The author thinks the following will get attention:
- arrests for Class C misdemeanors
- bail reform
- reducing mass incarceration
- juvenile reform
- asset forfeiture
- transparency
- Click here for the article.
Long considered perhaps the toughest of tough-on-crime states, Texas finds itself in 2016 in a remarkable position: An increasingly strong bipartisan coalition is pushing for reforms to the criminal justice system. On the agenda are changes that would have been unthinkable back when Democratic Governor Ann Richards led the charge to triple the size of the state’s prison system, touting prisons as rural economic development.
Though Texas still has the most prisoners of any state, in recent years it has reduced its incarceration rate and closed three prisons — the first time that’s happened, ever. Meanwhile, the Legislature enacted significant reforms to prevent, discover and redress wrongful convictions, and the state has become a national leader on forensic-science reform.
During the most recent legislative session, legislators decriminalized truancy for juveniles, ended the pick-a-pal system for selecting grand juries and adjusted property theft thresholds for inflation for the first time in more than two decades — a change that is likely to push incarceration rates down significantly within five years.
To be sure, Texas has a long way to go. Indeed, to some extent the state was able to enact big reforms because we began with a system so deeply slanted in the other direction. The United States famously has 5 percent of the world’s population and 25 percent of its prisoners, with Texas incarcerating more people than any other state, by far. With Louisiana, we are the global epicenter of mass incarceration.
As long as prisons were viewed as mainly a jobs program, it didn’t seem to matter whether filling them up improved public safety. Instead, criminal justice fulfilled more practical, if less high-minded, goals. As the Legislature defunded mental health programs, prisons and jails provided a safety valve for warehousing the mentally ill whom state leaders wouldn’t pay to treat. (The Harris County Jail is the largest mental health institution in the state.) If poor, inner-city schools weren’t preparing minority youth to participate in the workforce, prisons would keep them out of sight, out of mind.
Municipalities loath to raise taxes showed no compunction about mulcting poor people for fines and fees, jailing them if they couldn’t pay. Underfunded hospitals even got in on the act, relying on traffic enforcement to pay for trauma care for the uninsured. In essence, criminal justice came to be viewed as a cash cow that at times seemed to serve every purpose under the sun except securing justice. And the public accepted all this because the only people who suffered were, after all, “criminals.”
Today, the system still plays those roles, which means reform is not inevitable. But increasingly, a chorus of voices from both the left and the right are calling for change. Tea party Republicans have recognized prisons and jails as Big Government’s epitome and police as its liberty-violating agents. At the same time, the Black Lives Matter movement’s national arrival has energized Democratic constituencies opposed to mass incarceration.
