STEVE MARTIN ADVOCATES TEXAS ADOPT CALIFORNIA’S PRISON REALIGNMENT PROGRAM

Not the Hollywood comedian, but a Texas correctional consultant; his solution for ‘reform’ of the Texas criminal justice system is as funny as any of comedian Steve Martin’s hilarious skits

Steve J. Martin, a correctional consultant and former General Counsel of the Texas prison system, has been highly critical of the Texas criminal justice system. He charges that:

•Texas incarcerates the greatest number of persons in the U.S. but is dead last in the percentage of persons who graduate from high school.

•Texas has 75,000 inmates incarcerated for nonviolent offenses, a number that exceeds the prison populations of all but one state.

•Texas prisons hold more people with mental illness than our state mental health institutions have patients.

• Texas continues to incarcerate almost twice as many African-American males as are enrolled in the state’s public universities.

Martin says, “We have too many Texans locked-up — especially minorities who comprise nearly 70 percent of the total prison population.”

Martin’s solution is to ‘reform’ the Texas criminal justice system by adopting California’s prison realignment program. He says:

__“In the past six years, California has reduced its prison population by 50,000 by ‘realigning’ its criminal justice system and shifting the burden of managing low-level offenders from state prisons to local communities. California is now spending $800 million less on its prisoners than it did two years ago without compromising public safety and without an increase in crime rates.”

Advocating that Texas adopt California’s prison realignment is what I would expect to hear from Hollywood comedian Steve Martin, not from a professional ‘correctional consultant.’ Martin, the correctional consultant, ignores the fact that California’s ‘local communities’ have been overwhelmed by having thousands of prison inmates and parolees dumped on them. He ignores the fact that instead of ‘low level offenders,’ many of the realigned inmates and parolees have a history of violence on their rap sheets. The low level classifications are based solely on the most recent arrest - previous arrests for crimes of violence are not taken into account. And Martin ignores the fact that in many California counties the crime rate has gone up since realignment went into effect.

As for the disproportionate number of minorities in prison, isn’t Martin, the correctional consultant, aware that blacks and Hispanics are committing a disproportionate number of crimes?

I’d be interested in hearing comedian Steve Martin’s solution to reform the Texas criminal justice system. I’ll bet it would make more sense.