A quick update on an earlier Grits post. I'd estimated that 3.4% of Texas adults were in prison, on probation and on parole as of Aug. 31 2012 based on data from a recent Texas Criminal Justice Coalition report (pdf). Looking back, to complete the picture I should have also included the 67,000 people locked up in Texas county jails. Adjusting the calculation thusly, around 3.7% of Texas adults were under control of the Texas justice system in 2012, not including those caught up in the federal system. That's about one in 27 adult Texans; still a large number, but down from one in 22 just a few years ago, when the state justice system supervised some 4.6% of Texas adults.
By that measure, the proportion of Texas' adults under control of the justice system has dropped around 20% [(4.6-3.7)/4.6] in the last five years, with incarceration levels plateauing, then dropping slightly, as the overall state population continued to rise. We still imprison more people than any other state, even California, whose population is much larger than Texas', but the ever-upward trend witnessed over the last two decades has been at least momentarily checked.
The next challenge: Texas needs to direct more funding to diversion programming and adjust sentencing categories downward for certain low-level nonviolent offenses. The 2007 investments worked but aren't enough by themselves to reduce incarceration further without additional reforms.
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