Likely thanks to the state’s big old budget woes, it looks like Texas may join a growing number of states making significant drug-policy reforms. Specifically, HB 2668, by Rep. Ray Allen, R-Grand Prairie, has made its way out of the House and over to the Senate where, Lege sources say, it likely has legs. The bill would provide community supervision and substance-abuse treatment for low-level drug offenders — those caught with less than 1 gram or less than five “abuse units” of narcotics. (Abuse units apply to drugs for which weight becomes a tricky matter, such as LSD.) The bill would allow judges to sentence first-time offenders to supervision and allow for leeway with other offenders with previous drug convictions.
A more progressive approach toward rehabilitating low-level offenders has long been a priority for drug reformers. But Allen’s measure is still moving forward in Texas for one reason: money. According to the Criminal Justice Policy Council, in FY 2002 Texas admitted into its state-jail facilities more than 9,000 such drug offenders — almost half of whom faced no other charges and had never before been sentenced to a stint with the Texas Dept. of Criminal Justice. And, according to the Legislative Budget Board, shifting those folks to community supervision would have a profound positive fiscal impact. Through Aug. 31, 2005, the LBB estimates a savings of nearly $30 million, with additional yearly savings of between $26 million and $30 million through 2008.
Even some witnesses who initially expressed opposition to the measure during public testimony last month agreed that “conceptually” the legislation was right on. At the bill’s April 1 hearing before Allen’s House Committee on Corrections, Travis Co. Sheriff Margo Frasier told committee members her only concern was that passage of the bill, as originally written, would merely shift the fiscal burden from the state to the individual counties. Still, Frasier agreed that the idea behind the law is good: “Conceptually, this is definitely the way to go.” Predictably, the Harris Co. district attorney, whose staff has been omnipresent at the Lege to oppose any criminal-justice reforms, had a critic on hand to oppose HB 2668. Assistant District Attorney Chuck Noll warned against redefining drug offenses as a health care problem rather than a public-safety problem. “Drug addicts aren’t just hurting themselves,” he told the committee. But this argument didn’t appear to go over too well with Allen, who advised Noll that one of his motivations for drafting HB 2668 was Harris Co. itself — nearly 50% of the state’s incarcerated drug offenders hail from Harris Co.
The bill is currently pending in the Senate Committee on Criminal Justice.
This article appears in May 16 • 2003.