AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

As a newly elected state representative in 1993, Ray Allen was primed to get tough on crime. His family had been the victim of crime. Gangs were overrunning his hometown of Grand Prairie, and he had campaigned on a platform to "lock 'em up and throw away the key."

He kept that promise during his first years in the House, sponsoring a bill to require life terms for anyone convicted of sexual assault a second time.

These days, though, Allen is among a growing list of key state leaders and officials who are arguing for more programs to benefit convicts -- such as drug treatment, therapy and education in prisons as well as job placement, mentoring and re-entry initiatives once they get out. It is part of growing national trend, experts say, a stark contrast to the days of passing three-strikes laws, building more prisons and cutting programs in order to make the environment inside the lockups as punitive as possible.

"These wouldn't have been things I'd have thought about or said back in those days," said Allen, chairman of the House Corrections Committee, who earned the nickname "No Way, Ray" for his hard-line views on crime a decade ago. "Tight budgets have forced fiscal conservatives like myself to ask the same questions liberals were asking 10 years ago. We're all at the same reality now on criminal justice, I think: We simply cannot afford to keep everyone behind bars."

It costs Texans about $2 a day to keep a convict on probation, and $45 a day to keep him in prison, Allen said.

Signs of the slow shift in public policy are everywhere as lawmakers prepare to return to Austin in January.

Last spring, the Department of Criminal Justice created the Rehabilitation and Re-entry Programs Division to consolidate and better coordinate existing state and local initiatives to help the 60,000 inmates who leave Texas prisons each year. Top prison administrators are participating in a Travis County experiment establishing a community network to help ex-offenders. New programs are being offered for convicts who are leaving solitary confinement to return home.

In their proposed two-year budget, prison officials have requested an additional $28 million for increased supervision of probationers, $27 million for additional local beds for probation violators who would otherwise end up in prison, and $10 million more for additional drug treatment for parolees.

"These aren't just a bunch of touchy-feely programs," said state Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, the longtime chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee.

"With criminals, you either pay now while they're in prison or you pay later when they get out and keep coming back again and again," he added. "And later is always more expensive."

For Texas prison officials, who historically have been more focused on incarceration than rehabilitation, the shift is coming with support from the top.

"For an agency whose primary mission is public safety, it's always been really challenging for us to deal with both incarceration and re-entry, but we're doing it because it's right for the State of Texas," said Brad Livingston, interim executive director of the criminal justice agency.

By any measure, the corrections business in Texas is huge and expensive: a $2.4 billion annual budget; 45,000 employees; 150,000 people in 112 prisons and state jails; more than 70,000 on parole; another 400,000 on probation. The prison system added roughly 100,000 beds during the 1990s to build what, at the time, was the largest prison system in the free world.

Demand has continued to grow. By 2007, Texas will need 7,000 additional prison beds, Allen said, and that could cost taxpayers as much as $500 million.

"Instead of that, what if we funded additional probation programs and local short-term confinement beds and made other changes that would cost a whole lot less, with probably a better outcome," Allen said. "We could pay for a lot of children's health insurance with the savings there."

Allen and other lawmakers are advocating for more money for substance abuse treatment and mental health treatment -- to keep some convicts in community-based programs, when appropriate.

Amid the support for rehabilitation, Whitmire thinks the state also should re-examine its policies on imprisoning drunken drivers who violate probation.

"There are 4,000 DWIs in prison, and most never get any treatment," he said. "We have to do probation better, so that more people are better supervised and don't end up in prison. If we did some of our existing programs better, with better funding, I think we could save money and lives in the long haul."

As proof of that, Whitmire notes that the crime rate has fallen by 30 percent in the past 10 years, while the incarceration rate has stayed among the highest in the country.

"We've shut the revolving door for career criminals, and we do a great job of locking up violent offenders and child molesters and murderers," he said. "But what we need to work on is what we do with everybody else -- the nonviolent offenders and drug abusers and others who need rehabilitation to change their lives, if they so chose."

Convicts' family members and advocacy groups are hopeful, but cautious.

"These programs are needed, most definitely, because now there are many obstacles to an inmate coming out and being successful at reintegrating," said Carol Robinson, chair of the DeSoto chapter of the Texas Inmate Families Association, a statewide support group. "But Texas has never been very high on rehabilitation. They like that punishment. So only time will tell."

For thousands of convicts each year, the trip out of prison ends in the same city or town where they got into trouble, with no job prospects, no new skills and a big chip on their shoulder.

"Even if you're the most qualified applicant, once they find out you've been to prison, it's all over," said Alvin Taylor, 31, a Houston resident who served a five-year sentence for burglary and has bounced from one minimum wage job to another since he got out two years ago.

Travis County District Attorney Ronnie Earle, a longtime proponent of rehabilitation and re-entry programs, applauds the growing interest in Texas.

"More new prisons are an indulgence we can't afford anymore," he said, "so all of a sudden getting (prisoners) back on their feet after they leave prison is looking like a good idea. It's less expensive."

Nationally, Texas may be slightly behind what other states have done. One 2003 study showed that 25 states had reformed their sentencing laws to try to cut the number of people who were going to prison, and to put more people into rehabilitation and probation programs as a way to save money, said Kara Gotsch with the Washington-based National Prison Project of the American Civil Liberties Union.

Earlier this fall, Congress passed an act aimed at helping prisoners reintegrate successfully into society through self-help and treatment programs.

"There is a lot of interest in rehabilitation now on both sides of the (political) aisle," Gotsch said. "People realize our current criminal justice system is not working and that it's too expensive."

Allen agrees.

"I think the public is way ahead of the Legislature on this, and I think next year you'll see the pendulum swinging back toward rehabilitation in Texas," he said.

mward@statesman.com; 445-1712