BEHIND BARS

Too Many In Prison; Too Little Care And Prevention

According to a recent Justice Department report, the United States has won
a distinction it should not want and should make greater effort to avoid.

A department survey found that as of August 2002, the nation's inmate
population exceeded that of any other country. For the first time, the
report said, the United States had more than 2 million people in federal
and state prisons and local jails.

About one person for every 142 U.S. residents is behind bars. Most of the
growth came in the federal prison system, where the number of inmates grew
5 percent from 2001 to 2002. State prison populations grew less than 1 percent.

Texas bucked the trend with a 3 percent decrease -- a development that
reflects the tightness of the state budget as much as the quality of its
justice or a lowering of crime. Still, more than 600,000 Texans are
incarcerated or under the supervision of the criminal justice system.

About 140,000 are held in state facilities. About 8,000 people are jailed
in Harris County. Even if these numbers do not constitute record highs,
they offer evidence that Texas, like the nation, is not doing enough to
deflect residents from crime or to treat and rehabilitate those who are
convicted. Particularly disturbing is the growing number of inmates who
turn out to have been convicted on false testimony or contaminated
evidence, whose attorney's mounted incompetent defenses, or who are proved
innocent after serving years in prison or on death row. Supreme Court
Justice Anthony Kennedy complained to Congress that having 2 million people
in prison was unacceptable. The conservative jurist nominated by President
Reagan said minimum sentences prescribed for federal crimes often result in
prison terms that are too long. About half of the federal inmates stand
convicted of drug-related crimes.

In Texas, only 18 percent of prison inmates have been convicted on drug
charges, but most of the others suffer from drug and alcohol addiction that
aggravated their misbehavior. Texas could and should make wider use of
alternatives like drug courts. Statistics compiled by the Texas Department
of Criminal Justice show that the typical inmate in this state has a low IQ
and did not finish high school.

A disproportionate number -- 41 percent -- are black. Mental health
advocates estimate that 44,000 of those in Texas jails and prisons are
mentally ill. Most are there because of behavior that could be prevented by
proper and relatively inexpensive medication and counseling. Of the 53
percent of inmates imprisoned for violent crimes, many were abused as
children. The budget crunch is putting pressure on the state to keep prison
costs down. At the same time, the Texas House of Representatives passed a
budget that would slash budgets for education, care for the mentally ill
and child abuse prevention. The lack of these things is a factor that
influences whether a person becomes a criminal likely to be incarcerated.
Inadequate investment in these crime prevention tools almost guarantees
that the number of Texans behind bars and the cost of keeping them there
will go up. Also, though crime decreased through the 1990s, that trend has
begun to reverse.

The index crime rate was up 4 percent in 2001 and up another 1.3 percent in
the first six months of 2002, according to a report by the Texas Criminal
Justice Policy Council. The rate for violent crimes was up 5.1 percent in
2001 and 2.2 percent in the first half of last year. This comes, as the
CJPP report points out, at a time when Texas' reserve prison capacity is
rapidly declining.

The number of reserve beds within the state prison system fell from just
over 6,800 in December 2001 to just 674 in December 2002. The CJPP report
to legislators said if the trend continues, reserve space will be exhausted
by August of this year. Soon, the need to build and staff more prison space
and/or contract the job to the private sector will catch up to the harsh
realities of the state budget. Clearly Texas needs to get rapidly smarter
about how -- and how many -- it incarcerates.