How Texas got Anti-crime results by expanding treatment- not prisons.
The Washington Post (November 27, 2014) highlighted how Texas is reforming it’s penal system. Seven years ago Texas started reversing it’s over populated prison system, which had reached 173,000 in 2010. With a projected growth of 15,000 inmate every six years, State Sen. John Whitmire, House Speaker Tom Craddick and Rep. Jerry Madden called in Tony Fabelo, a 20-year veteran of the Texas Criminal Justice Policy Council who’s job had been eliminated by Gov. Rick Perry. Fabelo, advices these men that instead of building new prisons they should introduce a treatment system, in order to combat their high recidivism rate, they created hundred of new beds in for program such as ” Prison Therapeutic Treatment and The Substance Abuse Felony Punishment Facilities. These program were created to be alternative for inmates who normally would be returned to prison for parole violations, the reform has provided prosecutors and judges with a third option outside of parole and prison. Since the enactment of these programs. The number of inmates has dropped down to 168,00 in 2013. In 2011, the legislature voted to close a prison near Houston, this is the first prison to be closed in Texas in 166 years. Recidivism is down, from 28% to 22.6%. Fabelo believes “It’s a combination of multiple reforms, that’s created a stable system, an approach that has saved the state and its tax payers an estimated $ 3 billion to date. Adam Gelb of the Public Safety Performance Project at Pew Charitable Trusts stated: “They funded programs rather prison,” Therefore Texas has shown our government that there is a solution to the problem. The question is “when will our government apply the the logic Texas has applied and pass law that will create real federal reform.
Here’s the Washington Post article- http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/govbeat/wp/2014/11/27/tough-texas-gets-results-by-going-softer-on-crime/
I'm the son of an African American queen, born and raised in Los Angeles California, where I was groomed in its infectious gang culture. For the past decade and half, the federal Bureau of Prison has been a institution of self-education, self-evaluation and the reason I now possess knowledge of self. That being so, I now strive to expose the solution to the problems that our plaguing our communities, America's youth and this country as a whole. There's a saying: "There's nothing new up under the sun." Simply put, if there's one thing in this universe existence, that has seen all thing that mankind has done or not done, it is the sun. That means the moral dissension that taking place currently is nothing new. Historian have written about times where the moral fabric of a nation was so tattered where the only solution for change was war a destruction. This country was built and establish to be the nation it is today. By the disenfranchised, those who were being oppressed by the Queen and her fellow Aristocrats. Therefore if this country is to change once again for the better. It will begin and must begin with the actions and the voice of the disenfranchised i.e, America's minorities, poor and it's third class citizen the American Ex-felon. That being said I'm committed to "WRITING MY WRONGS..." and sewing seed of knowledge and truth that will blossom into peace, prosperity and positive change
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