"Tough on Crime" Bills Defeated in 2013

Youth Justice: HB 1165 | HB 1566 | HB 2450 | HB 2520 | HB 2872 | HB 3743 | SB 1183
Sentencing: HB 36 | HB 235 | HB 2827
Confinement & Reentry: HB 177 | HB 691 | HB 2053

Failed Bills Related to Youth Justice

• HB 1165 (Thompson, Ed): Relating to the offense of failure to attend school. HB 1165 would have expanded the class of individuals who may be convicted of truancy by increasing the age requirement under which a person could be convicted from 18 to 21. HB 1165 also would have allowed school districts to develop their own rules as to who must attend school, thus allowing individuals to be convicted of truancy based on each district’s own unique rules – leading to unpredictability and inconsistency in laws.

• HB 1566 (Miller, Rick): Relating to testing of a juvenile for a sexually transmitted disease or human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) upon the filing of a petition alleging delinquent conduct. Under current Texas law, juveniles who are convicted of sexual offenses must undergo testing for HIV and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), in part to alert victims of any disease they may have been exposed to. This bill would have required HIV and STD testing of youth who have merely been accused of sexual offenses. Doing so could potentially have violated the privacy rights of youth, while also leaving victims with test results from wrongfully accused youth.

• HB 2450 (Raymond) [SP: Zaffirini]: Relating to a pilot program operated by certain public or private primary or secondary or open-enrollment charter schools in Webb County concerning searches and drug testing of students with parental consent and certain disciplinary measures and other procedures that may arise from such a search or test. HB 2450 would have created a pilot program in Webb County (South Texas) that would have allowed schools to search a student for any drugs or alcohol (limited to once a week), or to test a student for the use of drugs or alcohol (limited to once a month), if the school principal had reason to believe that the student possessed such items or used them, and received written consent from the student’s parent for the search or test. If the search or test results were positive, the school would have informed local law enforcement, which would have confiscated the items within 72 hours of being notified. However, the student would not have been expelled from school unless he or she had repeatedly offended, or had failed to attend a required drug treatment program.

This bill would also have authorized the school district’s board of trustees or the governing body of a private or charter school to employ a juvenile case manager to handle such matters, who would communicate with the appropriate court regarding punishment or alternatives to disciplinary action. If a student was placed in adjudication proceedings, HB 2450 would have allowed a judge to place the student on deferred adjudication for up to 180 days, and dismiss the case if the child successfully participated in a drug treatment program. Under HB 2450, the court would have had the option of sealing a youth’s record, in certain instances.

HB 2450 also would have required the school district’s board of trustees or the governing body of the private or charter school to submit a report to the legislature regarding the effectiveness of the program, no later than December 1, 2014, and the program would have expired on June 15, 2015.

• HB 2520 (Springer): Relating to increasing the costs of court and juvenile probation fees imposed by a juvenile court. This bill would have raised the court costs for a juvenile probation disposition hearing from $20 to $300. This bill would also have raised the monthly fees that a youth must pay while on probation from $15 per month $60 per month. While this bill was intended to bring juvenile court costs in line with adult court costs, youth do not have the same resources or financial stability as adults, and they should not be required to pay the same high costs and fees as adults. This policy change would have been onerous and unnecessary, severely burdening low-income youth and families with high payments, and potentially causing undue legal (and further financial) burdens for youth and families unable to pay.

• HB 2872 (Villareal): Relating to the number of student absences that constitute a failure to attend school. Currently, a child commits a Class C misdemeanor if he or she fails to attend school for 10 days within a 6-month period of a school year. HB 2872 would have changed the 10-day requirement to a 5-day requirement each semester, unless the school operated on a year-round basis. In that case, a child would have been cited for failing to attend school for 3 or more days, or parts of the day, within a 4-week period.

• HB 3743 (Wu): Relating to the authority of a prosecutor in a juvenile case to appeal certain judicial decisions. Currently, prosecutors in juvenile cases are only allowed to appeal cases in which the grand jury approved an indictment for a violent or habitual felony committed by a child. HB 3743 would have expanded the power of prosecutors to appeal all juvenile cases.

