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| Judge Bradley Smith's Special Sanctions Court |
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| has reduced felony probation revocations in Ft Bend by 'training people to do good,' says Judge. |
By Mike Ward
AMERICAN-STATESMAN STAFF
RICHMOND — "Wow" flashes onto the wall in big yellow letters
behind state District Judge Bradley Smith as canned applause echoes through the courtroom. The audience begins clapping as
if on cue.
"You've done well," Smith tells the 22-year-old man, who is serving five
years of probation for assault and possessing cocaine. "That's what I like. See you next week."
"Thank you," the man answers politely, grabbing a piece of Werther's
Original candy as he saunters toward the door. On other days, it's a Life Saver or a star-shaped peppermint.
Smith's one-of-a-kind Special Sanctions Court, a six-month-old pilot
program, has drastically reduced felony probation revocations by "training people to do good," as the judge explains it.
Many legislative heavy hitters see the program as a key to the future
of criminal justice. Those promoting it include Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman John Whitmire, D-Houston; House
Speaker Pro Tem Sylvester Turner, D-Houston; and House Corrections Committee Chairman Jerry Madden, R-Richardson.
Were the numbers of prisoners to dip statewide by even a fraction of
the rate seen under Smith's program, Texas could reduce the number of new prisons that it says it needs.
Officials project that as many as 12 prisons will need to be built in
Texas within the next five years, at a cost that could top $1 billion.
It is the growing inflow of probationers who are filling prison cells
for breaking the rules — being late to appointments, testing positive for drug use, not showing up for community service
work — that lawmakers want to curb.
Most of these "technical violators" are first-time offenders serving
relatively short sentences, many for nonviolent drug and property crimes.
Rules-breaking probationers occupied 14,000 state prison beds in 2004.
They were 30 percent of all incoming convicts.
Local officials and state criminal justice experts say probationers can
be more successful if they are more closely supervised by a judge who, unlike a probation officer, could send them to jail
in an instant and modify terms of their probation for deeds both good and bad. So far, the numbers from Smith's Special Sanctions
Court back up that theory.
Since the pilot program began in August, only 20 felony probationers
in Fort Bend County have been sent to prison for rules infractions, down 63 percent compared with the same period the previous
year. Total revocations to prison — for both new crimes and rules violations — are down 31 percent.
"You can call it what you want — hand-holding, hug-a-thug, whatever
— but it works," Smith said after completing a docket in which two probationers were ordered to jail, two almost were
and 24 were applauded for doing well by sticking to the terms of their probation.
"But in order for this program to work, you have to have an open mind
to trying something different — because this program is different. I've worked inside the box (as a judge) for a long
time, and I can tell you a lot of my time has been wasted because the probation system as we have been doing it for years
doesn't work. . . . We need to lock up (in prison) the people we're afraid of and treat the ones we're just mad at, like most
all these I deal with."
Even so, Smith and Leighton Iles, director of the local probation department
who oversees the more than 550 offenders who are part of the program, caution against any rush to apply Fort Bend County's
successful model statewide. "It's too early to tell if it will be successful," said Fort Bend District Attorney John Healey
Jr. "But I don't see any particular indicator that it won't be, either. . . . Only time will tell."
If the state could reduce the ever-growing numbers of prison-bound probationers
to what they were two years ago, according to state records, 1,375 beds would be freed up. If numbers fell to what they were
four years ago, 4,572 beds would be empty.
"If we can make even a small dent in those increasing numbers, by encouraging
other counties to replicate the success in Fort Bend, the people of Texas will be saved millions and millions and millions
of dollars," said Turner, chairman of a House Appropriations subcommittee that has recommended $88 million in additional funding
during the next two years for probation and community-justice programs like the one in Fort Bend, among other initiatives.
Between 1994 and 2003, he said, the number of technical violators sent
to prison jumped by 95 percent — a statistic that prison officials cite as a key reason that their cells are nearly
full, even though the crime rate in Texas is down.
"If this doesn't work," Turner said, "you can count on a whole lot of
new prisons."
On Thursday morning, Smith moves steadily through the first nine of the
36 probationers sitting in his courtroom, each of whom scores a "Wow" for paying probation fees and restitution as ordered,
for attending anger-management, drug-treatment or Alcoholics Anonymous sessions, for performing community service hours as
ordered, for getting a job, or even for just looking for one.
One by one, the offenders stand before Smith's bench, their hands clasped
behind their backs. Smith waives additional community service for some who have done well, toughens the conditions of probation
for others who have not, and tells others that they need to do more.
"I stay in their business, every time they come into court," Smith said
after the hearing ends. "This is like training because most of these people don't have the capacity to be law-abiding citizens
on their own. For whatever reason, their brains don't work that way."
