PACKED PRISONS - USE SPACE WISELY, HEED WHITMIRE'S CALL

Time now for a quick refresher on the Texas prison system's boom
decade, the 1990s, when the state opened the almost unbelievable
number of 73 new lockups =AD 29 in 1995 alone:

Capacity tripled. Criminals lost the revolving door that had spun them
in and right back out because of overcrowding. It looked like
penitentiaries had a cell for anyone who could be put on the bus to
Huntsville by tough-on-crime prosecutors.

Things have changed in the new millennium. The prisons are near
capacity again.

Warning against needless resumption of building, Sen. John Whitmire of
Houston is calling on colleagues to douse their eagerness for new laws
that would jam prison buses full of new convicts =AD especially the
nonviolent kind.

Mr. Whitmire maintains that today's 154,700 prison beds are enough, if
used wisely. And so he has qualms about the wisdom of 100 bills that
have been filed this session to stiffen sentences or add felonies to
the 1,900 already on the books.

Through a key committee chairmanship, he vows to block expensive bills
he considers of marginal value to public safety. Block away, senator.

A House-passed bill by Rep. Vicki Truitt of Keller is on a collision
course with Mr. Whitmire. It would upgrade car burglary from
misdemeanor to felony and create enough convicts each year to keep a
new 500-bed prison full. Under the bill, a 16-year-old who reached
into a car and swiped a stack of CDs would be eligible for a felony
record and two years in state lockup, instead of today's one-year max
in county jail.

Leading lawmakers are concerned that state prisons continue to get a
steady stream of nonviolent offenders who are better dealt with in
treatment or probation programs. That's especially true of low-level
drug offenders or many convicted of DWI. Such prisoners need not
compete with hardened criminals for space behind bars.

As Mr. Whitmire says, "Prisons ought to be for people who want to rape
you or shoot you or murder you."