PROBATION and PAROLE
And the Climbing Recidivism Rates
Particularly in Texas
by
Lakeith Amir-Sharif
- There are more Texans under criminal justice control than the entire populations of some states, including Vermont, Wyoming and Alaska.
- According to Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates, one quarter of the nation's parole and probationers are in Texas. California and Texas, together, comprise half the nation's parolees and probationers.14
"The experience
of incarceration is one of fear, mistrust, violence, chaos,
isolation, and emptiness -- an assault on the deepest sense of self."
Since the enactment of mandatory minimum sentencing for drug users, the Federal Bureau of Prisons budget increased by more than 1,350%, from $220 million in 1986 to about $3.19 billion in 1997. Source: Bureau of Justice Statistics, Sourcebook of Criminal Justice Statistics (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 1997), p. 20; Office of National Drug Control Policy, Executive Office of the White House, National Drug Control Strategy, 1997: Budget Summary (Washington DC: US Government Printing Office, 1997), p. 111
The utilization of state-sanctioned supervision by the ruling class is a way to instill fear and maintain absolute control over the poor and working class.
According to prison legal news services, almost 3.8 million adult men and women were on parole or probation in the U.S at the end of 1995--more than 3 million and more than 700,000 on parole. By 2004 the number of people on probation or parole had risen to 6.9 million Americans. The drug war is the major cause for the rise in the number of people in prison and on probation.
Of the 1,586,902 arrests for drug law violations in 2002, 80.3% (1,235,667) were for possession of a controlled substance. Only 19.7% (303,146) were for the sale or manufacture of a drug. Source: Crime in America: FBI Uniform Crime Reports 2002 (Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office, 2002), p. 234, Table 4.1 & and p. 234, Table 29.
In 1991 blacks had a 47 percent chance of having their probation revoked and incarcerated in state prison, this in itself shows the bias intent of the criminal justice system.
Texas Tough?: An Analysis of Incarceration and Crime Trends in The Lone Star State
Average recidivism rates all over the nation are now at and above 65%. That's a lot of people who will never get out of the system.
In a majority of criminal cases of probation the restrictive conditions of release can be a severe burden on one's daily life, especially if a defender like myself comes from a poor and working class of society. Technical violations, as in my current case, play a strong role in recidivism rates, and probation officers have a lot of power in determining whether a violating individual goes to prison or if additional and more restrictive conditions are added to the original terms.
Additional conditions could include fines, restitution, alternative programs, or other financial obligations in which an individual could be stuck with monetary fees. These monetary fees go along with a judge's order to secure and maintain employment immediately.Since the American society hates to give anyone with a record employment, the assigned probation fees only force people on probation or parole to seek illegal solutions to support their families and themselves and pay their probation fees.
This is how people on probation run what might be called the full circle of poverty, since that person, striving to pay keep-out-of-jail fees or hoping to live beyond the restraints of an unworkable budget more often than not has no other choice than to return to habits that contributed to his original conviction.
Then there are those poor souls who use drugs and/or alcohol to try to escape the daily pressures of life. Again, it is a technical violation if you test positive for alcohol or illicit substances or fail to report for counseling and/or treatment; if you are lucky enough to have a treatment facility available.Fifty-five percent (55%) of all federal drug defendants are low-level offenders, such as mules or street-dealers. Only 11% are classified as high-level dealers. Source: US Sentencing Commission, Special Report to Congress: Cocaine and Federal Sentencing Policy (Washington DC: US Sentencing Commission, February 1995), Table 18
Study after study report researchers have found that drug and alcohol abusers will not/can not effectively nor permanently cease using these addictive substances unless and until it is of their own choosing. Ordering or forcing an addict into treatment rarely gets the desired results. Incarceration is meaningless because alcohol and other drugs are prevalent in every prison in the nation. [See Drugs in Prison] These unfortunates get caught in the endlessly revolving door of some overcrowded jail or prison.
As of year end 1999, there were 706,60013 Texans in prison, jail, parole or probation on any given day. In a state with 14 million adults, this meant that 5% of adult Texans, or 1 out of every 20, are under some form of criminal justice supervision. The scale of what is happening in Texas is so huge, it is difficult to contrast the size of its criminal justice systems to the other states' systems it dwarfs:
Finally, we approach the profound aspects of probation that explain a lot of the high recidivism rates and wasted lives. The rules of supervision require, not only getting and keeping a job, but the probation/parolee must report to a probation/parole officer on anywhere from a daily to a monthly basis. This also includes but is not limited to reporting any changes of employment, personal address or any other information similar to what you may find on a census. A person on probation must also obtain permission to leave a given jurisdiction (city, county, or state) even for an hour. Probation also means you will allow your place of residence to be visited and/or searched by your probation/parole officer at any time they desire. Contact with any other known offenders can also be an excuse for the probation or parole officer to take away your limited freedom.
