NONVIOLENT OFFENDERS ARE COSTLY FOR STATE'S PRISONS

Texas is facing a budget shortfall of almost $10 billion, maybe more. This
week, at a hearing evaluating the state's mushrooming prison budget in
light of the current fiscal crisis, Texas lawmakers will have an
opportunity to shave costs.

With crippling budget deficits, falling or stabilizing crime rates and
mounting public support for a more balanced approach to criminal justice,
even some very conservative states are finding ways to cut corrections
costs without jeopardizing public safety.

The National Governors Association has announced that states are facing
their worst fiscal crisis since World War II. According to an association
survey, that could mean severe reductions in education, Medicaid and social
services.

State governments spend more than $30 billion annually on corrections. In
fact, one of every 14 general-fund dollars is spent on prisons. Because
prisons have been one of the fastest growing items in state budgets,
officials can save substantially by cutting corrections instead of school
budgets or health-care coverage for the working poor.

Texas alone spends more than $2.5 billion annually on its prison system.
Texas prisons grew faster than any other system in the country during the
1990s, adding nearly one out of every five prisoners to the nation's prison
boom.

About 750,000 people - one out of every 20 adults in Texas - are in prison,
jail, probation or parole, an extraordinary level of government control
over the population. While Texas spends less per capita than the rest of
the nation on education, health care and roads, the state spends
substantially more on housing inmates.

In 2000, there were 89,400 people in Texas' prisons and state jails for
nonviolent crimes. Texas' nonviolent prison population is the second
largest incarcerated population in the country (after California) and is
larger than the entire prison population of New York, the nation's third
most populous state.

Those are precisely the kinds of inmates the public believes should be held
accountable in ways other than prison. According to a recent poll by Hart
Research Associates, two-thirds of Americans support sentencing nonviolent
offenders to probation instead of imprisonment, and a substantial majority
of the public supports eliminating mandatory sentencing laws and returning
sentencing discretion to judges.

Moreover, a recent poll by the University of Houston Center for Public
Policy found that the prisons were one of only two budgets that Texans
favored cutting in the current fiscal crisis. Nearly 30 percent supported
big cuts in the corrections budget, while another 40 percent preferred
smaller cuts.

As public opinion has shifted in favor of sensible alternatives to
incarceration and state budgets have tightened, a number of states are
rethinking their prison policies. In 2000, Louisiana, the state with the
nation's highest incarceration rate, eliminated mandatory sentences for
certain offenses and returned sentencing discretion to judges.

Michigan recently followed suit, abolishing mandatory sentences for drug
offenders. In California, more than 30,000 drug offenders have been
diverted from prison into treatment since 2000.

Instead of squandering money on the incarceration of nonviolent offenders,
Texas lawmakers should pass sensible reforms, too.

They could start by requiring the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles to
increase the parole of lower-risk offenders. Lawmakers also should reduce
penal code sentences for low-risk, nonviolent offenders and increase jury
and judicial discretion to evaluate an individual's circumstances.

Those proposals will reduce prison populations in a way that saves money,
assures public safety and returns some balance to Texas' penal policies. If
a conservative state like Louisiana can create a more balanced approach to
public safety, so can Texas.

Will Harrell is executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of
Texas. Vincent Schiraldi is president of the Justice Policy Institute, a
research and public policy organization.