By Wanda Garner Cash on behalf of the editorial board
John Whitmire doesn’t want Texas to return to the full-tilt, prison
building mode of the early 90s. The senator knows from experience that more prisons aren’t an effective way to curb
crime.
Better options are smarter sentencing, modifying parole regulations and
more effective drug treatment policies. It’s a message he’s been preaching for more than a decade, building on
the experience gained from his first round as chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee from 1993 to 1999 and into
this session where he once again steers that committee. During his previous term as chairman, Whitmire, an attorney, authored
much of the complete rewriting of the Texas Penal Code. With more 30 years in the Texas House and Senate, he knows whereof
he speaks.
No one should have been surprised at his pronouncement recently that
he would block any bills that would create a need for more prisons. Primary on his hit list are a handful of proposals to
increase misdemeanors to felonies.
One bill that has drawn Whitmire’s particular ire would elevate
auto burglaries from Class C misdemeanors into Class A felonies, with a two-year sentence.
Sounds like a get-tough stance, but in reality it transfers the burden
to the state prison system, at an estimated cost of $15 million in its first year. Currently, auto burglary is punishable
by up to one year in county jail.
His basis for rejecting such bills is philosophical and practical. First,
the state’s prisons are almost bursting at the seams, filled with non-violent offenders, most of them on drug convictions,
many of them repeat visitors. Keeping them in jail without any real effort at rehabilitation or education deepens the ruts
of a criminal lifestyle. Enhancing the crime to felony status almost guarantees it.
Additionally, he points to court records that show criminals aren’t
being sentenced to the full extent of the law, with car burglars serving an average sentence of just seven days.
Where’s the sense in enhancing car burglary to a two-year felony
that will require an extra 700 beds each year? Why not keep ‘em in county lockup longer and then send them to drug treatment
as a condition of release?
Research shows that most car burglaries are committed to get money to
buy drugs and when the offenders re-enter society, they inevitably return to crime to support the habit.
Whitmire also believes it would be wasteful for the state to spend millions
of dollars it doesn’t have for additional prison capacity. It would be a more effectively spent on drug and alcohol
treatment once they’ve served their time.
Houston Ministers Against Crime are veteran disciples in Whitmire’s
call for reforms.
Studies by the Senate Research Center affirm Whitmire’s contentions.
Additional analysis by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice concurs
that felonies should be reserved for crimes against people not property, that there should be more penalty focus on repeat
offenders and that the way to reduce car burglaries lies in drug addiction treatment.
Understand, Whitmire is no molly coddler of criminals. He believes we
should throw the book at the bad guys. But that book should be the existing penal code and not a thick stack of blue prints
for more prisons.
We agree. It takes only a short glance backward to know that Texas will
not solve the crime problem by building more prisons.
Today’s editorial was written by Wanda Garner Cash, editor
and publisher of The Baytown Sun, on behalf of the newspaper’s editorial board.
