Closing prisons an option to cut state budget

AUSTIN, Texas (AP) - Closing some Texas prisons is an option as the correctional system faces a Monday deadline to put together a budget-cutting plan.

Gov. Rick Perry, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst and House Speaker Joe Straus asked all state agencies in January to offer proposals cutting 5 percent of their budgets by Feb. 15. Texas is facing a projected state budget shortfall of at least $10 billion.

The Austin American-Statesman reported Thursday that Texas prison officials are looking for perhaps as much as $300 million in cutbacks in the 112-unit system.

"Closing prisons? It's absolutely on the table," said House Corrections Committee Chairman Jim McReynolds of Lufkin. "As tight as our budget situation looks, we cannot unravel the fledgling system of diversion and treatment programs that are paying big dividends now for the states. And there's only one other place to look prison operations."

Brad Livingston, executive director of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, has said that any budget reductions would not compromise public safety or agency operations.

"We certainly can't compromise public safety, and I'm opposed to closing prisons just to save a buck," said Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman John Whitmire of Houston.

"Closing prisons ought to be a result of having excess capacity that results from having diversion and treatment programs that are successful, to build new efficiencies into a system to make it work better, to be smarter about how we approach criminal justice," Whitmire said.

The number of imprisoned Texas adults has been decreasing and the system currently has about 2,300 vacant beds, according to Whitmire and McReynolds. The Texas youth prison system, which five years ago housed almost 5,000 offenders, now holds fewer than 1,700.

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Information from: Austin American-Statesman,

http://www.statesman.com

(Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved.)