NCJ Number
190433
Date Published
2000
Length
18 pages
Annotation
This study examined the extent to which the inmate population of Texas has increased in recent years, the specific communities that have been most impacted by any increase, and the effectiveness of any increase in incarceration in decreasing the rate of criminal victimization experienced by Texans.
Abstract
As of August 2000, the Federal Bureau of Justice Statistics reported that Texas pulled slightly ahead of California in having the largest population of inmates in its prison system; however, even before Texas had the largest prison population, it had the largest criminal justice system in the country, with an astonishing proportion of its population under criminal justice control. At the end of 1999, there were 706,600 Texans in prison, jail, on parole, or on probation on any given day. In a State with 14 million adults, this meant that 5 percent of adult Texans, or 1 in every 20 were under some form of criminal justice supervision. There were more Texans under criminal justice control than the entire population of some States, including Vermont, Wyoming, and Alaska. The majority of the inmates in Texas were serving sentences for nonviolent offenses that constituted low-level crimes. Although Texas' punitive criminal justice policies have affected all communities within the State, the African-American community has been disproportionately affected. If Texas' African-American incarceration rate was applied to the United States, the number of African-Americans behind bars on a national level would increase by half a million. Although African-Americans composed 12 percent of the Texas population, they comprised 44 percent of the total prison and jail population; and although whites constituted 58 percent of Texas' population, they represented only 30 percent of the prison and jail population. Data for Hispanics were somewhat unreliable and were not used in the majority of the study's calculations. The Texas' punitive criminal justice policies have not produced the declines in crime experienced in other States where incarceration has not been pursued with such vigor. 3 tables, 7 figures, and 27 notes