North Austin News

Texas' prison population continues its more-than-decade-long steady decline, currently at a 21st century low of less than 121,000 in 2020.  

Last year alone Texas' total prison population dropped from 140,819 to 120,873, according to a Texas Legislative Budget Board report issued in January. 

Since 2011 TDCJ has closed or idled 11 prison facilities, of which six have been sold. Of the remaining five, Bartlett State Jail in Williamson County is still owned by the state despite not having been in use for nearly four years. 

Texas state Sen. John Whitmire (D-Houston) | senate.texas.gov/

Even with the closures, Texas is not lacking in prisons. Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) is made up of 100 facilities on 83 properties on 124,000 acres across the state, in addition to contracts for one facility that is privately owned. 

In 2018, 151,213 inmates were incarcerated in Texas's prison system, according to a report released by New York-based Vera Institute for Justice. That number was part of a leveling off of the state's prison population that began before 2000.  

Prior to that leveling off, Texas' prison significantly increased in the decades prior, up 328% from the 50,636 locked up in 1983 to the 216,516 incarcerated in 2015, according to the Vera report. In 2015 Texas ranked fifth in the nation behind Arkansas, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Louisiana for jail admissions and third in the nation behind Arkansas and Louisiana for prison admissions.

The trend since has been steadily downward, but remains more than double the prison population in 1983, according to the correctional population and capacity figures released by the TDCJ last month.

Those figures indicate a total population 120,873 at the end of 2020, down about 20,000 from the 140,819 at the beginning of the year, according to the TDCJ report.

The decline in Texas' prison population hasn't gone unnoticed. About a year ago, TDCJ announced the closures of Garza East prison in Beeville and the Jester I Unit in Sugar Land. In its announcement, TDCJ referred to "decreasing demand for secure housing and projected stability in the offender population" as making the closures possible  "without negatively affecting public safety or causing any loss of jobs."

"In all approximately 2,300 beds will be taken out of service. The agency will be offering positions at nearby units to all impacted employees," the TDCJ announcement continued. "These closures will make a total of 10 units closed in the last decade by TDCJ. In that same time frame, the offender population has declined steadily from more than 156,000 in 2011 to 140,533 today."

The decline in Texas' prison population is a result of the state legislature's shift in 2007 to treatment and diversion and a "sustained focus" on criminal justice reforms, said state Sen. John Whitmire (D-Houston), who chairs Senate Criminal Justice Committee, in his widely reported statement at the time of the Garza East Jester I Unit closure.

By that time the state's prison population was about 140,000, about 20,000 more than are currently incarcerated in Texas prisons.

Despite the decline in prison population, understaffing of personnel manning Texas' state prisons has remained a problem. In October 14 state prisons reported at least 40% staff vacancies.

The previous month, Texas Criminal Justice Coalition senior policy analyst Doug Smith  referred to the significant drop in the prison population during his testimony before the Texas House Committee on Appropriations, saying the most recent prison population decline was the saving the state a significant amount of money.

Smith attributed the prison population decline to "rapidly declining crime rates, decreased felony court activity due to the COVID-19 emergency declaration and stalled transfer of individuals committed to state prison from county jail." He cautioned the decline wouldn't last.

"While this reduction in incarceration seems promising – and is saving the state approximately $1 million per day – the numbers will likely rise again once the pandemic subsides," Smith said.

Data collected the previous year seems to back Smith's assertions about cost savings. The system-wide average cost per day is $62.34, including the cost of beds and other services for each prisoner, according to a Texas Legislative Budget Board report issued in January 2019.

Smith estimated that 891 of every 100,000 Texans is in some way incarcerated in a state or federal prison, a juvenile facility or a county jail, a rate that "eclipses the national incarceration rate by 27% and dwarfs many other NATO member countries’ rates altogether."

"Unless the system is downsized and funding is shifted toward programs known to prevent crime, including substance use recovery programs, Texas will be forced to increase funding every year for maintaining its 100+ units, many of which are more than a century old," Smith said. "Rather than allocating additional state dollars to facility costs, we urge the committee to recommend closing aging and understaffed facilities across the state."