Texas has added over 4,000 new prison beds since the 2003 legislative session, and they are full.  If policies do not change, Texas is expected to need 2,000 additional prison beds every year. That means Texas can either start building thousands of new prison beds each year, which will cost millions of dollars, or we can change our criminal sentencing policies to better protect the public safety.

Our Texas Legislature has direct control over who goes to Texas prison and for how long – they enact our state sentencing laws. Our Governor must agree anytime the Legislature changes state sentencing laws.  The Texas Legislature defines which behaviors are crimes, and the penalty range for each crime. They determine which crimes are felonies and which crimes are misdemeanors.

A felony conviction can result in a sentence to prison, and  cause the person to have life long status as a "felon" with all of the consequences of that label. A misdemeanor conviction, on the other hand, is punishable by fines or time in the county jail and fewer collateral consequences result from the conviction. Prison is reserved for felons only.

Texas Department of Criminal Justice director Gary Johnson testified to the Senate Criminal Justice Committee the agency must spend 90% of its budget on prison beds due to "front end pressure." That means that there are so many felons entering the prison, and the prison has a legal duty to hold them inside due to long sentences, that TDCJ has no choice – it must spend 90% of its budget on prison beds, leaving almost no money available for alternatives to incarceration and "what works".

Texas prison sentences are double the national average.

The national average was just over 5 years in 1996, while the average Texas prison sentence was 9.5 years. 70% of admissions to Texas prison each year are for nonviolent crimes.

Nearly half of Texas’ 15,000 state jail felony prisoners are serving time for drug convictions involving less than one gram. Moving this offender to the misdemeanor level would save $73 million a year in prison costs – money better invested in education, families, and alternatives that work.

In 2003, three members of the Texas House of Representatives, Chairman Harold Dutton, Chairman Ron Wilson, and Representative  Jack Stick filed House Bill 2316, a serious attempt to decrease some of our low-level nonviolent felony penalties. That bill, if it had passed into law, was predicted to save Texas more than $58 million during the 2004/2005 biennium and more than $461 million during the 2006/2007 biennium in prison costs. We must revisit this type of reform for the sake of protecting our families – Texas needs those precious tax dollars for programs that improve our communities.

Sadly, each time the Texas Legislature meets it passes numerous new criminal penalty enhancements, increasing specific criminal penalties. It has been said that a new felony is the easiest law to pass in Texas. Few people will oppose a new criminal penalty enhancement, because they are afraid it will look like they approve of the conduct.

For instance, Texas passed a new law in 2003 that increased the criminal penalty for assault if the person assaults a sports official. Even though assault is already a crime, people were afraid that if they opposed the new law it might seem like they were in favor of assaulting sports officials. We have to work smarter than that. Texas should refuse to pass any new criminal penalty enhancements until the prison crisis is solved.

Research clearly shows that the old "tough on crime" policies do not stop crime. Elected officials who try to act "tough on crime" with the old rhetoric and old ideas should be politely educated about "what works". If an elected official is serious about stopping crime, he or she has no choice but to support solutions that work to reduce crime.