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Incarceration rates headed "straight up again" if Texas cuts diversion programming

At the Dallas News, Robert Garrett reports on a concern I've expressed here on Grits that the Texas Department of Criminal Justice plans to focus budget cuts on treatment and diversion programs while keeping the prison budget whole ("Addiction program for offenders too valuable to lose, proponents say," Aug. 9). Wrote Garrett:Many criminologists and others in the field say that groundbreaking work on drug and alcohol counseling and community supervision has proved so effective that it has prevented another Texas prison-building boom. But they fear that could change if lawmakers cut diversion programs as they tackle a projected $18 billion budget shortfall."We've saved money, kept the public safe, and we're not getting the state in such a situation where they're having to just open the doors of the prison and start pushing people out," said Teresa May-Williams, assistant chief of probation in Dallas County, which has been a leader of Texas' big push to treat nonviolent offenders' addictions...continue to full post

Full post as published by Grits for Breakfast on August 09, 2010 (boomark / email).