Probation is a re-entry option under which a court suspends the imposition or
execution of imprisonment and instead releases a defendant into the community on certain conditions. A number of years ago, not everyone reentered under probation, but today very few people are not subjected to the dangers inherent to the policy. In fact, length of probation is becoming years longer all the time.
Texas
Constitution Article 4 Section 11 (A) and
Texas Code of Criminal Procedure article 42.12.
The Lone Star State's criminal justice system is particularly worthy of scrutiny at this time, as the Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS) reported in August, 2000 that Texas, for the first time, leads the nation in imprisoning its citizens: Texas now has the nation's largest incarcerated population under the jurisdiction of its prison system.11 Since 1990, Texas has lead the nation's 50 states with an annual average growth rate of 11.8%, about twice the annual average growth rate of other state prison systems (6.1%). Even more important to the national context, since 1990, nearly one in five new prisoners added to the nation's prisons (18%) was in Texas.12
There are three types of probation authorized under Article 42.12 there is
regular, deferred and shock probation/boot camp...........
Texas Code of Criminal Procedure all these levels of probation are practiced in some configuration around the nation. The degree of failure to complete a supervised term of probation is higher based on the greater the restraint on an individuals movement. Current recidivism rates all over the country are now at and above 65%.As of August 2000, BJS reported that Texas pulled slightly ahead of California to earn the distinction of having the largest population of inmates under the jurisdiction of its prison system. But even before Texas became first in prisoners, the state held the questionable honor of having the largest criminal justice system in the United States, with an astonishing proportion of its population under criminal justice control.
Politics play a big role in the recidivism rates because they've created a need to fill beds for more prison funding and expansion. There's more profit to be made in prisons than in the area of alternatives for incarcerations.
______________OTHER AMAZING TEXAS
FACTS______________
- The number of people incarcerated in Texas (in prison or jail) reached 207,526 in mid-year 1999. Only California, with 10 million more citizens, has more people in both prison and jail.
- Texas has a rate of 1,035 people behind bars for every 100,000 in the population,15 the second highest incarceration rate in the nation (second only to Louisiana). If Texas was a nation separate from the United States, it would have the world's highest incarceration rate--significantly higher than the United States (682), and Russia (685) which has 1 million prisoners, the world's third biggest prison system. Texas' incarceration rate is also higher than China (115), which has the world's second largest prison population (1.4 million prisoners).16
- If the US shared the incarceration rate of Texas, there would be nearly three million Americans behind bars (2,822,300)--instead of our current 2 million prisoners.
- The Texas prison population tripled since 1990, and rose 61.5% in the last five years of this decade alone. In 1994, there were 92, 669 prisoners in Texas. This number had increased to 149,684 by mid-year 1999.17
- The Texas correctional system has grown so large that in July 2000, corrections officials ran out of six digit numbers to assign inmates, and officially created prisoner number 1,000,000.18
Characteristics of Texas Inmates
Contrary to the view that most of the people entering Texas prisons represent a threat to public safety, the majority of prisoners in the Lone Star State are serving sentences for non-violent offenses. When the composition of the prison population is examined, it appears that most are being incarcerated for low level crimes.
- In 1998, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice reported that of its then 130,000 prisoners, 54.8% were being held for a non-violent crime. If these offense proportions held true for the 1999 BJS prison counts, there would be 89,428 inmates held for non-violent crimes in Texas. Just by itself, Texas' non-violent prison population represents the second largest state prison population in the country (next to California). Texas' non-violent prisoner population is larger than the entire incarcerated population of the United Kingdom (73,545)--a country of 60 million people-- and bigger than New York's prison system, our 3rd largest state.19
- Of the almost 37,000 inmates entering the Texas prison system in 1998, more than two out of every three entered prison on a parole or probation violation. Of these, an estimated half were charged not with breaking the law by committing new crimes, but for committing technical violations, such as missing a meeting with a parole officer.20
- Twenty one percent (21%) of the people in Texas prisons are there for drug related charges.21 While a large number on its own, the 21% figure understates the role drug incarceration policies have played in driving up the prison population totals, as it does not include people serving time for drug related crimes such as theft or burglary. Eighty-five percent of the prison population has a history of drug or alcohol abuse.
