The Texas legislators push harder criminal punishments while the prison and prison population are increasing | News

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Legislators in Texas push more than 100 notes to the clamp against crime and threaten to overfill the prisons and prisons of the state, the population of which has continued to grow after the immersion during pandemic.

Legislators have proposed at least 121 legislative templates to increase criminal sanctions by increasing either mandatory minimum penalty or by increasing the punishment, according to the lawyer of the Texas district and district lawyers. This non -profit organization has also pursued 90 invoices that would create new criminals and 96 invoices that would cause new offenses.

These figures only include invoices that have been submitted by Monday and are expected to be increased as soon as they take into account the hundreds of draft laws that the legislators submitted this week before submitting the legislation on Friday. Nevertheless, the estimates show the growing push of the state for more punishment.

“Since 2015 there has been a rather steady, incremental growth of the number of crimes [lawmakers] Create every session, ”said Shannon Edmonds, President of the Texas district and district attorney. This growth signals a “return to the right and the order of the past decades,” he added.

The proposals include invoices that act against organized retail theft, people who burn vehicles more than once and prohibit the possession of child pornography of ai-generated cinemas.

Some proposals would provide the local law enforcement officers more instruments to comply with the threats from new technologies, including artificial intelligence, while other laws would not help prevent crime, and that the state's revised prisons and prisons could make an effort, experts said.

According to the legislative budget board, the prison population in Texas will probably increase by about 10% over the next five years, and the Texas Ministry of Criminal Justice will continue to fight with a lack of staff.

The population of the district prisons also increases. In February, according to data collected by the Texas Commission for prison standards, their population was about 2.5% higher than last year.

Some facilities are so little occupied that inmates are sent from the state to Mississippi and Louisiana. According to the Commission, around 4,100 prison inmates in Texas were accommodated in February in front of their county of arrest in February.

“It is important to take into account the costs that bear these legislative proposals for district prisons because many of them are already very thin,” said Marc Levin, chief policy consultant of the impartial thinking for punitive justice “if you increase things within the offense in which you are taking off the offense of class B in class B's offense, you have more people with a district prison.”

Class A is punished in prison for up to one year, while class B's offenses have up to 180 days in prison. People who have been convicted of crimes are usually held in state prisons in which around 136,000 criminals are currently housed.

During the Coronavirus pandemic, the prison population in Texas decreased to lows of around 117,000 people in January 2021. Since then, the number of people in state prisons has been contributed to around 31% of the nationwide growth of the prison population in the prison population over 2022 and 2023.

The session after the session leads the Texas legislators to a number of invoices that increase criminal sanctions, often in response to the public concerns about crimes they have seen in their communities. It wasn't always like that. In the late Aughs, the efforts to reduce the state's prison population were reduced from detention by reducing prison terms and the distraction of people. They swore around 2015, and since then the number of new crimes that the legislators create in every meeting has increased, said Edmonds. In 2023, legislators created 58 new crimes and 26 new punishments, a number higher than one of the legislative meetings in the past 10 years, according to the Prosecutors Association.

This year, a handful of invoices that cause criminal improvements or new crimes will be responded to the provisional charges of Lt. Governor Dan Patrick. On Patrick's order, the Senate's criminal judicial committee examined the effects of organized retail crime – in which a network of thieves steals large amounts of goods that they sell for cash, a growing problem, and also ways to strengthen investigations for financial crime.

The Senate Act 1300, submitted by Senator Pete Flores, R-Pleasanton, aims to fix the stolen goods in the amount of $ 422 million and sales tax of around $ 21 million.

The calculation would increase the punishment for such crimes based on the value of the stolen property. Current Law describes the organized retail theft as the offense of class C -which does not allow prison sentence -if the property taken is worth less than $ 100. The invoice would increase this to a class B's offense. With increasing value of stolen property, the punishment would increase up to a crime of first degree, which is punished with life in prison if the total value of the stolen goods exceeds 300,000 US dollars.

The committee brought the legislative template to the full Senate this week, although Senator Borris Miles, D-Houston, was concerned about the fact that the legal process arrested the public prosecutor impoverished families. A husband-woman couple in poverty could face prison sentence to steal the formula for their baby, although the invoice is aiming for the organized rings of retail theft, he explained to the legislators. Flores countered that the public prosecutors need discretion to determine whether charges are available.

Three further legislative templates that were approved this week by the Senate Committee on the Senate Justice aims at banking and credit card fraud, the information from Bank executives on alarming interest rates. And a legislative template by Sen. Tan Parker, R-Flower hill, creates a certain crime for the theft of email container keys or locks with stronger punishments for those who address older communities.

Other legislative templates deal with the theft of the car, a topic Bexar County Sheriff Javier Salazar said that the legislator had hit San Antonio particularly hard.

House Bill 727 increases the punishment for the break -in of a vehicle if the person who takes it on has a firearm, uses two or more vehicles or a stolen vehicle to carry out the crime. Such crimes would be referred to as a state prison crime, which could lead to 180 days to two years in the state prison. The law was pending this week in the committee. Also discussed – but outstanding in the committee – was House Bill 548, who defines a mandatory minimum year for a second criminal offense for car collapse.

However, real estate crimes are difficult to solve, and the punishment would not lead to the cases of burglaries of cars not solved, said Staene Heatly, district prosecutor in the Wilbarger district. “It doesn't seem to be an effective tool to prevent burglaries,” said Heatly. “They are difficult because people leave their cars unlocked, someone comes over at night and puts through the car and takes what he can do. There will be no witnesses, so they are only extremely difficult to solve. “

Critics who spoke against the legislative template said that burglaries are often carried out by young people who would not be held by increased punishment.

Studies show that the detention of young people rarely achieved positive results and that the investment in intensive youth programs would be more successful, said Levin.

This argument was reproduced during the discussion about house law 268, which would increase law enforcement for certain false reports, e.g.

“I have to struggle with the punishment of things for stupid things,” said Rep. Jolanda Jones, D-Houston, during the hearing of the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee. “Next, you know that you don't get a scholarship or cannot go to college.”

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This article originally appeared in the Texas Tribune at https://www.texastribune.org/2025/03/14/texas-criminal-enhancement-punishment-bills/.

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