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January 2008 In the News
Prison growth flat; 01/31/3008
 

AMERICAN STATESMAN: Texas’ prison population is growing slower than expected, and new prisons will not be needed within the next two years as earlier projected. That’s the conclusion of a Legislative Budget Board study to be made public on Monday, a report that attributes the good news on a slowdown in the number of new felons, a slightly increased parole rate, fewer revocations to prison from probation and parole and the projected impact of new treatment and rehabilitation programs approved by the Legislature last year.

 
 
 
AMERICAN STATESMAN: Gov. Rick Perry, through a spokeswoman, acknowledges that a shortage of prison guards is a problem, but he sees no crisis. Maybe not, but when the state has 10 prison units coming up at least 30 percent short of the proper number of guards, and one 300-bed wing of a prison has been shut down since October because of too few guards, well, we wonder how the governor defines crisis. The chairman of the Senate Criminal Justice Committee disagrees. Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, said, “It would be accurate to label this a crisis.”
 

Dalhart closes prison wing Guard shortage forces changes across the state; 1/12/2008

 

Amarillo: The Texas Department of Criminal Justice has shuttered part of a prison in the Panhandle and reorganized the inmate population of an East Texas lockup as it deals with a shortage of guards, officials said.  The prison system has about 83 percent of the correctional officers it needs, and at least 14 state prisons were operating with 75 percent or fewer of their guard positions filled at the end of November.

 
 
 
AMERICAN STATESMAN: As Texas' prison system struggles with an acute shortage of guards, two legislative leaders called Thursday for a review of whether thousands of convicts who have been approved for parole but still are awaiting release could be let go to ease the crisis. As many as 11,000 convicts could be good candidates for hastened releases from Texas' understaffed prisons, according to Sen. John Whitmire and Rep. Jerry Madden, who head legislative committees that oversee prisons.
 
 
AMERICAN STATESMAN: In a corrections system known for steady growth for decades, Texas has mothballed parts of a state prison in the Panhandle because there were not enough guards to properly run it. At a unit in East Texas, prison officials recently relocated nearly 300 high-security convicts and replaced them with lower-risk convicts who take fewer correctional officers to supervise.
 

KXII: HOWE, Tex. -- Speakers at a meeting Thursday say the director of the Texas Parole Board has told them, no in-or-out-of-state parolees will be permitted to live in the proposed guest house on Harrell Road.  In a meeting tonight at Howe High School, spokesman Bruce Dawsey announced members of their group, along with other area leaders, met with the director and deputy director of the Texas Parole Board. The two drove to Sherman from Austin for the meeting.