Two cheers for Rick Perry, who advocated for prison reform at the CPAC this weekend.
Texas Governor Rick Perry spoke at length about unnecessarily punitive mandatory minimum sentencing guidelines, as well as the wisdom of drug courts that divert addicts out of the penal system and into treatment. During his time as governor, Perry has become one of the more aggressive prison reformers in the country. In 2011, the state actually closed a prison because it couldn’t be filled thanks in large part to the declining incarceration rate. (Before Perry, George W. Bush oversaw the construction of thirty-eight new prisons.)
“You want to talk about real conservative governance? Shut prisons down. Save that money,” Perry said. “Stop the recidivism rates—lower them. That’s what can happen with these drug courts.”
He was joined by Grover Norquist and Bernie Kerik, the latter whom knows a thing or two about prison life. It is really interesting how having someone you know personally get incarcerated can change one's outlook on life.
Perry, of course, has nothing to lose. He is not running for reelection for governor again, so he can say whatever he wants to. But it is part of a national trend -- prison incarceration has peaked in this country after having grown over the last few decades. In Texas, prison population rates have gone down and Governor Perry has closed two prisons.
For only the second time in the state’s history, Texas lawmakers are closing inmate facilities to reduce bed capacity as the state’s prison population continues to drop. The decision by legislators this year to close two privately run jails operated by the Corrections Corporation of America is being met with very different reactions in the communities where the jails are situated.
Since 2011, Texas’ prison population has fallen to about 150,800 from more than 156,000, bringing the total of empty beds to about 12,000 statewide, said state Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, the chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee. Improved diversion programs and alternatives to incarceration have fueled the downward trend, he added.
Judges are starting to frown on prison overcrowding; for instance, from the Times article:
About half the 2012 decline — 15,035 prisoners — occurred in California, which has decreased its prison population in response to a Supreme Court order to relieve prison overcrowding.
Other factors include drug courts, more use of alternatives to sentencing, a national drop in crime, and nation-wide budget cuts at the state level.
Kerik:
Kerik spoke passionately about the number of people he met in federal prison who who were there for nonviolent drug offenses—people who got ten years for drugs “the weight of a nickel.”
“If somebody told me I would go to prison and meet some really good people, I would have laughed in their face. The reality is, I met some really good men. Decent men. Good fathers, good family men,” Kerik said.
“We’ve got to create alternatives, and we have to stop putting people in prison that don’t necessarily have to be there to learn their mistake,” he continued.
The problem is that the issue of disproportionate sentencing has yet to be addressed in Texas. In that state,
two thirds of its inmates are Black or Hispanic. This trend of declining prison populations could be reversed given that the Hispanic population and Black population is growing faster in this country than the White population unless something is done to stop this factor.
And we must do more of a focus on restorative justice, which focuses on treating each person as an individual. In this example, a 14 year old kid was about to be suspended from school for assaulting his teacher and screaming at her. But the teacher asked the principal not to suspend him; she talked to him first and got him to admit what was wrong -- turns out his mother had gone back to drugs and was AWOL for the last three nights while he was frantically trying to hold his siblings together. The solution -- bringing the teacher, the principal, the mother, and the son together to talk it out -- did much more good for the boy than sending him home would have. A similar approach to probation would save taxpayer dollars that would normally go towards incarceration as well as do a better job of stopping recidivism.