Recommendation 2: Texas should prevent future prison overcrowding by stopping the flow of probationers into prisons.
Fixing Texas’ probation system once and for all will save millions of dollars and meet Texas’ public safety needs. Revoked probationers from 2001 alone will cost the state approximately $470 million in housing costs for their projected prison length-of-stay!
Texas policy-makers must:
1. Adopt a risk-reduction strategy.
The time has come to equip each of Texas’ 121 probation departments with the necessary resources to realize their full potential. Probation reform must become one of our priorities.
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Departmental culture is key to a probationer’s success. A factor that contributes to the success of probationers is how they view their relationship with their probation officer. In other words, if probation officers believe that probationers can change their behavior and begin to make positives decisions in their lives, then their interaction is much more positive – which in turn produces better results.
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It is imperative that probation departments are given the necessary tools to identify, recruit, and retain highly qualified probation officers. This means that departments must be given resources to implement strategies that will improve the morale and job satisfaction of probation officers as they implement supervision policies.
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By making probationers better able to receive treatment, hold a job, and support their families, the flow to prisons can stop. In part, this can be accomplished by helping probation officers meet the needs of probationers. Most probationers who re-offend do so in the first two years – and the majority of those re-offend within the first eight months. If probation officers’ caseloads were reduced by half, they could keep a better eye on probationers during this critical period, while also helping them secure housing and jobs and thus better ensuring that the terms of their probation are achievable.
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Another way to prevent probation revocation – and reduce probation officers’ caseloads – would be to reduce probation term lengths. Texas’ average probation sentence is 5.6 years, much longer than the national average. A reduction in lengths would mean that probation officers would not have cases on their books for as long (in turn reducing their caseloads), and they would be better able to supervise probationers during that most-important early transitional period. Again, this would improve public safety while also limiting the number people ending up in prison.
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In addition to aiding probation officers, the State should fully fund courts specially designed to handle cases involving offenders who abuse addictive substances.
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Also, the State should expand the ability of probation departments to (1) offer early identification of all probationers who suffer from drug addiction/abuse, and (2) promptly place them in a treatment program. Probationers should be allowed access to a continuum of alcohol, drug, and other related treatment and rehabilitative services.
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Texas must consider strategies to cut the prison length-of-stay for probationers who have never been previously incarcerated, and who have been revoked for technical violations not involving a prior or present violent or sexually-based offense.
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Given that the cost of incarcerating an individual is $44.01 per day while the cost of maintaining him or her on probation is $2.13 per day (meaning the cost of 18 days of prison is equal to an entire year of probation), the State should direct more money towards effective, community-based treatment programs and other alternatives to incarceration.
Texas policy-makers must:
1. Adopt a risk-reduction strategy. Probation - if properly implemented - reduces risk.
Probation should not (as it currently does) operate only to oversee the judge-ordered requirements mandated to probationers. Instead, probation must be structured with an overriding risk-reduction strategy that aims to change the behavior of offenders to decrease their likelihood of re-offending. This risk-reduction strategy should be reflected in all areas of administration, including the design of supervision and sanctioning practices, the choice of programs administered, and funding and management. Such a strategy will likely lead to a change in culture and in the attitudes of probation officers and administrators, which will better accomplish Texas’ public safety needs.
a. Texas should implement shorter and stronger probation terms.
Instead of maintaining long, ineffective probation terms, departments should focus probation officer resources where they are needed most. Specifically, supervision should be heaviest during the early critical period (the first 8 months) of probation terms, with officer caseloads adjusted accordingly. In addition, terms should be limited to periods when supervision is most effective (5 years or less), and early release should be used as an incentive for good probationer performance.
b. Texas should increase basic funding.
Each department’s fiscal incentive for implementing long supervision periods should be eliminated. The State should increase basic budget funding (for each department’s operational costs and for treatment), which will compensate for decreased probationer fees.
This is important in helping probationers remain law-abiding citizens. Most probationers who are employed hold minimum wage jobs; in addition to supporting themselves and, in many instances, their families with the income they obtain from these low-paying jobs, probationers are also responsible for paying a high number of court-mandated fees and supervision-related fines (like restitution fees, program fees, etc.). This financial burden increases the likelihood of probationers to abscond and/or fail to meet their probation terms.
