Texas
Overview
Texas has long been regarded as a state with some of the “toughest”
criminal justice policies in the nation. During the early 1990s, policymakers
enacted laws increasing the time serious, violent offenders serve in
prison. With those and other changes to state law, the incarceration rate in
Texas increased significantly, and today, it has the second-highest incarceration
rate in the United States.1
Between 1985 and 2005, the prison population grew 300 percent, forcing the state to build tens of thousands of prison beds. From 1983 to 1997, the state spent $2.3 billion in construction costs to add 108,000 beds to its system. Less than 10 years later, the prison population exceeded the capacity of the state’s prisons by 3,000 and was projected to continue growing. An official state projection released in January 2007 forecast that the prison population would increase by 14,000 people within five years.
Faced with an impending prison overcrowding crisis, policymakers had to decide whether spending $523 million to build and operate additional prisons was the best way to increase public safety and reduce recidivism. With bipartisan leadership, policymakers in Texas identified and enacted strategies to expand the capacity of treatment programs and residential facilities that are projected to increase public safety and avert the projected growth in the prison population at a net savings to the state.
- William J. Sabol,Todd D.Minton, and Paige M. Harrison, Prison and Jail Inmates atMidyear 2006, Bureau of Justice Statistics, June 2007.