TEXAS PRISONS

Increase in inmate population is a real, but bipartisan, problem

Forget that endlessly e-mailed list purporting to show how awful Texas has
been under Gov. George W. Bush. Some of the items on the list appear to be
true; the state does lead in executions, though that hardly is a Bush
innovation. Some are exaggerations and half-truths. Some are so vaguely
worded as to make it impossible to check. And some are false.

For instance, the anonymously authored list has it that Texas is 50th in
spending for teachers and 41st in per-capita spending on education. The
American Federation of Teachers, hardly a pro-Bush stronghold, says Texas
teachers ranked 37th in a survey taken before a recent $3,000 pay hike. And
John Cole, the federation's Texas state president, says per-pupil outlays
rank it 33rd – neither worse nor much better than in the pre-Bush era.

But here is an item that, while it isn't on that highly circulated list,
ought to be worth some discussion – not just in the political precincts but
in criminal justice circles and public policy forums:

The Texas prison system grew faster than any other prison system in the
country during the 1990s, adding almost one of every five prisoners to the
nation's prison boom. It now has the largest prison population in the
country, surpassing that of California, which has 13 million more citizens.

Those numbers, which I trust, are from a study by the Justice Policy
Institute scheduled for release today. Vincent Schiraldi, the institute's
president, is quick to point out that the numbers aren't Mr. Bush's doing.
"This is a bipartisan effort," he says of Texas' prison explosion. "Half of
the 1990s growth was during [Democratic Gov.] Ann Richards' tenure."

Nor, he says, is the prison boom strictly a Texas phenomenon. Earlier
institute reports have looked at the District of Columbia, Maryland and New
York.

But Texas does appear to be a special case. Look again at "Texas Tough," as
the institute's report is dubbed:

There are more Texans under criminal justice control – 706,600 – than the
entire populations of Alaska, Vermont or Wyoming. Texas and California
together have half of the nation's parolees and probationers. Texas'
incarceration rate of 1,035 per 100,000 population tops every state but
Louisiana. If Texas were a separate nation, it would have the world's
highest incarceration rate – well above the United States at 682 per 100,000
or Russia's 685.

The state's prison population has tripled since 1990, rising more than 60
percent in the past five years – from 92,669 to 149,684. (All of those
numbers are from the report.)

Black Texans, by the way, are incarcerated at a rate seven times that of
whites – and at a rate 63 percent higher than the national rate for blacks.
But while blacks (12 percent of the state's population) supply 44 percent of
the inmates (more than half of them for nonviolent offenses), they are
underrepresented in such alternative programs as drug treatment.

And what is Texas getting from its tough approach? Maybe less than it
thinks. Here is the Justice Policy Institute's report:

"While crime has dropped in Texas in recent years, as it has done all over
the country, a state-by-state comparison shows the Lone Star state to be
lagging behind other jurisdictions that haven't increased their prison
systems as dramatically."

New York, with a state population roughly equal to that of Texas, offers a
particularly striking contrast.

Texas had the fastest-growing prison system in the 1990s; New York, the
third slowest. During the 1990s, Texas added more prisoners to its system
(98,081) than New York's entire prison population (73,233).

But the decline in crime in the last half of the 1990s was four times
greater in New York than in Texas.

Too-quick reliance on incarceration not only turns out to be bad criminal
justice policy, but it also has a devastating impact on minority
communities, exacerbating the very problems – of poverty, rage, joblessness,
family breakdown and societal disaffection – that produce a lot of the crime
to begin with.

We need to talk about how to do it better – not by circulating dubious and
unchecked e-mail accusations or by scapegoating particular politicians but
by looking at the actual consequences of the policies of the past decade.

It makes no more sense to lay the whole burden of Texas' dismal numbers at
the feet of George W. Bush than it does to blame President Clinton for the
fact that the United States leads the world in incarceration, with 2 million
people behind bars.

Laying blame is easy. Changing policy takes work.