The way criminal justice reform is often talked about, one might assume that it’s a zero sum proposition: Either the U.S. can reduce crime or it can reduce incarceration, but it cannot do both.
One state, however, is demonstrating that both are possible, if reform is done right.
According to the FBI’s index of crime rates, Texas’ crime rate, which includes both violent crime and property crime, fell 29 percent between 2005 and 2014, more than the national rate of decline. But the Lone Star State also closed prisons during that time and reduced the number of people it incarcerated. How did it pull this off?
Jerry Madden, a former Texas House Corrections Chairman, and Marc Levin, director of the Center for Effective Justice at the Texas Public Policy Foundation, write in an op-ed that Texas did it by creating alternatives to incarceration available to nonviolent offenders.
Nearly a decade ago, Madden and Levin write, “Texas projected that the state would need to allocate billions for the construction and operation of prisons, including more than 17,000 additional prison beds by 2012.”
But this was because prosecutors and judges often had no choice but to send offenders to prison: They had little discretion to sentence low-level offenders to treatment or rehabilitation programs instead of throwing them into prison.
So Texas policymakers got to work to expand diversionary and treatment programs. They simultaneously provided more opportunities for parole, which has also been successful. “Even with 11,000 more people on parole today than in 2007, more than 17 percent fewer crimes are being alleged against parolees now than then.”
This new approach marks a stark break from past policies. “Previously, Texas lawmakers responded to projected increases in the need for prisons simply by building more lockups. As a result, the state’s prison population rose from 19,000 in 1975 to nearly 174,000 in 2010.
The new approach has exceeded expectations both for public safety and cost control. Rather than build more prisons, Texas has since closed three and is looking at additional closures as the population continues to shrink — it had receded to 166,000 by 2014. Most importantly, crime has declined more in Texas than it has nationally or in states without significant criminal-justice reform programs.”
Read the entire piece here.
Daniel Allott is deputy commentary editor for the Washington Examiner
