Conservatives Must Continue to Lead on Justice Reform

This op-ed was jointly authored by Adam Brandon of FreedomWorks, Timothy Head of the Faith and Freedom Coalition, Grover Norquist of Americans for Tax Reform, and Marc Levin of Right on Crime.

Nearly ten years ago, in 2007, Texas faced $527 million in immediate prison-construction costs, and $2 billion in additional costs by 2012. Even for a large and wealthy state, the sticker shock was staggering.

Texas had seen its prison population rise dramatically. Between 1990 and 2010, the number of inmates jumped from around 50,000 to more than 155,000 — incarcerating so many inmates began to crowd out other vital areas of the budget.

Texas House Corrections Committee chairman Jerry Madden approached House speaker Tom Craddick and asked what he should do to address the rising costs. “Don’t build new prisons,” Craddick said. “They cost too much.”

Madden, a Republican, got to work and, along with his colleagues from both sides of the aisle, devised a plan to tackle the state’s growing prison population. With an investment of $241 million, lawmakers created drug courts to divert low-level, nonviolent offenders into treatment programs as an alternative to incarceration and funded rehabilitation programs to reduce prisoners’ risk of recidivism when they reentered society.

The results of the Texas model are difficult to ignore: The state’s prison population declined by 14 percent and, even more importantly, crime rates dropped by 29 percent.