Rehab effort curbs prison population

AUSTIN — Texas' prison population has stopped growing for the time being, thanks in part to changes in corrections policy two years ago that ballooned funding for rehabilitation programs, new statistics revealed Thursday.

That means Texas will not have to consider building new prisons at a time when the economic collapse is pinching the state budget, officials said.

"We put 6,000 treatment beds on line in the past two years ... and this is the initial result: Just what we expected," said Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman John Whitmire, D-Houston, who co-authored legislation mandating the greatly-expanded treatment programs in 2007.

Sen. Tommy Williams, R-The Woodlands, said the statistics show "a dramatic turnaround."

Thursday's testimony by the Legislative Budget Board to the budget-writing Senate Finance Committee marked the first public report card on the new programs, which two years ago were championed by corrections advocates as a step forward and opposed by some prosecutors and police groups as too soft on crime.

"Crime is down, the programs are working," said Michelle Lyons, spokeswoman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice that operates the 112-prison system. "It's been proven before that these types of programs have an impact on recidivism, so these new numbers are no surprise."

The East Texas Treatment Facility in Henderson has a DWI Recovery Program, a six-month initiative that teaches life skills lessons, alternatives to drinking and driving and the medical, lifestyle and stress effects of alcohol. The facility can house up to 500 inmates in its program. In September, 155 inmates graduated from the DWI Recovery Program.

According to the report, the number of convicts in Texas' state prisons is expected to remain steady this year, and then decline slightly the following year — for the first time in several years.

In 2012, however, the prison population could begin increasing again and by 2014 will grow from 155,000 people to almost 158,000, according to the Legislative Budget Board.

Billed at the time as the biggest shift for Texas corrections policy in years, the 2007 changes greatly expanded the capacity of in-prison drug and alcohol-treatment programs, opened new transition treatment centers to help convicts succeed once they got out, expanded counseling and specialized drug-treatment programs and opened new lockups designed especially for habitual drunk drivers.

Total cost was more than $227 million.

Funding is being sought this year for additional treatment beds, which could further reduce the prison population, said state Rep. Jerry Madden, co-author of the plan who at the time was chairman of the House Corrections Committee.

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