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Texas Tough: An Analysis of Incarceration and Crime Trends in The Lone Star State

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In Category : Place Based Reform, Policing, Criminal Justice Reform

In a continued examination of those states that lead  the national trend in increasing levels of  incarceration, the Justice Policy Institute turns a  focus on the state of Texas. The Lone Star State’s  criminal justice system is particularly worthy of  scrutiny at this time, as the Bureau of Justice  Statistics (BJS) reported in August, 2000 that Texas, for the first time, leads the nation in  imprisoning its citizens: Texas now has the nation’s largest incarcerated population under the   jurisdiction of its prison system. Since 1990, Texas has lead the nation’s 50 states with an annual  average growth rate of 11.8%, about twice the annual average growth rate of other state prison  systems (6.1%). Even more important to the  national context, since 1990, nearly one in five new prisoners added to the nation’s prisons (18%) was in Texas.

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