Texas Locking up Latinos and Black at Unprecendented Levels
Tuesday, October 19, 2004 at 05:45AM
TheSpook
Texas tall tales abound when it comes to fighting
crime. Notions on how to reduce criminality have held political sway in
the Lone Star State too long over scientific studies of "what works."
Politicians, who should know better, have pandered to fears that crime
runs amok in the streets. The results are counterproductive "get-tough"
policies that exacerbate crime, break up families and cost taxpayers
billions. In a criminal justice policy brief that the Texas LULAC state
executive office released in August, researchers show that since the
1990s, Texas has tripled the number of prisons and has a 51 percent
higher incarceration rate than any other state. The Legislature gives
the Texas Department of Criminal Justice about $5 billion each
biennium. TDCJ spends 90 percent of the money on prison beds and 10
percent on treatment and probation programs.
Part of the reason for the hefty spending is that
Texas felony sentences are double the national average. Yet 70 percent
of the prison admissions each year are for nonviolent crimes.
About half of the prisoners are serving time for drug convictions of possession of less than one gram.
The Justice Policy Institute found that even
though 40 percent of Texans in 2003 were black and Latino, 70 percent
of the prison population was minority.
LULAC projects that at the current Latino imprisonment rate, one out of six Latino men born in 2001 will serve prison time.
LULAC cites studies claiming that racial profiling
by police departments and drug task forces results in more searches of
Latinos than whites. To accommodate the millennium prisoners, LULAC
predicts, there will be a need for 2,000 new prison beds each year.
The LULAC study claims that the children of
imprisoned parents tend to make lower grades, drop out, become
delinquent and increase their chances of following their parents into
prison.
The report also found that imprisoned parents owed $2.5 billion in unpaid child support. [more] and [more ]
Incarceration is not an equal opportunity punishment [more ]
Article originally appeared on (http://brownwatch.com/).
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