Extra capacity at TDCJ?
From the bottom of page 1:
- As of May 2014, the agency had 1,473 beds temporarily removed from capacity due to staffing shortages.
- Also in May, 849 Substance Abuse Felony Punishment (SAFP) beds were temporarily converted into Intermediate Sanctions Facilty (ISF) beds.
That's where the long-term projections I was looking for come in. Sometime in June, LBB is scheduled to come out with an important set of official prison population projections on which legislative appropriators must base their various funding schemes. At a recent House Appropriations Committee hearing, LBB staff implied that the new projections would not show long-term growth in prison populations to the same extent as their last projection, which is now 15 months old. But we won't know for sure until the document is released.
If the downward trend continues, the Lege should cut more prison capacity and use the savings for treatment, rehabilitation and reentry programs.
Juvenile crime plummeted after Texas de-incarcerated youth prisons
Another fascinating tidbit from the tracking report: Despite having reduced the population of Texas youth prisons by nearly 80 percent after the 2007 sex-assault scandals and closed most of them, the average daily population of juveniles on probation statewide declined by 30 percent in Texas over the last five years, from 35,645 in 2008 to 24,896 in 2013. Referrals to probation fell over the same period, from 97,584 in 2009 to 68,386 in 2013, according to the report. And in schools, the number of Mandatory Attendance Days at Juvenile Justice Alternative Education Programs (JJAEPs) also went down, from 110,189 in the '08-09 school year to 73,227 in 2012-13. And that's despite the Legislature mandating that school police write fewer Class C tickets to students who misbehave.
Since juvenile incarceration fell almost 80% from its height after the Legislature first reformed, then disbanded, the Texas Youth Commission, what caused juvenile referrals (read: new offenses) to decline so rapidly in the years that followed? Many people associate incarceration with crime reduction, assuming prison keeps us safe from predators who would harm us if they were out. So how does the tuff-on-crime crowd explain such a radical reduction in juvenile incarceration corresponding to a 30-percent drop in juvenile crime over the last several years period?
Grits finds the rapid but inexplicable drop in juvenile crime one of the most remarkable, yet little-remarked stories in Texas criminal justice. A tremendous achievement. Too bad nobody knows what caused it nor how if at all it related to government policies, so it can't be readily replicated.