Pubdate: Wed, 17 Jan 2001
Source: Houston Chronicle (TX)
Copyright: 2001 Houston Chronicle
Contact:  Viewpoints Editor, P.O. Box 4260 Houston, Texas 77210-4260
Fax: (713) 220-3575
Website: http://www.chron.com/
Forum: http://www.chron.com/content/hcitalk/index.html
Author:  Thom Marshall

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.
- ---
MAP posted-by: GD