This article presents historical data on changes in punishment policy in Texas, examining how Texas’s prosecutors played an important role in shaping law and policy. This article helps parcel out the relative influence of various factors in driving more punitive policies by examining an unsettled period of legal and policy change when some state leaders were pushing back against the growing tide of prison expansion. Ultimately this period resulted in a new penal code that retained most of the harshest punishments for offenders, and created an additional layer of prison facilities to manage lower-level offenders. My findings emphasize how these legal changes reflected conflict between state and local government. It also suggests that important contextual factors deeply embedded in Texas’s history helped establish conditions more likely to lead to mass incarceration. These findings suggest that ‘top–down’ and ‘bottom–up’ theoretical accounts of punishment might omit important intervening institutional factors.
Associated Press (1991) Prison reform should focus on prevention, not construction. Austin American-Statesman, p. B2, 9/18.
2.
Association, Texas District and County Attorneys (1992) Response to the Texas Punishment Standards Committee Report. Vol. Senate Criminal Justice Committee and House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee Reports. Texas State Archives.
3.
Association, Texas District and County Attorneys (1993) Response to the Texas Punishment Standards Commission Report. Austin, TX: Texas State Library and Archives.
4.
BarkerV (2009) The Politics of Imprisonment: How the Democratic Process Shapes the Way America Punishes Offenders. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
5.
BeckettK (1997) Making Crime Pay: Law and Order in Contemporary American Politics, Ed. TonryMMorrisN. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
6.
BeckettKSassonT (2000) The Politics of Injustice: Crime and Punishment in America. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.
7.
CampbellMC (2009) Agents of change: Prisons, politics, and law enforcement in California and Texas. Dissertation Thesis, Criminology, Law & Society, University of California, Irvine, CA.
8.
CampbellMC (2011) Politics, prisons, and law enforcement: An examination of the emergence of ‘law and order’ politics in Texas. Law and Society Review45(3), DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-5893.2011.00446.x10.1111/j.1540-5893.2011.00446.x.
9.
CampbellRB (2003) Gone to Texas: A History of the Lone Star State. New York: Oxford University Press.
10.
Commission, Texas Punishment Standards (1992) Meeting minutes: February 28; March 13 ranking offenses meetings, February 28. Texas State Archives, p. 2 [77–78] archive page p. 3 [82].
11.
Criminal History Subcommittee Meeting Minutes (1992) Texas Punishment Standards Commission. Austin, TX: State of Texas.
12.
DurhamDT (1990) President’s message. The Texas Prosecutor, September/October, pp. 3–4.
13.
Editorial (1993) Prosecutors proposing 1-cent rise in sales tax. Austin American-Statesman, p. A8.
14.
FabeloT (1994) Sentencing reform in Texas: Can criminal justice research inform public policy. Crime and Delinquency40(2): 282–294.
15.
Foundation, Texas District and County Attorneys Association (2010) 2009 Annual Report. Texas District and County Attorneys Association Foundation.
16.
GarlandD (2001) The Culture of Control: Crime and Social Order in Contemporary Society. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press.
17.
GilmoreRW (2007) Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
18.
GottschalkM (2006) The Prison and the Gallows: The Politics of Mass Incarceration in America. New York: Cambridge University Press.
19.
HardinR (1991) Reviewing Texas people against crime: A prescription for the future. The Texas Prosecutor, March/April, pp. 1, 17–23.
20.
HarrisonP (2000) Incarceration Rates for Prisoners under State or Federal Jurisdiction, per 100,000 Residents. Washington, DC: BJS, National Prisoner Statistics data series (NPS-1).
21.
HeinzJPManikasPM (1992) Networks among elites in a local criminal justice system. Law and Society Review26(4): 831–861.
22.
HillGHarrisonP (2005) Prisoners under State or Federal jurisdiction. BJS, National Prisoner Statistics data series (NPS-1). Ed. corpop02.csv. Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice Statistics.
23.
HobbsFStoopsN (2002) Demographic Trends in the 20th Century. Washington, DC: US Government Printing Office.
24.
HolbrookTMRajaRJ (2008) Parties and elections. In: GrayVHansonRL (eds) Politics in the American States: A Comparative Analysis. Washington, DC: CQ Press, 61–97.
25.
Implementation of Long-Range Goals for Services to Prosecutors Under Way (1992) Texas Prosecutor, 22(2) March/April, p. 1.
JacobsDJacksonAL (2010) On the politics of imprisonments: A review of systematic findings. Annual Review of Law and Social Science6: 129–149.
28.
KeyssarA (2000) The Right to Vote: The Contested History of Democracy in the United States. New York: Basic Books.
