A PUSH FOR PRISON REFORM

Slain Officer's Mother Testifies

AUSTIN -- Her voice cracking, the mother of a slain Irving police office
pleaded Tuesday for a list of changes that she said are needed to make
the state's prisons safe for the inmates, the guards and the public.

"I'm a mother on a mission," Jayne Hawkins said during a 15-minute
presentation.

Addressing the House Corrections Committee, Ms. Hawkins repeated her
earlier demands for an independent investigation of the murder of her
son, Irving Police officer Aubrey Hawkins, and the appointment of a
citizen committee to oversee the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

Interrupted Robbery

Officer Hawkins was shot to death Dec. 24 outside an Oshman's Super
Sports USA store after interrupting a robbery in progress that police
say was committed by seven inmates who had escaped from the Connally
Unit near Kenedy, Texas, 11 days earlier.

Six of the seven who were captured in Colorado after a nationwide
manhunt face capital murder charges in connection with Officer Hawkins'
death. The seventh suspect killed himself when police cornered him.

Prison officials were not present at the hearing Tuesday. Gary Johnson,
director of the TDCJ's Institutional Division, previously acknowledged
that the system "failed" during the escape. Officials have said,
however, that the overall corrections system does not require massive
overhaul.

Ms. Hawkins and the slain officer's widow, Lori, are waging a campaign
to reform the prison system, which they blame for Officer Hawkins'
death. They appeared before the Senate Criminal Justice Committee
earlier this month.

"I will not allow Aubrey to have died in vain," said Jayne Hawkins,
characterizing the prison system as in disarray.

"The citizens elect the officials, the officials appoint TDCJ members,
and TDJC has a mission statement we have not seen them honor," she said.

Ms. Hawkins called for better training for prison guards, who she said
can be hired as young as 18 and receive only four weeks of classroom
instruction and two weeks of on-the-job training.

"Many are unprepared for the demands of matching wits and brawn with
hardened criminals," she said.

Guard Pay

Ms. Hawkins also called for better pay for guards and for creation of a
career ladder to reduce turnover, now 20 percent.

To avoid prison overcrowding, she recommended that alcoholics, drug
addicts, victimless criminals and the mentally impaired that now make up
16 percent of the prison population be placed in community treatment
facilities.

And she called for changes in procedures to prevent violent criminals
like those accused of killing her son of from being assigned jobs with
minimal supervision.

"We don't need their skills in the prison work force that badly," she
said.

Unlike the Senate committee, whose chairman defended the prison system,
the House panel listened silently to Ms. Hawkins' comments. Rep. Pat
Haggerty, R-El Paso, the chairman, expressed sympathy for her loss.