Big Brother is a Texan, apparently

The Pew Charitable Trust is a non-partisan organization dedicated to finding what they describe as “fact-based solutions and goal-driven investments to improve society.”  One part of the organization is Pew’s Center on the States (PCS).  Each year, PCS publishes a report which “examines the scale and cost of prison, jail, probation and parole in each of the 50 states.”  PCS then recommends ways in which the states can “cut both crime and spending by reallocating prison expenses to fund stronger supervision of the large number of offenders in the community.”  In other words, they believe community supervision (probation) is preferable to prison incarceration.

The latest report by PCS in entitled One in 31: The Long Reach of American Corrections.  The One in 31 refers to the fact that 1 out of every 31 adults in the United States is either in prison, on parole, or on probation.  That’s 7.3 million people! 

The report also discusses how less than one-third of those 7.3 million people are behind bars; but that in spite of this, the states spend nearly 90 percent of their corrections budget on prisons.  It’s certainly an interesting read whether you agree with the conclusions or not.

Of most interest, though, is the information on this fact-sheet about Texas.  It should be called One in 22: The Long Reach of Texas Corrections.  Can you believe it?  One out of every 22 Texans is being actively watched and monitored by the government.  Big Brother is a Texan, apparently.  Who knew?  Astonishingly, though, Texas is only the fourth most controlling state in the Union.  We are behind Georgia, Idaho, and Washington, D.C.

Another interesting facts in the report is that in 2008 Texas spent $2.96 billion dollars on corrections, or 6.8 percent of the general fund.  Here is a chart that breaks down the percentages: