendencies of those who remain. That's not to excuse rising violence rates, but I think that's what's driving it. Possibly the staffing ratios and policies from the ancien regime weren't adequate for the types of offenders who now end up in TJJD lockups, and certainly the data call into question whether programming at the units is working to change youth behavior. Good reporting from the Trib.

Rough waters lie ahead for yet-to-be-named captain of new Juvenile Justice Department

Though due to a sheer lack of bandwidth Grits has been forced to curtail juvenile justice coverage, the biggest (if little-discussed) criminal justice story in the state this month surely is the abolition on December 1st of the Texas Youth Commission and the Juvenile Probation Commission, merging the two agencies into the new Juvenile Justice Department, whose board (see a list and descriptions) met for the first time last week.  At the Texas Tribune, Brandi Grissom's story on the transition opens:

The Texas Youth Commission and the Texas Juvenile Probation Commission are officially gone, and in their place, a new agency is taking shape — lawmakers and advocates hope — to more efficiently and effectively deal with young offenders.

The new Texas Juvenile Justice Department's oversight board met for the first time last week, appointing an advisory panel to take recommendations as it merges the agency's two predecessors. They expect to hire a new agency leader as soon as next month.

Throughout the story legislators and policy wonks predict budget savings from the merger, and perhaps that will be the case, but it's also the case that the Lege needs to make targeted investments in community-based  services to ensure that kids diverted from youth prisons, and those supervising them, have adequate resources and support. In an article earlier this week from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram ("Tarrant juvenile justice officials wary about new combined state agency," Dec. 4), TJJD boardmember Scott Fisher said he thinks that will happen: "I think you're seeing a greater level of state funding of community-based programs than has existed in the past, because community-based programs do have a higher success rate with the population they deal with."

A judge in the Startlegram story questioned whether the agency would come to be dominated by youth prisons at the expense of probation and community-based programs, as has happened in the adult prison system: 

"The concern I think that we all have is that ... when we get in a funding crunch, then the needs of an institution -- which is basically what the Texas Youth Commission was, basically a juvenile prison -- might draw money away from the needs of children in the community," said Jean Boyd, a Tarrant County family law judge who was on the board of the Juvenile Probation Commission until it folded.

Boyd had opposed the merger, but she is now waiting to see how the new agency develops.

"I have to be hopeful," she said. "I support juvenile justice, and I want the agency to be successful, because we need it to be successful for our children."

Who will lead the new agency?

The newly appointed 13-member board met for the first time Thursday and launched a search for a new executive director.

The executive directors of the two previous agencies have applied for the post, and both were placed on paid leave until the board makes its decision on hiring when it meets again next month, Fisher said. Dr. Robin McKeever, the former deputy director of the youth commission, was named interim director.

No employees have lost their jobs, and all positions have been merged into the new agency while officials look for duplication. The Texas Youth Commission had about 3,500 employees, most of whom work in detention facilities. The Texas Juvenile Probation Commission had about 75 employees.

"You're taking two agencies and combining them, so there's going to be some change," Fisher said. "I think there's some uncertainty in the ranks out there."

Not only is there uncertainty in the ranks, it's fair to predict based on past experience with the state merging other agencies that rocky transitions are nearly inevitable - a regrettable feature of the process, not a bug. It's the little stuff that's most difficult: Are the computer systems compatible? How will information management systems be merged? How will the web sites be integrated? Should probation and parole supervision functions be merged? What differences in agency cultures and/or historic priorities will create internal friction? Nobody knows yet and it will take quite some time for the biggest challenges to even become fully apparent. For that reason, my hope is that the Lege will focus for a session or two on finding resources for community-based programming and keep their mitts off the agency's governing structure until the new, yet-to-be appointed leadership team has a chance to get their feet under them.

Speaking of whom, the head of the new agency could be Vicki Spriggs or Cherie Townsend, the past executive directors of the Juvenile Probation Commission and the Youth Commission respectively, or conceivably somebody else, though the smart money is on one of those two getting it. [Grits readers should express their preference in the comments, with two caveats in the interests of constructive civility: 1) be polite, respectful and avoid name calling or I'll delete your comments and shut down the string and 2) don't advocate one or the other candidate without giving a reason why.]

