Texas Democratic Party: Moving Texas Forward

Texas Democrats believe protection from crime is a primary responsibility of government that is essential to the quality of life in our communities. All Texans are entitled to be safe and secure, and free from fear of violence. The guilty must be justly punished for crimes they commit, the innocent must be protected, the rights of victims must be ensured, the accused provided due process under law, and public safety officers must be strongly supported. We believe a community-based approach to crime fighting makes our streets and neighborhoods safer. Partnerships should be formed with community groups to assist officers on the streets.  We must also be just as tough when addressing the causes of crime, so we can more effectively deter and reduce criminal conduct.

Texas Democrats believe government must provide the necessary tools and equipment law enforcement personnel need to do their jobs, and we must support officers with higher wages commensurate with the daily risks associated with the profession.

Texas Democrats applaud the Dallas County District Attorney for his innovative work with the Innocence Project to assure the integrity of convictions and exonerate and quickly release innocent people who have been wrongfully convicted. We urge the Legislature to create an “Innocence Commission” to review cases in which innocent persons were convicted of a crime and later exonerated, in order to identify the causes of wrongful convictions and determine and implement needed reforms to prevent recurring problems, including a requirement to corroborate eyewitness and confidential informant testimony and meaningful penalties for prosecutorial misconduct.

Texas has faced recurring crises in prison space that can be addressed by making sure dangerous criminals are locked up by adopting effective prevention, education and alternative sentencing strategies to reduce the numbers of nonviolent offenders imprisoned. Less money will be needed to build more prisons when prevention efforts can keep people from becoming career criminals. Texas has more people in prison and a higher incarceration rate than any other state. There are too many people in Texas prisons who could be supervised safely in the community at a much lower cost, while also paying taxes, paying restitution to their victims and paying child support.

Texas Democrats are leading efforts to make the Texas criminal justice system fairer, more equitable and less costly. We support reforms passed with the support of the Democratic legislators in 2007, which redirected corrections policy to include short-term residential diversion and treatment facilities for low-level substance abusing offenders and additional outpatient drug and mental health treatment resources.

Texas Democrats also led efforts to pass legislation to remove the requirement that a person obtain a letter of innocence from the District Attorney to receive a pardon for innocence; and increase the level of compensation for each year of wrongful incarceration.

Transforming Juvenile Justice in Texas

The shocking Texas Youth Commission scandal showed how desperately Texas needs to make sweeping changes in juvenile justice policy to end a pattern of abuse and cover up by stressing treatment and reducing ineffective punishment. The “tough love” approach adopted by former Governor George Bush has failed and led to a shocking 50 percent recidivism rate for juveniles.

The state should consider TYC reforms based on the “Missouri model,” which emphasizes preventive measures, education and training, parental involvement, treatment for drug abuse and mental health problems and housing troubled juveniles closer to home in community-based settings instead of large, remote, TYC prisons. The use of Tasers and pepper-spray at TYC facilities should be banned, unless it is necessary to prevent loss of life or serious bodily injury.

Juveniles are presumed to be less culpable for their crimes than adults and therefore have a constitutional right to be treated differently. Prison-style incarceration often does young offenders more harm than good. Community-based juvenile justice prevention and intervention programs can ultimately reduce adult crime, Texas’ high incarceration rate and the need for prison construction.

Texas Democrats support the guiding principles of the Texas Youth Commission’s Blue Ribbon Task Force Report, which recommend a TYC environment that facilitates the appropriate educational and moral development of youth who would spend the least amount of time possible in the TYC system; staffing capacity commensurate with the size and needs of the population; and a child-focused, family-centered, non-violent TYC. These principles would be best realized in a regionalized, community-based system that admits youth to TYC using research-based risk assessment and classification and provides specialized treatment for youth and families.

Administration of Justice

To continue the fight against crime, make our streets and our homes safer, and improve the administration of justice, Texas Democrats support just and smart policies, including:

