STATE'S PRISONS PUSHING CAPACITY

A steadily growing population of convicted criminals is pushing Texas'
prison system close to where an emergency-crowding law not used for a decade
could trigger steps to lower the number of felons behind bars, officials
said Thursday.

But they insisted such a move is unlikely, as long as Texas' parole rate
remains at more than 25 percent and other programs successfully divert
enough convicts from prison to avoid a crowding crisis.

Official reports listed Texas' 114 prisons as 97.3 percent full.

When the prisons reach 99 percent, a state law requires the parole board to
consider for early release almost any convict serving time for a nonviolent
crime who is nearing the end of a sentence -- even if the inmate already has
been turned down. And while that might not produce a much different result
than the board approving more convicts for parole in the first place,
officials privately concede the political backlash could be ugly.

"Anytime you invoke anything, like martial law or the prison act, it creates
the perception of a crisis -- and perception is as much of it as anything,"
said A.M. "Mac" Stringfellow, chairman of the prison system's 18-member
governing board.

"If the (parole approval) rate stays at 25 or 26 percent, I think we'll be
OK."

In recent months, admissions to state prisons have continued to grow
steadily, by an average of about 400 per month, officials said. By Thursday,
151,095 convicts were behind bars -- a tally that officials predict could
increase by 5,000 during the next year. The state's capacity is about
155,500.

Earlier this month, the prison board recommended that the state build three
more prisons, adding 8,550 beds at a cost of nearly $550 million. And they
are seeking another $17 million for additional beds for parole violators,
for expansion of electronic monitoring programs for parolees and for 500
beds in local lockups.

In recent months, parole officials have changed their policies to review
cases faster and not send as many parolees back to prison for rules
infractions -- most involving low-risk, nonviolent convicts who were headed
for freedom soon anyway. They also are reportedly studying whether more
elderly and seriously ill convicts can be paroled to nursing homes to free
up additional prison bunks.

New statistics made public Wednesday showed that Texas' parole rate climbed
in July to its highest single point in a single month since Gov. George W.
Bush took office five years ago, with nearly 29 percent of eligible convicts
approved for early release from prison.

Parole officials attributed that to new programs that have allowed closer
supervision of convicts who are released, among other factors. They have
insisted that a steadily increasing parole rate in the past year is not a
reaction to prisons growing fuller.

But unless the growing influx of prisoners cools, officials have warned for
two months, Texas' prisons could be full within a year. And that has
heightened some concerns that the Prison Management Act, a law approved in
1983 to relieve prison crowding and first used a few years later, could come
into play again.

A dozen years ago, when Texas prisons were so full that more than 30,000
convicts were backed up in county jails and courts were levying millions of
dollars in fines each month, then-Gov. Bill Clements invoked the law 13
times to release tens of thousands of convicts early. Many quickly went out
and committed new crimes, triggering a public outcry that caused Texas to
more than double the size of its prison system in five years -- the biggest
such construction project in U.S. history -- and brought about tougher
anti-crime laws.

Carl Reynolds, general counsel for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice,
said that although the prison capacity is high again -- the highest since
all the new prisons were completed in 1995 -- he thinks it's unlikely the
Prison Management Act will come into play again.

A recent cushion: The state is leasing bunks from counties -- more than
5,000 in recent months -- with another 1,500 recently authorized by the
prison board. "The community beds act as our safety valve," Reynolds said.

Tony Fabelo, head of the Criminal Justice Policy Council, the state agency
that charts prison population trends, predicts there will be enough beds for
state convicts during the next year -- even if the parole rate stayed at 20
percent.

"We don't have any crisis," Fabelo said. "Ninety-seven percent is not
overcrowded. And we have the planning in place to keep it from reaching 99
percent."

Even so, Stringfellow and other officials are optimistic the system will not
hit 99 percent before new prisons are built. Privately, officials said they
need to keep the capacity at less than 98 percent to allow for proper
operational flexibility.

"The fact of life is that we have only X number of beds -- and we don't have
any control over what the parole board does or what the judges sentencing
people to prison do," Stringfellow said.