By Mike Ward
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
In a key accord for the young legislative session, House and Senate
leaders appeared to be in agreement Monday about basic details of a proposed large-scale expansion of probation and treatment
programs designed to keep thousands of nonviolent convicts from filling up more expensive and much-needed prison beds.
The heads of two legislative panels on criminal justice, Rep. Sylvester
Turner and Sen. John Whitmire, both Houston Democrats, said after a morning meeting that they agree about the details for
well over $88 million for "prison diversion" programs.
Those details must be approved and are subject to change by the powerful
budget-writing House Appropriations Committee, for which Turner oversees criminal justice budget issues, and the Senate Finance
Committee, on which Whitmire sits.
However, Monday's development could be a first step in a shift in policy
from expanding the prison system each legislative session, addressing a shortage of bunks, to earmarking large amounts of
money for community justice programs.
The prison system gets about $2.4 billion a year, and lawmakers say they
don't expect that figure to change.
They said the funding shift is the first such move in Texas in almost
15 years, when lawmakers greatly expanded drug treatment and community justice programs. In the years since, most of those
programs withered because funding dried up or wasn't allocated in subsequent legislative sessions.
"Substance abuse treatment, community-based residential beds, reduced
caseloads for probation officers, incentives to keep technical violators from going to prison — they're all in here,"
Turner said. "I think we are beginning to turn this big ship. This appears to have wide support."
Included in the initial funding plan, approved Monday afternoon by the
House Appropriations subcommittee on criminal justice, is $62 million for state prison officials to temporarily lease beds
in privately run and county jails to deal with a projected overflow of convicts that could begin as soon as next month. Also
included is more than $88 million more for enhancements to probation, parole and community justice programs.
Halfway house programs would be expanded, substance abuse treatment would
become available to thousands more convicts and probationers, probation caseloads would be reduced to allow better supervision
of offenders, and mental health initiatives would be expanded.
