By Mike Ward

AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF

In a state that imprisons more lawbreakers than most, the per-day cost of locking up convicted felons in Texas has dropped for the second year in a row, a new report shows.

Though the drop means tens of millions of dollars in savings, if only on paper, legislative leaders cautioned Tuesday that a growing prison population and other issues promise to drive costs much higher.

"That lower cost probably means less treatment programs * and that's not good," said state Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, which oversees prison operations.

The declining cost-per-day figure * one of several key indicators that lawmakers watch in determining how much money they will have to spend on prisons * is raising eyebrows. Lawmakers are looking for ways to deal with faster than expected population growth during the next two years, which could cost $200 million more.

"I'm not surprised those costs are down, because we cut the prison system's budget a quarter-billion dollars two years ago," said state Rep. Ray Allen, R-Grand Prairie, chairman of the House Corrections Committee. "We cut programs; we cut costs by renegotiating contracts (with private companies) at lower rates; we cut everything to the bone.

"The system cannot be sustained at this level for long."

The report by the Legislative Budget Board shows that the per-diem cost of imprisonment in Texas dropped from $41.64 in 2003 to $40.06 last year * a decrease of $1.58. If the state's prison population were to hold steady at 150,000, the cost of locking them up would drop by about $86.5 million a year.

Texas spends more than $2 billion a year to operate its prison system, the second-largest in the United States, and prison officials are seeking a 5 percent increase for the next two years.

By contrast, the report calculates the per-day cost of locking up teenage offenders at $155.02 a day in 2004, an increase from $154.94 in 2003.

The cost of locking up an adult has fallen below the $44.01 a day it cost three years ago.

According to the report, the lone increase for adults was at medical units, where the cost per day jumped from $479.38 to $524.39.

Mike Viesca, a spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, attributed the decline in costs to two factors: the increasing numbers of convicts who are housed in state prisons, and budget reductions, which forced prison officials to slash programs and spending.

"The more offenders who are in the system, that spreads out the costs of housing and supervision," he said. "It's hard to say whether it's good news or bad news."

For Whitmire and Allen, among other legislative leaders, the new report underscores the need for enhanced probation programs to house and rehabilitate nonviolent offenders who have committed minor crimes. The proof, they say, shows up on other pages of the budget board's report.

Probation programs, to supervise offenders whose sentences have been suspended, cost about $2.27 per offender per day, the report shows, and those that use electronic monitoring cost $5.48 a day per offender.

Parole programs keep track of prison inmates after they are released.

"Does it make sense to keep folks in a $40-a-day bed, with no programs and rehabilitation, when we could keep them working and have them do probation for $2 a day?" Whitmire said. "No way."

Allen agrees.

"As a state, we can't afford to do what we've been doing; that's what I draw from the numbers," he said. "We have to build a system with workable alternatives (to prison) on the front end, or we'll have to spend billions of dollars to build another 30,000 or 40,000 prison beds * billions that we don't have."