Since President Richard Nixon first announced the “War on Drugs” forty years ago, the United States has adopted “tough on crime” criminal justice policies that have given it the dubious distinction of having the highest incarceration rate in the world. These past forty years of criminal justice policymaking have been characterized by overcriminalization, increasingly draconian sentencing and parole regimes, mass incarceration of impoverished communities of color, and rapid prison building. These policies have also come at a great expense to taxpayers. But budget shortfalls of historic proportions are finally prompting states across the country to realize that less punitive approaches to criminal justice not only make more fiscal sense but also better protect our communities. This report details how several states with long histories of being “tough on crime” have embraced alternatives to incarceration, underscoring that reform is not only politically and fiscally viable, but that other states must also urgently follow suit.
Date
Monday, August 1, 2011 - 12:00am
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As Texas prepared to execute Cleve Foster on April 5, 2011, disturbing new facts emerged in relation to Texas’ lethal injection protocol. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) announced its intention to begin using a new drug in the lethal injection process, without allowing for any expert analysis or public scrutiny of the suitability of the new drug—pentobarbital. In fact, there is no evidence that Texas has ever engaged in a meaningful assessment of whether the drug can or should be used in combination with the other two drugs administered in lethal injections, pancuronium bromide and potassium chloride. This lack of assessment and transparency is even more troubling given the concerns of prominent anesthesiologists about the efficacy of pentobarbital in the execution of human beings and the risk that the three drugs used in combination could lead to an excruciatingly painful death.
Texas’ lax attitude regarding the taking of human life contrasts sharply with its enactment of detailed regulations to ensure that animals suffer no pain when they are euthanized. Animal euthanasia laws provide strict certification requirements for euthanasia technicians and regulate acceptable methods of intravenous euthanasia down to the correct dosage per kilogram of an animal’s body weight. By contrast, the Texas legislature has failed to enact any legislation to ensure that the individuals responsible for extinguishing human life are properly trained and qualified, and that the drugs they administer are both effective and humane. Instead, the legislature has left the lethal injection protocol to the discretion of the director of the Correctional Institutions Division of the TDCJ – a prison official with no medical training. In Texas, men and women are put to death not under the supervision of doctors and anesthesiologists—or even licensed veterinarians—but at the hands of a prison lethal injection team whose medical training is limited. It is no exaggeration to say that Texas regulates the euthanasia of reptiles more strictly than the execution of human beings.
Date
Tuesday, March 1, 2011 - 12:00am
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The Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) confines 4.4 percent of its prison population in solitary confinement. Texas locks more people in solitary-confinement cells than twelve states house in their entire prison system. On average, prisoners remain in solitary confinement for almost four years; over one hundred Texas prisoners have spent more than twenty years in solitary confinement. The conditions in which these people live impose such severe deprivations that they leave prison mentally damaged; as a group, people released from solitary are more likely to commit more new crimes than people released from the rest of the prison system. Yet in 2013, TDCJ released 1,243 people directly from solitary-confinement cells into Texas communities. These prisoners return to society after living for years or decades in a tiny cell for twenty-two hours a day, with no contact with other human beings or access to educational or rehabilitative programs. As documented in our report, A Solitary Failure: The Waste, Cost and Harm of Solitary Confinement in Texas, this dangerous and expensive practice is making our state less safe.
Here’s a summary of the report, which explains why less solitary confinement is not about going “soft” on crime, it’s about being smart on crime.
- Background - Explore the the early failure of solitary confinement, the misguided return of solitary confinement int he late 20th century, and the renewed consensus: solitary is a dangerous and expensive correctional practice.
- Solitary Confinement increases crime - Solitary permanently damages people who will one day return to Texas communities. The consequences of overusing solitary is more crime in Texas communities.
- Solitary is a huge cost to taxpayers - Solitary confinement costs Texas taxpayers at leas $46 Million a year.
- Overuse of solitary increases prison violence – Solitary confinement makes prison less safe and deprives officers of the option to incentivize good behavior. Violence escalates when officers deny people in solitary basic needs. Other states have improved prison safety by reducing solitary confinement.
- Mentally ill people deteriorate - The universal consensus: never place the seriously mentally ill in solitary. Yet, Texas sends thousands of people with mental illnesses to solitary confinement and inadequately monitors and treats them.
A Solitary Failure: The Waste, Cost and Harm of Solitary Confinement in Texas was researched and written by Burke Butler, Arthur Liman Fellow, TCRP, and Matthew Simpson, Policy Strategist, ACLU of Texas, and edited by Rebecca L. Robertson, Legal and Policy Director, ACLU of Texas.
“Everyday from dusk to dawn theres noise, banging, clanking, yelling, screaming. Everyday someone is getting hurt or hurting themselves. Everyday theres fire and floods and complete chaos & hate. Everyday there’s loneliness. I woke up last night to someone screaming ‘Let Me Out of Here’ (again) over and over with so much anguish there was no doubt he was screaming from his very soul. But he was just screaming what we are all thinking. Everyday is a challenge here. A challenge against insanity.”
-Alex
Date
Thursday, February 5, 2015 - 12:00am
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