By The Texas Sunset Advisory Commission
As the criminal justice system works through the final lingering effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on court backlogs, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) along with the other adult criminal justice entities subject to this Sunset review — the Board of Pardons and Paroles (BPP), Windham School District, and Correctional Managed Health Care Committee — are once again at a critical point. This Sunset review occurred in the context of TDCJ’s systemwide prison lockdown due to unprecedented levels of contraband and violence and inmate population projections that exceed TDCJ’s operational capacity, raising basic questions about TDCJ’s ability to handle its current and future realities. The state’s criminal justice entities are confronting serious challenges in executing their mission to safely confine, supervise, and provide services for adults convicted of certain crimes in Texas. This Sunset review therefore seeks to best position TDCJ and its counterparts so that they are able to prevent current problems from becoming unmanageable, widespread crises in the coming years. While the sheer size and complexity of Texas’ sprawling prison system is unique, TDCJ faces the same national trend as its peers in other states — hiring people to work in corrections is difficult. The Legislature and TDCJ have long recognized correctional officers, who play a vital frontline role overseeing Sunset seeks to position TDCJ to be able to prevent problems from becoming widespread crises. incarcerated adults, as deserving of additional attention and resources for recruitment and retention. Yet the uncomfortable reality the Sunset review found is some of Texas’ prisons are located in places where hiring sufficient correctional staff is nearly impossible. As that reality is unlikely to change, TDCJ is forced to spend significantly on transporting staff around the state and maintaining facilities that hold thousands of vacant, unusable beds. Furthermore, while difficulty hiring correctional staff isn’t unique to this state, the agency has not done enough to mitigate this problem. Serious and systemic deficiencies in human resources functions, which form the backbone of effective agency operations, contribute to agencywide hiring and retention problems, with more than half of TDCJ divisions at a vacancy rate of at least 20 percent in fiscal year 2023. This staffing crisis extends to parole officers who supervise releasees in Texas communities and several other critical divisions. Ultimately, the Sunset review found TDCJ must concurrently plan for the future to locate or expand facilities in places where the agency can adequately staff them while also greatly improving internal human resources functions and processes to retain existing staff. T he Sunset review also found TDCJ to be in significant need of modernization, as decades-old technology and paper-based and manual processes limit the agency’s ability to effectively and efficiently leverage its $3.9 billion annual budget. But the lack of modernization is not limited to technology. Without better strategic planning and data practices, the agency will continue to reactively lurch from emergency to emergency. Additionally, TDCJ’s approach to rehabilitation programs, many of which inform BPP’s determination of the potential for an inmate to safely reenter the community, suffer from deficiencies that undermine the Legislature’s significant investment in these programs. To overcome these deficiencies, this review recommends requiring enhanced rehabilitation planning and evaluation to better ensure beneficial program outcomes rather than simply encouraging participation regardless of efficacy. T his Sunset review also took a close look at the parole system — both the processes by which BPP decides whether to grant early release to eligible inmates and the processes by which TDCJ’s parole officers supervise releasees. Given the high stakes of inmates reentering the community and the discretionary nature of making such decisions, BPP voters understandably take a cautious approach. As it has in previous reviews of BPP, Sunset focused on improved fairness, consistency, and transparency of BPP’s decision-making processes. Separately, the review also found the need for more efficient TDCJ parole processes to ease burdens on the often underappreciated parole staff who serve a critical public safety role in Texas communities. T his review did not have findings or recommendations in two key areas: probation and correctional health care. TDCJ’s role in probation is limited to maintaining standards for and providing funding to local Community Supervision and Corrections Departments (CSCDs). Overall, Sunset staff found TDCJ adequately performs this function, and many ideas for changes to probation largely amounted to calls for increased funding. To this end, TDCJ has requested through its 2026-27 Legislative Appropriations Request additional funding to support both CSCD staff salaries and supervision activities. Additionally, this review found the Correctional Managed Health Care Committee’s role, which primarily is to develop a statewide managed healthcare plan, to be functioning adequately. TDCJ works effectively with its contracted partners at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center and the University of Texas Medical Branch to deliver healthcare services as the Legislature intended. Despite finding considerable areas for improvement across the criminal justice entities under review, Sunset staff determined that Texas continues to benefit from TDCJ’s oversight and management of a system in which a single state agency supports probation and directly provides incarceration and parole supervision. Accordingly, Sunset staff recommends continuing TDCJ for 12 years and aligning its Sunset review to coincide with that of the other criminal justice entities. The following material highlights Sunset staff’s key recommendations for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Board of Pardons and Paroles, Windham School District, and Correctional Managed Health Care Committee.
Austin, TX: The Commission, 2024. 189p.