I respect both candidates, but my gut tells me drawing leadership from the Juvenile Probation Commission may better focus agency priorities on the needs of probation, with a shorter ramp up period than we might see hiring from TYC. Vicki knows the local systems much better and would have less of a learning curve coming in to address the main challenge facing the agency - beefing up local, community-based services. That's only my tentative sense, though, and Cherie Townsend also brings many strengths to the table. Both women were given a month off with pay while the new TJJD board figure out what they want to do.

Here's Townsend's farewell letter to TYC employees and more background on TJPC's website.

Now-defunct TYC-Geo contract cited as example of revolving-door oversight

Grits hadn't had a chance until this morning to take a look at the new report on private prisons out of ACLU national that's been getting lots of press: "Banking on bondage: Private prisons and mass incarceration" (pdf). Here are a few notable quotes:

the crippling cost of imprisoning increasing numbers of Americans saddles government budgets with rising debt and exacerbates the current fiscal crises confronting states across the nation.

Leading private prison companies essentially admit that their business model depends on high rates of incarceration. For example, in a 2010 Annual Report filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA), the largest private prison company, stated: “The demand for our facilities and services could be adversely affected by . . . leniency in conviction or parole standards and sentencing practices . . . .”

Further:

As incarceration rates skyrocket, the private prison industry expands at exponential rates, holding ever more people in its prisons and jails, and generating massive profits. Private prisons for adults were virtually non-existent until the early 1980s, but the number of prisoners in private prisons increased by approximately 1600% between 1990 and 2009. Today, for-profit companies are responsible for approximately 6% of state prisoners, 16% of federal prisoners, and, according to one report, nearly half of all immigrants detained by the federal government. In 2010, the two largest private prison companies alone received nearly $3 billion dollars in revenue, and their top executives, according to one source, each received annual compensation packages worth well over $3 million.

Another section of the report critiques the corporate-friendly American Legislative Exchange Council, declaring that "ALEC has not only done work that helped increase the amount of taxpayer money spent on corrections generally but has also supported policies likely to increase the proportion of corrections spending funneled to private corporations."

The report also documents the impact of expanded federal immigration detention practices which has been a hobby horse of this blog for many years. "The past decade has borne out the prediction that 9/11 would be good business for private prisons. By 2010, the average daily population of immigration detainees stood at 31,020, more than a 50% increase over the 2001 level (and an increase of roughly 450% over the 1994 level)."

One notable critique held that "Many in the private prison industry, however, once served in state corrections departments, and numerous state corrections officials formerly worked for private prison companies. In some cases, this revolving door between public corrections and private prisons may contribute to the ability of some companies to win contracts or to avoid sufficient scrutiny from the corrections departments charged with overseeing their operations." Moreover, the main case study used to support this contention (p. 38 of the pdf) was a Texas case: A disastrous private contract between the GEO Group and the soon-to-be-defunct Texas Youth Commission, which had hired former Geo employees to monitor their contract to manage the since-closed Coke County facility.

In both juvenile and adult settings, the "revolving door" phenomenon is something about which one hears numerous back-room whispers, but seldom fact-based documentation. It happens, but how commonly? I've never seen hard data, but could cite many anecdotes. Most blatantly, federal Bureau of Prisons chief Harvey Lappin this year left federal employment to become an executive at Corrections Corporation of America. Adds the report, "The company’s payroll also includes a second former BOP Director: J. Michael Quinlan serves as a Senior Vice President of CCA." In 2010, President Obama named a high-dollar Geo Group consultant the head of the US Marshals service. And I know there's at least some cross-pollination between TDCJ and private contractors.

Grits wonders what a more comprehensive review would reveal about this "revolving door" pheomenon between the leadership of private and state-run prison systems? Anecdotally it seems common, particularly among top decisionmakers who might have sway influencing government contracts. But the Coke County example involved lower-level employees migrating back and forth from state to private employment being hired to provide oversight to their former (and potentially future) employer. That situation strikes me as potentially fairly common and makes me wonder precisely how deep that particular rabbit hole goes?

