PRISON OVERSIGHT IS ALMOST ENDED

Judge Justice yields control in most areas of the state prisons, but
serious questions about prison system remain.

Texas has come a long way since U.S. District Judge William Wayne
Justice took control of the prison system in 1972.

Last Monday, Justice terminated his control of prison staffing,
discipline, access to courts, crowding, health services, and death
row. He retained control over three areas: poor conditions of
confinement in administrative segregation; the failure to provide
safety for inmates; and excessive use of force by corrections
officers. But the judge's action relinquishes most federal oversight
of the Texas prison system.

You can dispute some of the rulings made by Justice, one of the
nation's foremost proponents of judicial activism, but you can't
ignore the conditions that led him to take control of a prison system
that was a model of inhumanity, and a shame for Texas.

Justice's reforms were considered outrageous, but they sound very
reasonable today. He ordered the prison system to provide one bed for
each inmate, and later made that one cell for each inmate; because of
overcrowded conditions, the practice at one time was to put three
inmates in one 9-by-5 foot cell. He ordered the prison system to
provide access to medical care and recreation time. His ruling that
the prison population could not exceed 95 percent of any prison's
capacity to house them created a state prison crisis in the 1980s.

This lit a fire under the Legislature, forcing it to provide adequate
funding and institute needed penal reforms.

Justice's action closes a chapter in this story, but Texas still faces
big problems. Our prison system is too large. We put too many people
behind bars who do not belong there. Drug users who have not committed
a violent crime shouldn't have to spend years behind bars; instead of
incarceration, they need help to change bad habits. Yes, we need to
lock up violent, predatory criminals, and keep them locked up. But in
filling prisons with petty felons and drug users, we cast too wide a
net.

Our prison system, overlarge and overburdened, takes too big a
financial bite out of scarce resources. That money could be better
spent addressing conditions that breed crime. More of it should be
used for drug prevention, job training, and juvenile outreach programs.

Texas really needs to escape the lock-them-up-and-throw-away-the-key
attitude. Prisons will never solve the social problems caused by lack
of opportunity; they just keep them out of sight for a time. But our
prison problems can't be hidden indefinitely. Someone - another
reformer like William Wayne Justice - will force us to take a close
look at them.