Every local political candidate in the United States runs on a crime fighting platform, promising to put more “boots on the ground” (more officers patrolling the streets). These promises are made even though the candidates know full well that there is no money available to carry them out. And that’s the case with the current city elections in Houston.
A frequent op-ed contributor to the Houston Chronicle wrote on Sunday that Houston needs to add many more investigators rather than to add more officers on the streets. I’m not sure that I can agree with him. Houston probably need both more investigators and more officers on the street.
Today, I spent some time at one of the Houston police stations visiting with some of my old friends. We discussed that op-ed piece. I told my friends that in order to reduce the city’s crime rate, Houston needed to adopt New York’s “Broken Windows” concept. (In Broken Windows, NYPD aggressively went after and arrested offenders for minor crimes such as vandalism [hence the term broken windows], petty thefts, public intoxication, simple assaults, graffiti, etc. By jailing these misdemeanants they were prevented from committing more serious crime. Broken Windows had a significant impact on the reduction of crime in New York City.)
The officers I talked with were familiar with Broken Windows. They said that while they agreed the concept was a very good one, it could not be used in Houston because the county jail is overcrowded. The sheriff’s department refuses to book anyone into their jail for any offense that is less than a Class A misdemeanor. (In Texas there are three classes of misdemeanors – A, B, and C – with A being the most serious.) The sheriff’s policy precludes the jailing of many Broken Windows offenders.
In my past blogs, I have written about studies showing that early releases from prison, whether to satisfy federal court orders about overcrowding or as the result of state budget cuts, put the public at great risk. According to independent research organizations, for every 5,000 felons who receive an early release, 45,500 new crimes will be committed over a three-year period, and 9,000 of those crimes will be violent felonies. And the overcrowding of county jails also contributes to the crime rate by keeping those arrested for minor offenses from being locked up at all. As a result many of those misdemeanants will end up committing crimes that are far more serious.
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