MORE: From Texas Prison Bidness, Sentencing Law & Policy, CNBC, and NPR.

The State of Texas as Parent

Our pal Michele Deitch at the UT-Austin LBJ School is moderating a panel on juvenile justice at the State Book Fair in Austin next weekend that sounds interesting:

The State of Our Children: Texas as a Parent

with William S. Bush and Sherry Matthews

Moderated by Michele Deitch

Date: Saturday, October 22, 2011
Time: 1:30 - 2:30
Location: Capitol Extension Room E2.014

In two recently published books, Texas' role - both in the past and present-day - as the caretaker of youth in state-operated children’s homes and juvenile prisons is being examined. Sherry Matthews and William Bush write about the thorny problems and life within those institutions both from the human and policy perspectives, and they bring to life an aspect of Texas society that isn't often talked about.

Panelists:

William Bush, author of Who Gets a Childhood: Race and Juvenile Justice in Twentieth-Century Texas
and
Sherry Matthews, author of We Were Not Orphans

Moderator Michele Deitch, J.D., M.Sc., is a Senior Lecturer at the LBJ School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas, where she teaches graduate level courses in juvenile justice and criminal justice policy.  She served on Texas’s blue-ribbon task force that recommended recent reforms to the state’s juvenile justice system, and has been a court-appointed monitor of conditions in the Texas prison system. Her juvenile justice research has received national media attention, and in 2010, she was named “Outstanding Juvenile Justice Advocate of the Year” by the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition.

William S. Bush
In Who Gets a Childhood: Race and Juvenile Justice in Twentieth-Century Texas, William S. Bush both analyzes and indicts the American juvenile justice system. Using Texas as a case study in its treatment of young offenders, he uncovers the ongoing cycles of crisis, reform, and regression over the past 100 years. At the turn of the century, the United States juvenile justice system underwent extreme transformation. Under the gentle leadership of people like Justice Ben Lindsey and the unwavering passion of reform groups (specifically women’s Christian organizations), attitudes toward juvenile defendants changed drastically and the goals for dealing with these youths changed from retribution to rehabilitation. Cases like that of 16-year-old San Marcos resident Jimmy Jones, who in the late Twenties was struck 40 times with a baseball bat and chased down by blood hounds, first brought the horrors of incarcerated minors to light. Others like the incident at Mountain View State School in Gatesville, where 14-year-old C.W. was beaten unconscious by inmates as a guard looked on, resulted in institution shut-downs in 1975. Youth offenders initially landed in adult prisons, where their discipline was both punitive and ineffectual. But with reform came the concept of “treating the individual, not the crime,” which has remained – at least in theory – the prevalent idea behind youth rehabilitation programs. Despite such gains, however, history has proven that theory and practice are often worlds apart, and gruesome scandals continue to surface (blacks, Latinos, and poor whites are particularly affected). Bush ends by charging the American juvenile justice system to uphold the rights of the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution by addressing “this century’s dilemma,” as he calls it, and extending “the privileges and protections of childhood and adolescence to all youth.” Bush is an assistant professor of history at Texas A&M University in San Antonio. His extensive research has culminated in a policy series for the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition (TCJC), a non-profit advocacy organization in Austin.

