SOMEBODY HAS BAD INFORMATION

One of our Texas prison officials called.

Glen Castlebury is in charge of dealing with the news media. Like many in
such jobs, Castlebury is an old newspaperman. He switched sides about a
quarter-century ago to dispense information for the late Bob Bullock, and
then he joined the Texas Department of Criminal Justice a few years back.

I haven't met him in person, but we've had a couple of lengthy visits on
the phone. And you can tell just a few words into your first conversation
with this fellow that he's not your typical government-agency PR man, flack
or spinmeister. But then the TDCJ is not your typical government agency.

Typical dealings between reporters and flacks go like this: Let's imagine
someone at an agency spilled something. A reporter would call up demanding
to know the entire story behind the half-empty container and how much
damage was done. The agency spokesman, on the other hand, would point out
that the agency is proud to have a half-full container, and how nice and
clean is the area that got washed.

Sort of verbal checkers game Castlebury, however, comes across as a tough
old coot, which no doubt serves him well, considering the sort of
situations that occur in prisons to set reporters to calling him. My usual
tactic when talking to government-agency flacks is to try to be the one who
seems like a tough old coot. So this adds another level to conversations
with Castlebury, makes them more of a competition, sort of a verbal
checkers game.

The reason he called was to take me to task for a comment of mine made here
just the other day: Texas prison officials are expected soon to ask our
elected crew at the Capitol to vote them a big potful of money to add more
beds.

Castlebury wanted to let me know that any such expectations are without
solid foundation. Texas prison officials, he told me, are not soon going to
ask for more beds.

He provided a real long and somewhat interesting explanation that included
historical perspective, and that dealt with policy-council reports, which
were not the same as actual requests, and which included other options, and
... . I asked if he could maybe boil it down to just a couple of sentences
and e-mail them.

"Since the completion of the expansion program in 1995 TDCJ has not
advocated building new prisons for capacity purposes, period," the obliging
Castlebury wrote Tuesday morning. "Gov. Bush and (Lt.) Gov. Bullock in 1995
told TDCJ to rent county jail beds if we needed more capacity before the
turn of the century, and that policy has been followed.

"In June of last year preliminary estimates sent to the Legislature by the
Criminal Justice Policy Council said the state might have to cope with
15,000 new felons by 2005, and that 6,000 of those would be already on hand
in those rented county beds by 2003.

"In light of that, TDCJ had a responsibility to make prudent suggestions to
the Legislature for coping with the Policy Council's estimates, and toward
that end we suggested a mix of options, which included building 8,500
new-capacity beds.

"The Policy Council has now officially lowered its estimates, and therefore
any suggestion of new capacity beds is off the table."

Concerned about their image It was my clear understanding from our phone
conversation that prison officials don't want folks to think that they are
empire-building. Castlebury said he doesn't know anyone who wants more prisons.

So when I wrote that prison officials are expected to ask for money to
build more prisons, I was going on some outdated preliminary budget
estimates. Also, I was maybe assuming that since we've already built so
darn many new prisons so recently, and filled them up, we'd likely be
building some more.

I was also maybe remembering in the back of my mind somewhere, how many a
Texas town wants more prisons because the payroll boosts the local economy.
And people in the prison-construction business would profit from building
more of them. And more prisons would mean more customers for all the folks
who sell the goods and services needed to keep them running.

If prison officials didn't ask for more prisons, someone else must have. In
Gov. Rick Perry's budget proposal, announced Tuesday afternoon, there is
$95.1 million for two new 400-bed TDCJ geriatric units and two other
540-bed prison units.