CJPC Legislative Update - April 27, 2009

Finally Something NC Can Learn From Texas

Texas State Representative Tells NC How to Reduce Prison Beds

Jerry Madden, a Republican Representative in the Texas State House told North Carolina Legislators last week that Texas had been able to reduce its skyrocketing prison costs and North Carolina could too.

The Texas Speaker of the House tapped Rep. Madden, an engineer and self-described social conservative, for the task of finding ways to bring the costs and the population under control. Madden has clearly been the legislator for the job. Working together with a leading Senate Democrat, he helped forge a plan that has greatly reduced the 17,000 new prison beds Texas was slated to need.

"There are ways you can do this thing," Madden told legislators. He explained that it's not always necessary to make big changes in order to lower costs. For example, "if you have 5% that don't return to prison, that's 1500 people. That's one prison and next year it's the same."

"I guarantee you, if you build it, they will come," Madden said about building new prisons which costs $250 - $300 million each in Texas and $40 million to operate. Texas has 150,000 people in prison, 450,000 on probation and 77,000 on parole - a total of 7% of the male population in Texas is under some form of correctional supervision. Texans spend $5.6 billion per year on their correctional system. North Carolina spends over a $1 billion per year.

Major Changes Pursued in Some States

Madden pointed to other states, such as Michigan and Kansas that are also making major changes in their population and spending. Michigan - a state that has 1 in 3 state employees working for the Department of Correction - has not only reduced the projections, they've cut the actual population.

One approach in Texas and Michigan is taking steps to reduce the high rates of failure for people leaving the system. Even a small reduction in the failure rate can have big financial pay offs down the road. To do that, Madden said, "We found we needed more drug treatment and mental health programs." In previous year Texas had cut offender treatment programs to build more beds.

Probation revocations are another area that has been targeted in both Kansas and Texas. As in North Carolina, a high percentage of prison admissions in Kansas were probation revocations. We need to look for the "swingers" Madden said. He explained that some offenders who are revoked definitely need to be in prison and some will do ok no matter what is done, but those people in the middle are worth the extra attention to keep them from coming back. Those "swingers" can help save the state a lot of money.

Michael Thompson from the Council of State Governments in New York worked with Texas to help develop data for their state's approach. Thompson cited counties in some states that have exceptionally large numbers of offenders returning from prison or jail. In Maricopa County, Arizona, for example, two-thirds of those released were returning to a single neighborhood. The neighborhood had 1% of the state's population and 6% of the population returning from prison.

Incentives

In some states, leaders have chosen to "incentivize" communities to lower their revocations. They found if they could lower their revocation rate by just 1%, the community could receive $400,000 to address local housing and treatment needs. A number of North Carolina communities could be prime candidates for this kind of innovative solution.

Finally, Madden emphasized that the changes made in Texas didn't require new legislation, but were accomplished through appropriations acts, one more indication that there are many ways to address the problem.