Sherry Matthews
Austin writer Sherry Matthews lost her three older brothers when she was only a toddler. Like thousands of other children, they were sent to live at the Waco State Home following a series of family tragedies. Established in 1919, the home was a center for children ages four to 16 whose parents were either unable or unwilling to care for them; often it was both. In We Were Not Orphans, Matthews explores the history of the despotic state-run institution and relates the alternately harrowing and joyful stories of more than 50 people who grew up there (Austin writer Jesse Sublett conducts the interviews with the Home’s former residents). The Texas Senate created the Waco State Home as a safety net for white children who were labeled “dependent and neglected” by the court system. Deaths, financial crisis, and family violence were some of the reasons they ended up at WSH. By the 1960’s the home became integrated. Although the home did exceptionally well in providing food, clothing, and a well-rounded education, it did nothing to provide a safe or nurturing environment. Many children were severely beaten and emotionally scarred. Despite the endemic abuse, some of the children still had fond memories of growing up at the home. They played sports, indulged in pranks, and sneaked away on dates. As one Waco State Home alumnus put it, “We were not orphans. Our parents were living. They just couldn’t take care of us.” We Were Not Orphans is a blend of chilling investigative reporting and life-affirming storytelling, revealing that the resilient spirit of childhood can prevail over adversity. Despite coming from broken homes and living under horrifying circumstances, the children of the Waco State Home clung to each other for comfort and for the most part were able to lead fulfilling lives. Matthews is the founder and owner of Sherry Matthews Advocacy Marketing, a public service marketing firm. She has won numerous awards on behalf of government agencies, nonprofit organizations, and companies for her socially conscious work. We Were Not Orphans is her first book.

Conservatives praise 'Texas model' on criminal justice reform

Just received this press release from the Right on Crime initiative announcing two new public policy reports from the Texas Public Policy Foundation:

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE September 30, 2011

Right on Crime and TPPF Release Reports on Texas Corrections Reform

Texas achieves dramatic results in criminal justice reform

AUSTIN, TX - Right on Crime and the Texas Public Policy Foundation (TPPF) today released two policy briefs regarding Texas' extensive criminal justice reforms in juvenile and adult corrections. Over the last decade, the groups' policy advisors have been instrumental in working with the Texas legislature and Governor Rick Perry to overhaul the state's corrections system.

"For the first time in state history, Texas closed a prison because we don't need it anymore," said Marc Levin, Senior Policy Advisor to Right on Crime, who also serves as the Director of the Center for Effective Justice at the Texas Public Policy Foundation.  "The reforms that were first adopted in Texas have stimulated similar initiatives across the nation in South Carolina, Kentucky, Georgia, Ohio, Arkansas, and other states.  Crime has dropped in Texas since the changes and taxpayers have saved more than a billion dollars from not building new prisons.  We believe these commonsense policies, which were supported by 'tough and smart on crime' conservatives and are outlined in these reports, can serve as an effective model for other states."

According to the report Adult Corrections Reform:  Lower Crime, Lower Costs, policies initiated since 2005 have expanded capacity to alternatives to incarceration that hold nonviolent offenders accountable and provide effective supervision. This has helped Texas reduce its crime rate by 12.8 percent since 2005 while also reducing its incarceration rate by 9 percent. Additionally, the number of new crimes committed by parolees fell 8.5 percent from 2007 to 2010.

The second report, Comprehensive Juvenile Justice Reform:  Cutting Costs, Saving Lives, revealed that through key reforms, Texas was able to reduce the number of juvenile crime cases by 9.1 percent from 2007 to 2011.  Among the reforms, Texas moved away from an overemphasis on incarcerating less serious youth offenders in remotely located state lockups and towards evidence-based community corrections programs that produce a greater reduction in re-offending for every dollar spent.

"While we have more work to do, the Texas model of reform has proven to be extremely effective in both increasing public safety and saving taxpayers' money," said Brooke Rollins, president of TPPF and a Right on Crime signatory. "In criminal justice, it is vital to align policies with the current research indicating what works to protect communities and reform offenders, rather than simply maintain the status quo. The commonsense approach outlined in these new reports provides a roadmap for other states to follow Texas' model in modernizing the corrections system in a way that reduces crime and cuts costs."

To view the reports, click here.

While the state deserves credit for various reforms passed in the last few years, this last session Texas legislators backed away from a more aggressive reform agenda, much to this writer's dismay, de-emphasizing the strategies embraced over previous sessions instead of doubling down. As regular readers, know, I'm willing to give credit where credit's due, but I was disappointed Texas legislators didn't seize the opportunity presented to them by the budget crisis to more radically reform the corrections system, particularly on the adult side. Indeed, in many ways I fear this failure to act in 2011 may, in the medium to long run, set the agency up to fail.