PRISON CRUNCH SOLUTION SOUGHT

AUSTIN - With Texas prisons running out of space and officials asking for
as many as 5,000 more beds, lawmakers are trying to make more room for
violent offenders without costly new construction.

Ideas include moving some inmates into drug treatment programs before
they're paroled and returning fewer parolees to prison for minor infractions.

"We're trying to do some things we believe will change the course of Texas
in ways that will make this a better state," said Rep. Jerry Maden,
R-Plano, chairman of the House Corrections Committee. "We're going to be
looking at alternatives to actually building hard prisons."

Madden's committee held a rare joint meeting Tuesday with the Senate
Criminal Justice Committee to explore options for handling the steadily
rising prison population.

Many of the ideas are similar to smaller-scale changes made two years ago.
Lawmakers then spent an extra $27 million on drug treatment facilities and
sought to reduce the number of parole revocations in 2003, the Legislature
slashed funding for prison substance-abuse programs to help overcome a
budget deficit.

This year, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice has requested 5,000 new
beds, including 4,000 in two new maximum security prisons and 1,000 in a
medium security unit for about $440 million.

The Texas prison system is already one of the largest in the country with
almost 152,000 inmates costing about $2.5 billion per year.

"The bathtub is full," said Tony Fabelo of the Council on State Governments
Justice Center, who presented a report on Texas prisons. Fabelo was the
executive director of the former Texas Criminal Justice Policy Council,
which Gov. Rick Perry eliminated in 2003.

One reason for the prison population explosion is tougher sentencing laws,
which give judges few alternatives to incarceration, Fabelo said.

The state saw a massive prison buildup in the early 1990s and has added
13,000 more beds since 1997. At the current rate of incarceration, the
state will have about 168,000 prisoners creating a space shortage of almost
17,000 beds.

According to Fabelo, felony convictions in Texas are up 29 percent since
2000 even while the state's violent crime rate dropped each year but one
between 2000-2005.

Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, chairman of the Senate panel, has urged
lawmakers to consider other options for low-level drug offenders and
low-risk parole violators.

According to Whitmire:

- - The state has 1,900 inmates already approved for parole upon completion
of an alcohol or drug treatment program but must wait up to a year to get
in one.

- - About 700 have been approved for parole are still waiting to be released
because there's no room in halfway houses or other facilities.

- - Another 1,500 inmates on drunken driving charges are waiting to get in
treatment programs.

- - In 2006, the state revoked probation or parole for 12,000 inmates on what
he classified as "minor" violations, such as failing a drug test while
awaiting entry to a treatment program, failure to hold a job or nonpayment
of court-ordered fees.

Spending money on more halfway houses and treatment programs would help,
Whitmire said.