Such is the case of a 21-year-old burglar who gets no "Wow." He has missed
an alcohol-counseling session, and Smith, who gets a detailed briefing from probation officials on every offender minutes
before he sees them in court, wants to know why.
"I had trouble," the man says, looking at the floor and shuffling.
"What trouble? Everybody tells me they have trouble."
There is no answer.
"OK, well, you did the deed, so now you've got to pay for it."
A deputy moves forward with handcuffs. The defendant begins shaking.
And talking.
"My breath smelled like alcohol. . . . I had to leave."
Now, the truth comes out: In violation of his terms of probation, he
drank a beer before he went to the session. He was sent home.
Smith is not happy: "You say it was a careless mistake? Mistakes are
accidental. Careless mistakes are not."
He orders the man to spend the weekend in jail and perform additional
community-service hours.
"Thank you, judge," the man says, as do most of the other probationers
who got no time behind bars at the hearing.
| As part of his probation, Marcus Johnson |
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| does community-service work such as spreading mulch at county buildings. |
It might seem an odd twist of fate that the future of Texas' strait-laced,
law-and-order system of justice could be pegged to such an unorthodox, in-your-face program that would make Judge Judy feel
right at home. Smith, 59, a veteran judge and former prosecutor who helped craft the Special Sanctions Court from the mold
of the local drug court he has headed for three years, insists that the early success highlights an important lesson.
"The traditional approach in Texas has been to sentence them and say,
'Go forth and sin no more. Here are the conditions, now abide by them,' " he said. "It doesn't work very well. Judges can't supervise people as closely as they need to be. And it takes a judge to get
their attention."
Larry Howell, 37, says he is living proof of that. When the Stafford
plumber was sentenced to five years' probation for assaulting his wife, he figured it would be an easy run — as it was
10 years earlier when he got probation on another assault charge. "Just show up, give them the money, nobody does anything
to you," he explained.
Wrong.
Smith told him to pay up the hundreds of dollars in probation fees he
owed, perform community-service hours he had avoided and attend the required classes he skipped. Howell blew him off.
Result: Nearly a month in jail.
"I lost my job where I'd worked 13 years," Howell said. "But I realized
this was serious business, my business, and it was up to me to make it right. He'll give you just enough rope to hang yourself."
Since then, Howell has been back to jail once for testing positive on
a mandatory urinalysis to detect drugs, a test required of all probationers as part of the program. "I feel lucky now because
I'm sure I'd be sitting in the penitentiary if I wasn't in this program," he said. "The judge got my attention."
He got Marcus Johnson's attention, as well.
The 20-year-old Richmond man, serving three years' probation for credit-card
forgery, owed 450 hours of community service and hundreds of dollars in fees when he faced Smith for the first time last October.
Like Howell, he was soon in jail — working off his debt to society in white coveralls, doing landscaping work and other
menial chores at some of Fort Bend County's parks and public facilities.
"I'm tired of jail," Johnson said. "The sanctions made the difference.
. . . I wised up at some point."
Both he and Howell know they will be seeing Smith for some time to come.
And both say they have come to look forward to the Wows and the candy
— important rewards, Smith says, to motivate probationers to do better.
Fort Bend officials were motivated, as well, when they established the
program in August with a $363,000 state grant.
Realizing that Texas prisons were again getting full, they began looking
for a way to make sure they were sending to prison only those who really needed to be there, according to Fort Bend County
officials.
"We knew there had to be a better way to handle it," said state District
Judge Brady Elliott, a 17-year veteran on the bench. Elliott, like the district's other three judges, heard revocations in
addition to as many as 1,600 criminal and civil cases each year until the Special Sanctions Court came along. Before that,
about the only time a judge saw a probationer was at sentencing and when they were revoked, a system common to most counties.
Now, before each docket he calls, Smith spends time on the phone with
probation officers getting an update on the status of every probationer who will come before him. That way, he knows what
treatment classes they have skipped or attended, what fees they paid or avoided, the results of their latest drug test, and
any other problems they may be having.
"Access to that immediate information is very important," he said. "If
I know, I can call them on something right here. . . . A little jail time here and there can be a great motivator."
So far, Iles and other officials say, the fledgling Fort Bend experiment
is working.
"What we are doing here is a simple concept," Iles said. "Simple works."
By the numbers
- $40.06: Average daily cost to taxpayers to house an offender in a state
prison
- $2.27: Average daily cost to supervise an offender on probation
- $88 million: Additional funding for probation and prison-diversion programs
proposed by the House Appropriations Committee
- $85 million: Approximate cost of a new prison
- 6: Number of new prisons needed in three years, at current incarceration
rates
- 12: Number of new prisons officials say will
be needed in five years
- 150,800: Current prison population
- 150,834: Maximum operating capacity of prison system
- 45,060: Offenders sent to prison in 2004
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