Tough on Whom? Disparate Impact Upon Communities of Color
While Texas' punitive criminal justice policies have affected all communities within the state, the African American community has disproportionately born the brunt of the state's high incarceration policies:
- While one out of every 20 Texas adults is under some form of criminal justice control, one out of 3 young black men (29% of the black male population between 21 and 29) are in prison, jail, parole or probation on any given day.22
- One out of every four adult black men in Texas is under some form of criminal justice supervision.23
- Blacks in Texas are incarcerated at a rate seven times greater than whites. While there are 555 whites behind bars for every 100,000 in the Texas population, there are an astonishing 3862 African Americans behind bars for every 100,000 in the state. This is nearly 63% higher than the national incarceration rate for blacks of 2366 per 100,000.
- If Texas' black incarceration rate was applied to the United States, the number of blacks behind bars on a national level would increase by half a million. There are currently an estimated 824,900 African Americans in prison and jail in the U.S. The new figure, 1,346,370, would increase the number of African Americans incarcerated in the U.S. by 63%.
Within the criminal justice population in Texas, blacks are underrepresented within the ranks of those receiving less punitive sentences.
- Although blacks represent 12% of the Texas population, they comprise 44% of the total prison and jail population. While whites comprise 58% of Texas' population, they represent only 30% of the prison and jail population.
- Probation is often given in lieu of incarceration as a less severe form of punishment. The percentage of blacks on probation falls to 20.6% of the total probation caseload, as compared to a 44.9% representation by whites.24
- Blacks form only 26.7% of the Substance Abuse and Felony Prevention Program (SAFP), a drug treatment program that can be court mandated by judges for convicted felons instead of prison. Whites represent 43.1% of the SAFP population.25
Tough, but not smart, on Crime? The Impact on Crime Rates
Despite the simplistic connection drawn by some that harsher crime policies lead to safer communities, there is little evidence that Texas' severe correctional system is responsible for the drop in crime. In 1980, when Texas had a prison population of 30,000, the state's crime rate was 10% above the national average. Eighteen-years, and 130,000 prisoners later, the Lone Star State's crime rate was 11% above the national average. So, after 18 years, and a monumental growth in imprisonment, Texas' crime rate is not just higher, but increasingly higher, than the national average.
More recent FBI crime survey's suggests that Texans may be receiving "Diminishing Returns " on what further prison expansion may do in reducing the state's crime rate. While its incarceration binge slowed in the late 1990s, Texas continued to increase its prison population by 4,000 inmates between 1998 and 1999. During that same year, while the average of US cities with population over 500,000 experienced a 6% decrease in crime, Texas cities with populations over 500,000 experienced a 2.3% increase in crime. Of the six large cities which experienced an increase in crime from 1998 to 1999, four were in Texas. (Remember that 'crime' includes breaking probation).
Conclusion: The costs of 'toughness'.
One of the leading proponents of the Texas prison expansion recently argued, "let's admit that prison is a sad and expensive necessity.....And if Texans and their criminal justice policies seem tough, maybe it's because its criminals are tough. Texas ain't Vermont."
But the protagonists of high incarceration policies have not proven whether these policies are truly a "necessity." Despite having the most punitive criminal justice system in the world, Texas crime rates have not experienced the declines witnessed in other parts of the country--places where prison growth has not been pursued with such vigor. In light of these lackluster results, the architects of Texas' prison policies should question whether these mediocre crime drops are worth the "sad" social cost the state is paying for having 1 in 20 adults, and 1 in 3 young black men, under criminal justice control. The criminal justice policy-making consensus in Texas--a view that spans both parties--has directed corrections officials to plan for the day when there will be 1 million people under criminal justice control. Unless the costs of these policies are weighed in the balance, this foreboding figure will undoubtedly come to pass.
Because no exact age distribution was available for the parole, probation and county jail population, we followed the methodology employed by the Sentencing Project in their 1996 study "Young Black Men and the Criminal Justice System". We used proportions of each demographic group in prison for the age range 21-29 as an estimate of the county jail, probation and parole age distributions as well. As the Sentencing Project approach suggests, this as a conservative estimate for the following reason; the median prison inmate is about 35 years old; probationers are likely to be younger on average than inmates, and parolees older, but probationers far outnumber parolees. While the national average jail population is about ten percent younger than the prison population, jail inmates are also less likely to be African American. Therefore, our assumption is that the two differences are statistically cancelled out. Age distribution for the SAFP and state jail populations were not averaged into the proportional equation because the facilities represent such a small percentage of the population and are of such a hybrid nature that they would not be statistically representative.
(From CENTER ON JUVENILE AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE. The authors of this report were Dana Kaplan, Vincent Schiraldi and Jason Ziedenberg of the Justice Policy Institute. Special thanks to William Chambliss, Ph.D. and Meda Chesney-Lind, Ph.D. for their research and editorial assistance. This report was funded by a generous grant from the Open Society Institute's Center on Crime, Communities and Culture.
