Texas: how to do prison reform from the right

Texas’s recent moves towards prison reform are interesting for two reasons. First, the substantive policy of trying to cut prison numbers via a strong emphasis on rehabilitation. Second, the politics of it because the moves are coming from the right, not from liberals, as the BBC reports:

Something happened in 2007, when Texas Republican Congressman Jerry Madden was appointed chairman of the House Corrections Committee with the now famous words by his party leader: “Don’t build new prisons. They cost too much.”

The impulse to what has become the Right on Crime initiative was fiscal conservatism – the strong sense that the taxpayer was paying way too much money to fight a losing war against drugs, mental ill-health and petty criminality…

Consistent with the straightforward Texan manner, the Congressional Republicans did not attempt to tackle what in Britain are known as “the causes of crime” – the socio-economic factors that make people more disposed to offend. Instead, they focused on the individual criminal, and his or her personal choices. Here, they believe, moral clarity and generosity are what’s needed.

Though fiscal conservatism may have got the ball rolling, what I saw in Texas – spending time in court and speaking to offenders, prison guards, non-profit staff and volunteers – goes way beyond the desire to save money.

The Prison Entrepreneurship Programme, for instance, matches prisoners with businesspeople and settles them in a residential community on release. Its guiding values are Christian and its staff’s motives seem to be love and hope for their “brothers”, who in turn support the next batch of prisoners leaving jail…

Immediate, comprehensible and proportionate sanctions are given for bad behaviour, plus accountability to a kind leader and supportive community. This is the magic sauce of Right on Crime.

Far from having to build new jails for the 17,000 expected new inmates, Jerry Madden and his colleagues have succeeded in closing three prisons.