Senator Whitmire Opposes New Texas Prisons

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice has announced that it is nearing its capacity to house state prisoners. Michelle Lyons, a TDCJ spokeswoman, said, "Right now, we're 97.4% full, and 97.5% is considered our optimal operational capacity." The Texas prison system now houses 152,000 prisoners, and plans are being made to ask for two new units to be built. If built, the two new units would raise prison capacity to 155,000.

However, Senator John Whitmire of Houston, who heads the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, is opposed to building any new prisons. Senator Whitmire says, "There are always going to be those who say we need to keep building prisons so we can keep people locked up for longer periods of time, but we need to be smarter about the way we use the space we have before we start building more prisons." Senator Whitmire believes at least 5,000 beds could be freed up if we concentrated on rehabilitation for drug and alcohol users instead of incarceration. He said, "I'm not talking about anything that's soft on crime. I'm talking about being tough - and smart. The way we're going, you have repeat DWI offenders in maximum security cells with murderers, rapists and child molesters. It would be a heck of a lot better if we could get them out of those cells and into treatment programs so that they wouldn't be a danger to society when they got out." The senator intends to push to get more money for drug & alcohol treatment programs, when the legislature convenes next January.

Spokesmen for Governor Perry said the governor has not made up his mind about building new prisons.

Senator Whitmire is correct about this issue. Texas already has more people incarcerated than most countries do. We do not need to build more prisons. We can't even keep the ones we already have staffed adequately. Here in Texas, we need to get out of the mindset that everything can be solved by incarcerating someone.

We need our prison space for violent criminals and career criminals. Drug and alcohol addiction should not be considered a crime, but a medical problem, that can be dealt with more effectively with rehabilitation. Sending a person to prison should be the final option, not the first option.