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Date: April 30, 2024 Tue
Time: 1:22 am
Time: 1:22 am
Results for parole (texas)
1 results foundAuthor: Levin, Marc Title: The Role of Parole in Texas: Achieving Public Safety and Efficiency Summary: Texas recently earned national acclaim for avoiding what was expected to be a catastrophic prison overcrowding crisis. In 2005, in anticipation of overcrowding, the Legislative Budget Board recommended building more than 17,000 new prison beds. Texas did not build the beds, however, and it still managed to reduce crime throughout the state. Part of the credit for this impressive accomplishment must go to the state’s parole system. In 2009, out of 76,607 parole-eligible cases considered, 23,182 Texas inmates were placed on some kind of parole supervision. More importantly, the number of parolees revoked to prison has sharply declined from 11,311 in 2004 to 6,678 in 2010, reflecting a drop in both new crimes and technical violations serious enough to warrant revocation. The parole system is designed to ensure those leaving prison are under supervision during their initial reentry into society and promote order in prisons by providing inmates with an incentive for good behavior, but it is also the primary means by which the state controls the size and cost of the prison population at the back-end of the system. Some states don’t have parole and instead adhere to “truth-in-sentencing” policies which incarcerate offenders for every day of their sentence. While such policies have some appeal, they don’t allow for an appraisal of the inmate’s behavior in prison and his eff orts at self-improvement through completing rehabilitation programs. As conservative Congressman Howard Coble of North Carolina noted, “I still embrace the theory of locking the cell door if an offender has been convicted of a crime. But I don’t say throw the key away. I say, keep the key handy, so the same key that locked that door can also unlock it.” In a practical sense, parole is also the state’s response to the problematic incentive created by a dual system of locally elected prosecutors and judges and state-funded incarceration. The incentive is for locally elected officials to seek public support and eliminate any risk of crime in their local jurisdictions through the longest sentences possible for every offender at the state’s expense, as opposed to managing risks by balancing incarceration costs with other priorities, such as better policing programs that may prevent more crime for every dollar spent. In Texas, parole revocations have declined in recent years, from 14.8 percent in 2004 to 8.2 percent in 2010. Further parole reforms, if properly targeted, could improve this, staving off prison crowding problems long before they start and contributing to gains in public safety. The recommendations presented in this report stand in stark contrast to the late 1980’s debacle when the state leadership decided to turn the parole system into a gigantic jailbreak rather than incur the cost of building new lockups. At that time, some 750 prisoners were being released early every week, including many murderers and rapists. There are key differences, however, in our situation today: 1) the state has more than three times as many prison beds due to the early 1990s prison building spree triggered in part by the public outrage at these releases in the 1980s; 2) carefully targeted changes have resulted in only a slight increase in the total parole rate from 27 to 31 percent; and 3) the state has far more nonviolent inmates today who are either ineligible for parole or who are being refused parole. By continuing to focus parole changes on this population, the state can avoid building new prisons while also not repeating the mistakes of the past. Details: Austin, TX: Texas Public Policy Foundation, 2011. 8p. Source: Internet Resource: Policy Perspective: Accessed July 22, 2011 at: http://www.texaspolicy.com/pdf/2011-05-PP09-Parole-mlevin-vreddy.pdf Year: 2011 Country: United States URL: http://www.texaspolicy.com/pdf/2011-05-PP09-Parole-mlevin-vreddy.pdf Shelf Number: 122151 Keywords: Community CorrectionsParole (Texas)Parole RevocationsParolees |