• revising sentencing guidelines for non-violent offenders, redirecting the “War on Drugs” to treatment, and reclassifying some offenses considered felonies;
• increased funding for the state prison system’s Windham School District and restoration of Republican cuts to programs for inmates to take higher education courses, because literacy, education and job training ensure people leave prison and do not return;
• ensuring prisons are staffed by professionally trained and compensated corrections officers, in sufficient numbers to achieve safe staffing ratios;
• fully funding mental health facilities and creating more facilities as necessary to provide appropriate mental health services to redirect individuals from the criminal justice system;
• rewriting the relevant Texas criminal code provisions to take into account modern understanding of severe mental illness and to broaden the legal definition of insanity to ensure that the public is kept safe while allowing treatment for mentally ill inmates;
• opposing the further privatization of Texas prisons and mandating a pay scale comparable to public prisons for prison guards at existing private prisons;
• reducing recidivism rates by increasing rehabilitation and re-entry programs, with special emphasis on reducing functional illiteracy and drug use among people released from prison, including the reversal of policies that deny student loans and grants to those who have completed sentences for drug felonies;
• sensitive treatment for the victims of crime and stronger emphasis on compensation to crime victims by the criminals themselves;
• strong enforcement of the James Byrd, Jr., Memorial Hate Crimes Act and the federal Matthew Shepherd Hate Crimes Prevention Act;
• ensuring proper oversight and regulation of crime labs, especially labs that process DNA evidence, to assure proper analysis of evidence, including timely analysis of evidence from medical rape kits and entering such evidence in a computerized database;
• placing more police officers on the streets in underserved areas;
• insure that any use of tasers is carried out only when necessary to prevent loss of life or serious bodily injury, as a substitute for lawful use of a deadly weapon;
• increasing the amount of federal grant money obtained through the Edward Byrne Law Enforcement Assistance Program used for drug treatment and drug court programs, homeland security operations, and crime lab upgrades;
• prevention programs addressing drug and alcohol addiction, lack of educational opportunity and other root causes of crime;
• probation reform to more closely supervise probationers in their communities and provide alternate means of punishing them, such as local jail time, house arrest, additional counseling and self-help programs, without sending them to a state prison;
• significantly reducing the number of people reincarcerated for technical violations of parole or probation, such as missing an appointment with a supervisory officer;
• stronger enforcement of laws and punishment for white collar corporate criminals;
• ending racial profiling in searches and traffic stops;
• the right of every person to be tried by a jury that broadly reflects the ethnic makeup of the community, including legislation to eliminate the disgraceful practice of using all-white juries and grand juries in cases involving people of color;
• staff the Parole Division to achieve the 60:1 ratio of parolees to parole officers; and
• creating and adequately funding a public defender office in Texas’ most populous counties.

Sexual Assault and Family and Domestic Violence

Sexual assault and family and domestic violence are violent crimes that disproportionately harm women and children; crimes that often involve a cyclical, generational pattern, thus affecting entire communities as long as such crimes continue to be perpetrated. We support:

• strong enforcement of Texas laws to hold offenders accountable and increase the likelihood that victims will come forward to report these crimes;
• policies that encourage advocacy, support, and safety for victims and their families;
• early prevention efforts focused on youth to decrease the incidence of sexual and domestic violence prior to victimization;
• training programs for law enforcement, prosecutorial, judicial, health care, mental health and education professionals to promote increased understanding of and improved response to the crimes of domestic violence and sexual assault; and
• a strong statewide initiative to reduce the alarming increase of child abuse and neglect through investment in effective early prevention programs.

Capital Punishment

When capital punishment is imposed, Texans must be assured that it is fairly administered. Texas Democrats extend our deepest sympathies to all victims of crime and especially to the families of murder victims, and we strongly support their rights. The Texas death penalty system has been severely criticized by religious leaders, appellate courts and major newspapers that have observed that the current system cannot ensure that innocent or undeserving defendants are not sentenced to death. The Dallas Morning News has called for abolition of the death penalty in Texas.

In the modern era, Texas has executed over 400 people, far more than any other state in the nation. The frequency of executions and inadequacies in our criminal justice system increase the likelihood that an innocent person will be executed. The State of Texas may have already executed at least two innocent people, according to major newspaper investigations into the cases of Carlos DeLuna and Cameron Todd Willingham. Another inmate, Ernest Willis, was exonerated and released from Texas Death Row in 2004 after 17 years of wrongful imprisonment.

We condemn Governor Perry’s manipulation of the forensic science commission investigation of the science which led to the execution of a possibly innocent person.

In order to promote public confidence in the fairness of the Texas criminal justice system, Texas Democrats support the establishment of a Texas Capital Punishment Commission to study the Texas death penalty system and a moratorium on executions pending action on the Commission’s findings.

Texas Democrats support the following specific reforms:

• establishing a statewide Office of Public Defenders for Capital Cases to ensure that every person accused of a capital crime has equal access to well-trained trial and appellate attorneys, regardless of income, race or the county of jurisdiction;
• allowing testing of any possibly exculpatory DNA evidence to ensure guilt or innocence before executions are carried out, and allowing testing of DNA evidence after an execution to determine if an innocent person has been executed;
• establishing procedures to determine before a trial takes place whether an accused has mental retardation, in order to be sure that Texas complies with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ban on executions of people with mental retardation;
• banning death sentences and executions for people with mental illness;
• requiring the Board of Pardons and Paroles to meet in person to discuss and vote on every case involving the death sentence;
• restoring the power to the Governor to grant clemency in death penalty cases without a recommendation from the Board of Pardons and Paroles. To restore public confidence in the process, the Board should meet in public and decisions should be made by majority vote;
• when the imposition of the death penalty is before the Parole Board or the Governor we urge consideration of all reasonably certain scientific or factual evidence that has become known since the trial; and
• reforming statutes related to the “Law of Parties,” to make sure individuals who actually commit crimes are the primary focus of prosecution.