Right on Crime, Wrong on Crime- Texas Edition

 

Right on Crime is a national campaign of the Texas Public Policy Foundation in partnerhsip with the American Conservative Union Foundation and Prison Fellowship, that supports conservative solutions for reducing crime, restoring victims, reforming offenders and lowering taxpayer costs.  The movement was born in Texas in 2007.

TPPF is a conservative think tank based in Austin, Texas.  The organization was founded in 1989.  The stated mission of TPPF is "to promote and defend liberty, personal responsibility, and free enterprise in Texas and the nation by educating and affecting policymakers and the Texas public policy debate with academically sound research and outreach."

TPPF does a lot of good work in Texas outside the area of pretrial criminal justice reform where the group created a nationwide project called "Right on Crime."  The Professional Bondsmen of Texas has been writing a series of articles highlighting the many failures of Right on Crime and TPPF in the area of criminal justice reform.  In the January 2022 PBT newsletter, an article highlighted that Right on Crime supported Proposition 47 in California that changed many felony offenses and made them misdemeanor offenses.  Then liberal prosecutors announced that they would no longer prosecute these crimes.  Prop. 47 is one of the many causes that has lead to increased crime in California.  Additionally, their support of Prop. 47 has lead to many businesses closing their doors because they cannot stay in business in the face of $25,000.00 in daily shoplifting.  Other businesses have closed their doors because they have concluded that they cannot provide a safe work place for their employees any longer.  Right on Crime supported the passage of Proposition 47.  They do not champion this on their website because it has been a huge failure.

The April Newsletter highlight a story where Right on Crime was wrong on crime involving New York's criminal justice reforms.  In New York a host of charges required the trial court to release the defendant without bond.  The trial court had no discretion.  No matter how many times the defendant is arrested on the charge, the trial court is required to release the defendant again and again with no bond.  As crime increased, New York politicians had to acknowledge that the only change made was to the bail laws.  Therefore, the reforms have been rolled back on two occassions.  There is even talk of having a special session before the upcoming election to address further roll backs.  

Right on Crime touted these reforms and even attacked anyone who had the temerity to question these reforms.  

In the July Newsletter, another story highlighted Alaska's experience with criminal justice reform.  TPPF and Right on Crime advocated in support of the changes and even traveled to Alaska to testify in support of reform.  After the reforms past, TPPF and Right on Crime was requested to return a year later to explain the bad results that were being seen.  Alaska ended up repealing many of the reforms based upon their bad experiences.

In Texas, TPPF/Right on Crime has been proposing changes to the Criminal Justice System as well.  TPPF's proposals have been based upon an incorrect assumption.  TPPF assumes that most people will appear for court.   

History has proven that TPPF's first assumption was incorrect.  The last several years have demonstrated that defendants will not appear for court if they are simply released.  The results have been consistent across the country.  In California, a county recently issued a report stating that defendants released on "zero bail" failed to appear 70% of the time.  In New York, the result has been the same.  In Harris County where the county entered into a settlement and changed misdemeanor bail and initiated a simple release strategy, data from the last two years from the 16 misdemeanor courts demonstrates that defendants fail to appear over 80% of the time.

These failure to appears rates are dramatically different that the systems that they replaced.  A criminal justice system that was functioning with a less than 10% failure to appear rate and now must try to function with one that has a 70% or higher failure to appear rate is asking for the impossible.  Courts cannot function with a 70% failure to appear rate.  The reason for this is that a criminal case must be put on hold any time the defendant failes to appear and the case remains on hold until the defendant return.  A court that averages a 70% failure to appear rate is a court that will collapese from the even increasing backlog of cases.  In Harris County the misdemeanor courts have prevented collapse only by dismissing 72% of the misdemeanor cases disposed in 2021 and 2020.  In August 2022, a report on the Harris County District Clerk's website documents that over 90% of the misdemeanor cases discposed were dismissed.  If we are going to dismiss over 90% of the misdemeanor cases disposed, then why have misdemeanor courts.  This has led some to argue that the real goal of these policy proposals is decriminalization and not reform.

In Texas, TPPF has proposed the adoption of a risk assessment tool.  Since, TPPF assumes that defendant will come to court, it assumes that there is no need for bondsmen and the court's should switch to an algorithm to make release/detain decision.  

As data called into question the use of risk assessments, TPPF continued to propose adoption ignoring these arguments.  Studies were released concluding that risk assessments had a racial element.  Consequently, the left leaning groups which originally supported them withdrew their support.  Instead of reevaluating its support, TPPF sought to just "repackage" it as a conservative approach instead of a bi-partisan approach.

TPPF has been proposing a risk assessment tool to replace bondsmen for several sessions (a Texas version of the New Jersey Plan).  However, the lessons from the last several years have demonstrated that if Texas had adopted this proposal, the entire state of Texas would be facing many of the same problems that Harris County is now seeing.  The reason for this is that the facts have proven that people will not come to court on their own.  If Texas had adopted a risk assessment tool and replaced the bail industry, then the problems in Harris County would be the problems of the entire state.

TPPF provides valuable research and insights to the Texas Legislature, but in the area of Criminal Justice Reform, TPPF and Right on Crime has proven over and over that they are wrong on crime.