Pubdate: Thu, 29 May 2003 Source: Dallas Morning News (TX) Copyright: 2003 The Dallas Morning News Contact: http://www.dallasnews.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/117 Authors: Ray Allen and Joe Deshotel Note: State Rep. Ray Allen, R-Grand Prairie, is chairman of House Corrections Committee. Rep. Joe Deshotel, D-Beaumont, is chairman of the Legislative Black Caucus and a member of the House Appropriations Committee. PRISON NOT ALWAYS ANSWER As Texas grapples with a $9.9 billion budget shortfall, it is our job to trim government costs and examine every state expenditure to ensure that taxpayers' money is being wisely spent. That is why we joined forces this year to support legislation that would ensure that dangerous offenders are incarcerated but that also would divert carefully selected nonviolent offenders into supervision and treatment programs. Texas lawmakers haven't been reluctant to punish criminals. We have the second-highest incarceration rate in the nation. In fact, one in every 21 adult Texans is under some form of criminal justice supervision - more people (740,000) than live in Austin (657,000). That includes one in every three young African-American males. Prisons alone don't create the kind of comprehensive approach to crime control that helps to keep Texans safe. Judges and juries routinely sentence offenders to probation when the facts of a case warrant and when public safety concerns are met. But what Texas doesn't do is ensure that first-time, low-level drug offenders get mandatory drug treatment to halt their slide into criminal behavior. The bills we are supporting would divert carefully selected, nonviolent drug users from the currently inevitable path to prison into proven supervision and treatment programs: - - House Bill 2668, which we authored, would mandate treatment instead of prison for first-time, nonviolent drug offenders and would save the state $115 million over five years. It also would free more than 5,000 prison beds for violent offenders who merit long sentences. - - House Bill 2624, by Rep. Pat Haggerty, R-El Paso, would allow nonviolent offenders early termination from probation if they remain drug free and comply with all probation conditions through the first third of their sentenced probation time. That would reduce caseloads on probation officers, freeing them to better supervise other offenders with more serious crimes. Passage of the bill would save an additional $120 million over five years - tax dollars that should be spent to ensure adequate prison capacity and the effective supervision of violent offenders who pose a threat to families and communities. Effective treatment costs taxpayers roughly half as much as incarceration. But those two new approaches to nonviolent offenders not only are less costly than prison but, more important, more effective. A recent report by the National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse found that nonviolent drug offenders sent to treatment were less likely to be rearrested, less likely to be reconvicted and less likely to return to prison than a comparable group of offenders who simply were imprisoned without treatment. Conversations with recovering drug addicts and alcoholics have convinced us that good treatment programs are tough. An offender forced to tackle and defeat an addiction often finds treatment to be more difficult than enduring prison's "three hots and a cot" at taxpayers' expense. Texas already is a recognized leader for its drug treatment programs inside prisons. Sadly, that treatment hasn't been available to first-time, low-level drug offenders. House Bill 2668 would correct that deficiency and, in the process, reduce crime and save taxpayer dollars. The two legislative proposals offer Texans the best of both worlds: They save money and yield better public safety. That is the right criminal justice policy for Texas' future: tough, smart, efficient and fiscally sustainable. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake