Texas Democrats

 

Texas Democrats believe protecting citizens from crime is a primary responsibility of government essential to our quality of life and vital communities. All Texans are entitled to be safe and secure, 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 will make streets, neighborhoods, and public places safer for law abiding citizens. Community Policing Initiatives that deploy officers to specific neighborhoods to root out crime and build relationships with residents should be the focal point of law enforcement activity in Texas. Partnerships should be formed with community groups to assists officers on the streets. 

Texas Democrats encourage local, state and federal governments to provide the necessary tools and equipment law enforcement personnel need to do their jobs, and to support their officers with higher wages commensurate with the daily risks associated with the profession. 

Texas faces an imminent crisis in prison space unless we reduce the number of people we send to prison by using prevention, education and alternative sentencing programs for nonviolent offenders. We can either spend money preventing people from becoming career criminals or spend even more money building more and more prisons.

 

Texas Democrats have led efforts to make the Texas criminal justice system tough yet fair. Since 2004, Democratic legislators have:

• Passed legislation to establish the Texas Forensic Science Commission to oversee the integrity of crime laboratories and DNA evidence testing; and,
• Passed legislation to give jurors the option of sentencing a person convicted of a capital crime to life without the possibility of parole.

 

 

Juvenile Justice

We believe prevention is the best solution to juvenile crime, but juveniles must be held accountable when they break the law. The juvenile justice system must teach young people drawn to a life of crime at an early age that they will be held accountable and responsible for their actions. Most juveniles in correctional facilities represent a failure of public policy. We must create safe neighborhoods, good schools and stable jobs with livable wages for the parents and caregivers of our children, so Texas children do not end up wasting their lives in prison and ruining the lives of crime victims. We support:

• Teaching responsibility to nonviolent juvenile offenders through programs such as restitution centers;
• Drug prevention programs in our schools and communities, including school-based clinics to provide children with access to drug counseling, education and outreach programs that stop drug addiction before it begins;
• Programs that help high-risk kids stay in school and stay positively involved in their communities;
• Teach parents about management of their children’s emotions;
• Maintaining the distinction between adult and juvenile justice.

 

 

Adult Corrections

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

• Tougher laws and new computer technology to protect children from internet predators;
• Reducing prison overcrowding by revisiting sentencing guidelines for non-violent offenders;
• Increased funding for the state prison system’s 83,000-student Windham School District, as well as all other public school districts in Texas, because literacy, education and job training are key to ensuring children leave the prison system and do not return;
• Ensuring prisons are staffed by professionally trained and well-compensated corrections officers;
• 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 the high rate of 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;
• Ensuring proper oversight and regulation of crime labs, especially labs that process DNA evidence, to assure proper analysis of all DNA 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;
• 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; 
• Crime prevention programs addressing drug and alcohol addiction and other root causes of crime and stressing the need for educational opportunity;
• Reform of probation to more closely supervise probationers in their local communities and provide alternate means of punishing them, such as time in a local jail, house arrest, additional counseling and self-help programs, without sending them to a state prison;
• Allowing incarcerated offenders and their families to remain in regular telephone communication at normal commercial rates in order to help inmates and their family members maintain strong family ties, thus reducing recidivism rates;
• Stronger enforcement of laws and punishment for white collar corporate criminals;
• Establishing an “Innocence Commission” to review cases in which an innocent person was convicted of a crime and later exonerated, in order to determine the causes of the conviction, as well as identify needed reforms to prevent systemic flaws from recurring;
• 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 accused who are people of color.

 

 

Sexual Assault and Family and Domestic Violence

Sexual assault and family and domestic violence are violent crimes that disproportionately harm women and children, and because they often involve a cyclical, generational pattern, entire communities suffer as long as these 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 and programs 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 in Texas to promote increased understanding of and improved response to the crimes of domestic violence and sexual assault;
• 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 used, Texans must be assured that it is fairly administered. Texas Democrats extend our deepest sympathies to all victims of crime and especially to the family members of murder victims, and we strongly support their rights. The current system cannot ensure that innocent or undeserving defendants are not sentenced to death.

In the modern era, Texas has executed over 360 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. Texas may have already executed at least two innocent people, according to recent major newspaper investigations into the cases of Ruben Cantu and Cameron Willingham. Ernest Willis was exonerated and released from Texas Death Row on Oct. 6, 2004 after17 years of wrongful imprisonment. 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.