ON TEXAS TIME

Prisons full in Baja Oklahoma

The Republican nomination of Texas Gov. George W. Bush for president
is focusing the eyes of the nation on the Lone Star state as Bush's
record is examined in detail.

It is generally a good record, one of bipartisan cooperation that
improved public schools and higher education while cutting taxes
during a time of economic boom. But Gov. Bush might not want to brag
too much about the "Texas solution" in corrections.

The Dallas Morning News recently reported that after a $2 billion
prison-building binge that tripled the number of prison beds in Texas,
there is no room at the corrections inn.

Soaring crime all over the nation prompted most states to "get tough"
to try to stem the tide, but none got tougher than Texas. The motto,
Texas observers noted, was that "if you do the crime, you do the time
and Texans are willing to pay for it."

That attitude, reported the Morning News, probably will be put to the
test in the next legislative session. The 152,000 prison beds (100,000
more than were available a few years ago) are full.

With an incarceration rate of 724 inmates per 100,000 residents, Texas
trails only Louisiana in its determination to put criminals in prison
. The national average is 461 per 100,000 citizens.

In fairness to Gov. Bush, the prison boom was not of his making. The
decision to triple the size of prisons was made before he became
governor, although he has not opposed the get-tough policies.

The Texas experience should be especially instructive for Oklahoma,
where public attitudes toward crime and punishment are not greatly
different.

Oklahoma is third in the nation when it comes to incarceration rates,
with 622 prisoners per 100,000 citizens. Corrections spending in
Oklahoma is nowhere near the rate in Texas. But spending on prisons
here has more than doubled in the last decade from $153 million to
$355 million annually, much of the increase coming in recent years.

Putting more offenders in prison for longer terms is intended to
control crime. The idea is that if a greater number of criminals are
put away, then crime rates simply have to decline.

It does not seem that the correlation is that simple. If it were, you
could expect that Louisiana, Texas and Oklahoma would be the most
crime free states in the union. They are not.

Louisiana's overall crime rate puts it fourth in the nation. Oklahoma
ranks 14th and Texas 16th in overall crime rates.

In violent crime, Oklahoma sinks to 21st and Texas is 17th among the
50 states. Corrections officials note that poor states generally have
higher property crime rates, a fact verified by common sense.

Similarly, most social scientists consider the state of the economy to
be the biggest factor in crime rates.

Public outrage at crime has almost killed serious discussion of what
causes crime. A suggestion that lack of education and poverty breed
crime is enough to get an elected official branded as "soft" on crime.

Oklahomans have seen that happen as recently as last year when the
work of a bipartisan coalition of state senators to revamp the state's
criminal justice system was scrapped. The plan was to shorten the
prescribed sentences for all but the major, violent crimes, but
increase the percentage of the sentences that inmates would actually
serve.

This approach would have created community-sentencing programs for
nonviolent crimes, especially those involving drugs and substance abuse.

The Legislature passed the reform, but it met a storm of protest and
fainthearted lawmakers failed to put it into effect. Tulsa County was
one of the few counties in the state that effectively organized to put
the community sentencing aspect into practice.

Even as legislators are busy this session finding money to carry the
Department of Corrections through this fiscal year ending June 30,
perhaps 20 or more of the state's smaller hospitals are expected to
close their doors. Even the large hospitals in Oklahoma City and Tulsa
are in trouble.

Why? Because the payments for Medicare and Medicaid patients are below
the costs of services and hospitals have no choice but to treat the
elderly on Medicare and the poor on Medicaid.

Most other major services in Oklahoma suffer from lack of funds. But
the money crisis in hospitals -- while the state seems poised to
follow the Texas example in corrections -- dramatically points to
misplaced priorities.

Oklahoma leaders could, for example, claim millions more money in
federal matching dollars for Medicaid. For every dollar the state
spends on Medicaid, the federal government provides $2.44.

State officials say there is no actual limit on the amount of federal
money that can be claimed through Medicaid. It's easy to see how
another $500 million could be added to the $1.8 billion in combined
state and federal money spent on health care for people who work hard
but cannot afford health-care insurance.

Former Oklahoma State Senate Pro Tem Bob Cullison many years ago
warned that unchecked expansion of the penal system would bankrupt the
state. That might be an exaggeration. But it appears that without
reform of the criminal justice system the costs of incarceration will
gradually starve all other aspects of state government, especially
education.

Texas is a much wealthier state than Oklahoma. Texans perhaps can
afford to indulge themselves in building more and more prisons.

In the days when the $2 billion prison expansion was planned, some
Texas officials predicted a stabilization of the prison population
long before the new beds were occupied. It didn't happen.

Today, many Texas officials are reconsidering the get-tough policies.
They actually are talking about attacking the causes of crime:
substance abuse, illiteracy, dysfunctional families and poverty.

That is the example that Oklahomans should be following.