Likewise, probationers who suffer from drug addiction and who cannot afford the fees to cover treatment program costs often choose jail time over treatment, which decreases their probability of success by increasing their likelihood of re-offending and ending up back in the system.
c. Implement a rational allocation funding strategy.
Resources must be distributed to probation departments based on a funding formula that provides the following:
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higher per capita rates for supervised offenders who are serving the early years of a term of community supervision than for those offenders who are serving the end of a term of community supervision
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penalties in per capita funding with respect to each supervised offender whose community supervision is revoked due to a technical violation of an applicable condition of community supervision; and
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awards in per capita funding with respect to each supervised felony offender who is discharged following an early termination of community supervision.
Departments should contract with certified treatment providers to mitigate probationers’ criminal tendencies and reduce the likelihood of them ending up in prison.
a. Texas should expand the use of validated and verified diagnostic tools and make training available to all departments so that they can most effectively use the results of the diagnostic.
Validated instruments are essential in determining each probationer’s risk level and propensity for criminal behavior. They are also critical for departments that want to use their resources efficiently. However, each department must be provided with assistance (through trainings) to enable probation officers to properly utilize the results of these tools and offer each probationer an individualized supervision plan. This much-needed training will ensure the best use of supervision resources.
b. Texas should implement progressive sanctions.
Departments should provide locally tailored, swift, certain, and proportionate punishments according to the severity and frequency of each probation violation. Each department should adopt best practices and encourage the sharing of program ideas that prove to be successful within their own departments. This will aid in program development and better respond to the needs of each probationer in each situation.
c. Texas should eliminate prison terms for probationers who receive technical revocations.
Individuals revoked from probation for technical violations (being late on a fee payment, missing a meeting, etc.) should be sent to intermediate sanctions facilities, where time served could be determined by a progressive sanctions model. Or, as an acceptable alternative, these individuals should be revoked to prison for terms no longer than one year, subject to mandatory release, and returned to community supervision at the end of the period.
d. Texas should view probation and drug treatment separately to reduce drug-related technical violations.
Oftentimes, addiction to drugs causes criminal activity (such as theft), because people require funds to feed their addiction. These individuals’ problems should be addressed in one of two ways: (1) drug treatment, or (2) probation. Drug treatment will best get to the root of the criminal activity because it will address the physiological impact of the substance on the addict and help put an end to the need for criminal activity spurred by the addiction. On the other hand, probation will help determine if the drug treatment program is truly working for that individual. For instance, if an offender fails a drug test, his or her probation officer will be able to verify that the offender’s current treatment program is not working. This should not be a cause for probation revocation (as committing another crime, like theft, would be) – not all treatment programs work for every type of addiction and, on average, an addict relapses three times before successfully completing a treatment program. If an individual is punished with probation revocation for failing to control his or her illness, s/he will ultimately reenter society with unmet needs and will continue to make poor life decisions and engage in unlawful activity.
Judges and probation officers must be given tools besides revocations to deal with probationers’ poor decisions that fall short of new crimes, and they should invoke technical revocations and sanctions only according to the degree of risk that the violations represent to public safety and recidivism. We must reserve our prison space for those who are a real threat to public safety, not waste them on non-violent drug users.
3. Mandate accountability to verify progress.
Supervision and oversight at the statewide level should be strengthened to ensure that local departments are adopting best practices and correctly implementing them, while still being given the flexibility to tailor their programs to probationers’ needs.
a. Texas should provide technical assistance/accountability grants to all 121 probation departments to implement progressive sanctions.
To facilitate the adoption of best practices over time, technical assistance should be provided to departments; they should have access to expert consultants that can assist them with the implementation of new, proven programs. Local departments should be required to submit evidence-based program proposals to the Community Justice Assistance Division (CJAD) before being given program funding for this assistance. Technical assistance and grants should be provided for (a) organizational change, (b) supervision strategies, (c) accountability and auditing of programs, and (d) program improvements supporting risk reduction. To secure renewed funding, programs should be subject to periodic review based on a cost-benefit analysis of outcome measures of risk reduction, including recidivism and probationer success rates.
b. Texas should promote the sharing of what works.
The State should increase funding to CJAD so that it can hire additional staff to meet the technical needs of the field in all areas.
CJAD should compile an annual report to be distributed to judges and probation directors that assesses the successes and failures of all programs using the outcome measures of (1) completion, and (2) recidivism rates of program participants. Post-completion program evaluations should include an examination of rates of probationer recovery, employment, and educational attainment.