Open Access Publisher and Free Library
05-Criminal justice.jpg

CRIMINAL JUSTICE

CRIMINAL JUSTICE-CRIMINAL LAW-PROCDEDURE-SENTENCING-COURTS

Posts tagged Texas
The Future of Dignity: Insights from the Texas Women’s Dignity Retreat

By Lindsey Linder

For the past 30 years, the number of women incarcerated in America has grown exponentially, increasing at nearly twice the rate of men’s incarceration. With only five percent of the world’s female population, the United States accounts for nearly 30 percent of the world’s incarcerated women. Texas has contributed greatly to this surge in incarcerated women, with one of the top 10 highest female incarceration rates in the country. Regarding growth over time, female incarceration in the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ, the state’ corrections system) increased 908 percent from 1980– 2016, compared to an increase in the male population of 396 percent. In other words, female incarceration in Texas has increased at more than twice the rate of male incarceration over the past 40 years. Alarmingly, a more recent spike in system-involved women has occurred as Texas has lowered its population in TDCJ, and Texas now incarcerates more women by sheer number than any other state. From 2009– 2018, Texas reduced its men’s prison population by 10,179 while backfilling its prisons with 122 women.6 As of 2018, women incarcerated in TDCJ numbered 12,076, representing 8.3 percent of the incarcerated population, up from 7.7 percent in 2009. Additionally, the number of women serving 10 years or more in Texas increased over 50 percent from 2005 to 2014. And the rise in female incarceration is not exclusive to prisons. The number of women in Texas jails awaiting trial has grown 48 percent since 2011, even as the number of female arrests in Texas has decreased 20 percent over that time period.10 The issues facing incarcerated women are complex, as are the underlying causes of their incarceration. However, because women comprise only a small portion of the overall incarcerated population, their needs are largely disregarded in larger justice reform conversations. One of the predominant obstacles to reform has been the lack of data on who these women are and how they become entangled in the system. To help bridge this gap, the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition (TCJC) launched the “Justice for Women” campaign in March 2018, starting with a two-part report series on women in Texas’ justice system  These two reports, which incorporated the results of our survey of more than 430 women incarcerated in Texas prisons, explored the concerning increase in the number of justice system-involved women in Texas and examined the unique issues they face prior to and during incarceration. TCJC accompanied the reports with a webpage dedicated to women’s justice, which includes stories of women impacted by Texas’ justice system—stories that have been critical to reform  

Austin: Texas Criminal Justice Coalition 2020. 28p.

Sunset Staff Report for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, Correctional Managed Health Care Committee, Windham School District, and Board of Pardons and Paroles

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.