WASHINGTON, DC — The Texas prison system grew faster than any other prison system in the United States during the 1990s, adding nearly one out of every five prisoners to the country's prison boom. In a new study released by the Washington-based Justice Policy Institute on August 29, the criminal justice think-tank found that one out of every 20 adults in Texas were either in prison or jail, or on probation or parole.
There are more people in prison in Texas than in any other state, and Texas' incarceration rate is second only to Louisiana's.
"The sheer numbers of people in prison and jail in Texas are signs of a system fixated on punishment and devoid of compassion", stated Vincent Schiraldi, the institute's director and report co-author.
Other findings reported in the study include:
- The average annual growth of Texas' prison population during the 1990s (11.8%) was almost twice the average annual growth of the other US states (6.1%).
- If Texas were a country, it would have the highest incarceration rate in the world, easily surpassing the United States and Russia, the next two finishers, and seven times that of the next biggest prison system, in China.
- African-Americans in Texas are incarcerated at seven times the rate of whites, and nearly one in three young African-American men in Texas is under some form of criminal justice control. The incarceration rate for blacks in Texas is 63% higher than the national rate for blacks.
- Texas' crime rate has declined much more slowly than other large states'. From 1995 to 1998, Texas' crime rate fell 5.1%, half the national average (10%), and the least of any of the nation's five largest states.
- There are 89,400 people incarcerated in Texas for non-violent crimes. Texas' non-violent prison population is larger than the entire prisoner population of Britain, a country of 60 million people, or New York, the USA's third largest state.
The institute drew a specific comparison between Texas and New York, the state closest in size to Texas. During the 1990s, Texas added more prisoners to its prison system (98,081) than New York's entire prison population (73,233). Overall, during the 1990s, Texas added five times as many prisoners as New York did (18,001).
Yet since 1995, the study found that New York's decline in crime was four times greater than Texas' decline in crime. Texas' crime rate (5111 per 100,000) is 30% higher than New York's. In 1998, Texas' murder rate was 25% higher than New York state's rate.
"If locking more people up really reduced crime, Texas should have the lowest crime rate in the country", says Jason Ziedenberg, senior researcher at the institute and report co-author.
[The Justice Policy Institute report is available on its web site: <http://www.cjcj.org/texas/texas.html>.]