29.
KrampitzT (1991a) Bad news…but then some good news. The Texas Prosecutor, pp. 3, 28.
30.
KrampitzT (1991b) Executive Director’s Report: The Aftermath of a Misspent Youth. Vol. 21. Austin, TX: Texas District and County Attorneys Association.
31.
KrampitzT (1991c) Swamps, alligators, and the 72nd legislative session. The Texas Prosecutor, January/February, p. 3.
32.
KrampitzT (1992) Executive director’s report: Asking the right questions. The Texas Prosecutor, January/February, p. 3.
33.
KrampitzT (1993) A legislative postmortem. The Texas Prosecutor23(4), p. 3.
34.
LynchM (2010) Sunbelt Justice: Arizona and the Transformation of American Punishment. Stanford, CA: Stanford Law Books.
35.
LyonT (1992) State to consider tougher criminal punishment proposals. Austin American-Statesman, 11/30, p. A17.
36.
MartinSJEkland-OlsonS (1987) Texas Prisons: The Walls Came Tumbling Down. Austin, TX: Texas Monthly Press.
37.
MillerLL (2008) The Perils of Federalism: Race, Poverty, and the Politics of Crime Control. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
38.
Office of Governor Office of Governor William P. Clements, Jr (1982) Notes for Governor Clements, Initial Meeting of the Blue Ribbon Commission on Criminal Justice. Ed. Staff. Austin, TX: Office of Governor William P. Clements, Jr.
39.
PageJ (2011) The ‘Toughest Beat’: Politics, Punishment, and the Prison Officers Union in California. New York: Oxford University Press.
40.
PerkinsonR (2010) Texas Tough: The Rise of America’s Prison Empire. New York: Metropolitan Books.
41.
Regular Panel Hearing Summary (1992) Texas Punishment Standards Commission. Austin, TX: State of Texas.
42.
ReynoldsC (1992) Executive Summary, TPSC Full Commission Meeting. Texas State Archives, Austin, TX.
43.
SavelsbergJJ (1994) Knowledge, domination, and criminal punishment. American Journal of Sociology99(4): 911–943.
44.
ScheingoldSA (1991) The Politics of Street Crime: Criminal Process and Cultural Obsession. Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press.
45.
SchoenfeldH (2010) Mass incarceration and the paradox of prison conditions litigation. Law & Society Review44(3–4): 731–768.
SimonJ (2007) Governing through Crime: How the War on Crime Transformed American Democracy and Created a Culture of Fear. Ed. TonryMMorrisN. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
48.
SpelmanW (2000) The limited importance of prison expansion. In: BlumsteinAWallmanJ (eds) The Crime Drop in America. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 97–129.
Staff (1993a) 1993 TDCAA committee assignments. The Texas Prosecutor, January/February, pp. 10–11.
53.
Staff (1993b) Texas Punishment Standards Commission: Executive Summary. Austin, TX: State of Texas.
54.
Staff, Legislative (1993c) Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence Bill Analysis HB 1235. Ed. The House of Representatives. Austin, TX: Texas State Archives: 18: 1999/054–10.
55.
Staff (2009) List of newly elected prosecutors. The Prosecutor, 39(2).
56.
Statistics, Bureau of Justice (2008) Incarceration: Summary Findings. Vol. 2009. Washington, DC: Bureau of Justice.
57.
Subcommittee Meeting Minutes (1992) Texas Punishment Standards Commission. Austin, TX: State of Texas.
US Census Bureau, Current Population Survey(November 2002 and earlier years) Table A-3. Reported voting and registration for total and citizen voting-age population, by state for congressional elections: 1974–2002.
60.
WacquantL (2001) Deadly symbiosis: When ghetto and prison meet and mesh. Punishment & Society3(1): 95–134.
61.
WalmsleyR (2005) World Prison Population List (Sixth Edition). King’s College, London: International Centre for Prison Studies.
62.
WardM (1993) Reforms vital to reform of outdated prison system. Austin American-Statesman, 3/25, p. B1.
63.
WeberM (1978) Economy and Society. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
64.
WesternB (2006) Punishment and Inequality in America. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.
65.
ZimringFE (1991) The Scale of Imprisonment. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
66.
ZimringFE (2007) The Great American Crime Decline. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
67.
Lawrence R. Alberti et al., Plaintiffs-Appellees v. The Sheriff of Harris County, Texas et al., Defendants-Third Party Plaintiffs-Appellants, Appellees (1991) in re Ann Richards, the Governor of Texas et al., Third Party Defendants-Appellants. United States Court of Appeals, 5th Circuit.