• SB 1183 (Huffman): Relating to testing of a juvenile for a sexually transmitted disease or human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) on the filing of a petition alleging delinquent conduct that includes certain sexual offenses. Under current Texas law, juveniles who are convicted of sexual offenses must undergo testing for HIV and sexually transmitted diseases (STDs), in part to alert victims of any disease they may have been exposed to. This bill would have required HIV and STD testing of youth who have merely been accused of sexual offenses. Doing so could potentially have violated the privacy rights of youth, while also leaving victims with test results from wrongfully accused youth.

Failed Bills Related to Sentencing

• HB 36 (Menéndez): Relating to the criminal penalty for and certain civil consequences of damaging property with graffiti. This bill would have imposed mandatory jail time for any offense related to graffiti. This bill also would have increased all Class B misdemeanor designations to Class A misdemeanor designations. Furthermore, the bill would have increased graffiti to a felony for multiple violations. (Even if a person was placed on community supervision or deferred adjudication, HB 36 would have increased any subsequent offense into a felony.) Lastly, this bill would have mandated a court to suspend an individual’s license or provisional license for no less than two years for a graffiti offense, and if the graffitist was a juvenile, he or she would have been denied a license upon application for one. Sentencing a graffitist to jail or prison will not restore property; less punitive measures – including graffiti cleanup and behavioral programming – are more effective at improving behavior and providing relief to property owners, and they will not clog already burdened county and state corrections facilities at great taxpayer expense.

• HB 235 (Riddle): Relating to the punishment prescribed for burglary of a vehicle and to grants of community supervision to persons who commit that offense. This bill would have enhanced a first-time offense of breaking into a vehicle from a Class A misdemeanor to a state jail felony. Criminal penalty enhancements lead to greater reliance on costly and ineffective state jail beds – thus straining criminal justice resources that could be focused on approaches that truly tackle the root causes of crime. Also problematic, state jails have incredibly high recidivism rates due to a lack of post-release supervision; they offer little if any rehabilitative programming; and they cost approximately 30 times more than the costs of holding an individual accountable on probation.

Programming, treatment, and diversion efforts are strategies that keep people safely in their communities, where they are able to access needed services, maintain employment, and care for their families under the supervision of qualified practitioners. Incarceration, on the other hand, threatens county tax bases (as the number of individuals with criminal records rises), while also increasing reliance on welfare and other public assistance upon reentry.

• HB 2827 (Burkett): Relating to the punishment for the offense of burglary of a vehicle and to grants of community supervision to persons who commit that offense. Offenses based on pecuniary loss already exist in code. HB 2827 would have unnecessarily extended this approach to the offense of burglary of a vehicle. Specifically, it added the language that is relied on in provisions governing property crimes (such as criminal mischief or theft) to burglary of a vehicle. Moreover, the degrees of offense under HB 2827 were based primarily on financial damage, as opposed to number of offenses; this means that someone could have potentially received a first or second degree felony conviction for a first offense.

Failed Bills Related to Confinement & Reentry

• HB 177 (Larson; Springer): Relating to housing prisoners in a tent or other facility in lieu of a county jail. Texas law already allows counties to temporarily house prisoners in tents at the request of the county’s sheriff and commissioners court. This bill would have expanded the use of penal tents, specifically by removing the requirement that sheriffs and commissioners’ courts first request their use, and by allowing tents to be used for the duration of an individual’s sentence. This would have created costly and dangerous situations in Texas counties, similar to the disastrous results seen in Maricopa County, Arizona, which has lost millions of dollars to lawsuits.

• HB 691 (Phillips): Relating to the authority of a county or municipality to regulate the location of halfway houses; providing a penalty. This bill would have given counties the right to regulate – and thus limit – transitional homes (e.g., halfway housing) in unregulated county areas, and it would have imposed misdemeanor penalties if such regulations were violated. Transitional housing is crucial for the safe, successful reentry of individuals exiting jails and prisons and should not be further restricted.

• HB 2053 (Phillips): Relating to temporarily holding certain arrested persons in municipal jails. This bill would have opened the door to costly lawsuits by allowing small counties (populations of 10,000 or less) to contract with municipalities to hold arrested individuals in municipal jails for up to 72 hours. However, municipal jails are not required to comply with standards or procedures established by the Texas Commission on Jail standards. This bill also made it clear that counties contracting with municipal jails that failed to meet Commission requirements would not be in danger of violating regulations otherwise applicable to county jails. Commission standards are critical to protecting jail staff and inmates, maintaining safe and sanitary facilities, and reducing federal court intervention.