Medical Parole Gets Incarcerated In Texas
Denied To More Than 90% Of Eligible Inmates Which Costs Taxpayers Millions
AUSTIN, Texas — Because of recent cuts that the Texas Legislature made to the prison health care budget, “health care in the Texas prison system has, or soon will, become unconstitutional,” according to James C. Harrington, director of the Texas Civil Rights Project.
In a letter to the Texas Sunset Advisory Commission this week he urged reform of the Texas prison health care system, as the commission will evaluate the Texas Department of Criminal Justice and the Texas Board of Pardons and Paroles starting Jan. 1, 2012. Harrington urged the commission to evaluate how increased use of medical parole could avert costly medical bills and lawsuits by paroling terminally-ill prisoners.
Prisoners who qualify for medical parole must have terminal illnesses or require long-term nursing care, such as those in a persistent vegetative state, those with total mobility impairment, or those with an organic brain syndrome. They must also have served enough of their sentence to qualify for parole.
Noted Harrington, “The only reason medical parole has not done the job of lowering the cost of prison health care is because the parole board has denied medical parole to more than 90 percent of eligible inmates. If the state released its backlong of terminally ill and/or infirm inmates, it could save up to $76 million per biennium.”
In his letter, Harrington noted that inadequate funding for prisoner health care has been a problem, now made worse since the 82nd Legislature cut the annual prison health care budget by $75 million in 2011.
“As a result, the University of Texas Medical Branch’s expenses for prison medical care now exceed its budget by about $2 million a month.”
He added, “The healthcare situation in TDCJ is quickly deteriorating because of factors beyond its control. TDCJ neither controls the number of prisoners it receives, the rate at which they are released, the length of their incarcerations, nor the funding it receives to house them.”
Over the past few years, incidents of inadequate health care among inmates has been on the rise, which makes the matter worse if health care technicians are reduced in number.
Harrington explained tht Texas prison population jumped 995 percent from 1972 to 2011, while the state’s total population increased just 124 percent. He said that this was not caused by an increase in the crime rate, rather due to the creation of new felonies, long prison sentences for nonviolent offenders, and “the errant practices of the Parole Board.”
“In the last decade alone, the Legislature has created about 40 new felonies per legislative session, bringing the state total to nearly 2,500. At the same time, the Parole Board grants parole at just a fraction of the frequency recommended by its own guidelines. As a result, the prison population has swelled dramatically in the past 20 years.”
