Reduce drug sentences to lower Texas’ prison population [Editorial]

Twelve years ago, Texas blazed a successful trail for criminal justice reform that even the federal government has tried to follow, but Oklahoma’s recent mass release of nearly 500 inmates may have given it the momentum to reach even higher ground than the Lone Star State.

With 170,000 inmates and a $523 million budget request to build three new prisons staring them in the face, the Legislature and Gov. Rick Perry finally admitted in 2007 that Texas’ lock-’em-up approach to criminal justice not only wasn’t working; it was too expensive.

The lawmakers subsequently passed a bipartisan plan sponsored by Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, and Rep. Jerry Madden, R-Plano, that would instead lower the prison population by spending $241 million on incarceration alternatives that included drug courts, rehabilitation for non-violent offenders, and more mental health and educational programs for inmates.

The results have been striking. Texas’ inmate population has dropped more than 12 percent and instead of building new prisons, the state has closed eight facilities. Among the impressed include a long list of conservative groups and Congress, which last year passed the First Step Act, which funds similar early-release and recidivism-reduction programs for federal inmates.

First Step goes further though by also reducing mandatory minimum prison sentences for some drug crimes, which has allowed eligible federal inmates to qualify for early release. That’s also what Oklahoma has done by downgrading numerous felonies to misdemeanors, including simple drug possession and minor property crimes.

That was the will of the people. Many of the same Oklahomans whose votes ushered President Trump to a landslide in the Sooner State three years ago also approved the sentencing changes through a referendum in that same election.

The state’s legislators voted earlier this year to make the reforms retroactive, which led to the Oklahoma Pardons and Parole Board’s unanimous vote this month to commute the sentences and release more than 450 nonviolent offenders serving time for crimes no longer considered felonies.

If Oklahoma can do that, so can Texas. The Lone Star State’s criminal justice reforms have been effective, but more must be done.

In fact, a survey of prison populations by the Vera Institute of Justice showed Texas was one of 19 states that saw their inmate populations increase between 2017 and 2018. The institute said Texas’ increase of nearly 1,000 inmates was the largest in the nation. But it was called a “slight bump” by Marc Levin, a vice president for the Texas Public Policy Foundation.

Levin, who helped craft the 2007 prison reform package, said the Texas prison population started declining again this year and by September was 142,048 inmates, which is 3,500 fewer prisoners than it was 12 months earlier. He said most of that decline, however, appears to have occurred in state-run jails.

“A lot of jurisdictions are realizing the state jails don’t work because the people sent to them don’t get drug treatment,” Levin told the editorial board. He agreed that sentencing changes are needed to restore momentum to Texas’ inmate reduction efforts. “Oklahoma has done something we haven’t don: lessen sentences for lower-level drug cases and make those changes retroactive,” said Levin.

About 16,000 inmates in Texas prisons and state jails for drug possession could be affected by that change, he said, though some might not be eligible for release due to prior offenses.

Levin also pointed out the need for probation reform in Texas, which has more than 120 local probation departments. “Every judge does mostly what he wants,” he said, calling for a matrix that all judges must follow when setting probation guidelines. “We still have too many people in prison, including elderly, geriatric prisoners,” said Levin.

Texas took a bold step 12 years ago when it enacted criminal justice reforms. Not only has that step saved the state millions of dollars it didn’t have to spend to build and staff prisons, it has also allowed inmates who in many cases didn’t need to go to prison leave incarceration and try to make a positive contribution to society.

Now, it’s time for Texas to take some more bold steps with sentencing changes, uniform probation standards, better alternatives for geriatric inmates, and other criminal justice reforms. We look forward to seeing what the lawmakers and Gov. Abbott come up with when the Legislature reconvenes in 2021 .