Texas Counties Could Stand to Save Significant Amount of Money

Last year, I wrote about Dallas County how plans to start issuing tickets for possessing small amounts of marijuana. Dallas County realized the overwhelming financial costs stemming from these minor offenders clogging the justice system and crowding the jails. Vast county resources are required to jail them, prosecute them, and provide them with appointed counsel. Dallas planned to begin a pilot program of citing and releasing in early 2014. Cite and release has been implemented in Travis County, as well as Hays and Midland Counties. As our legislators continue to meet in Austin, Rep. Joe Moody has raised the idea that Texas drop low-level marijuana possession to a Class C misdemeanor and civil fine statewide. This would certainly save tremendous resources. Will this happen? It will be interesting to see.

Two Ways to Save

Scott Henson wrote a very insightful column in the Dallas Morning News about two simple ways to reduce spending statewide with regard to criminal justice system, and both involve reducing charges. One is the idea discussed above, to reduce possession of marijuana from a Class B to a Class C misdemeanor. Henson indicates that over 64,700 people were arrested for misdemeanor possession of marijuana in 2014.

The other notion he proposes is to reduce second offense Class B misdemeanor driving with license invalid also to a Class C. Henson points out that there were 29,000 new Class B invalid license cases that showed up in misdemeanor county court across the state in 2014, bottlenecking dockets and siphoning resources. Another thing about Class B misdemeanors is that almost everyone charged with that level of offense gets arrested. So this idea would also save police agencies a lot of money. To quote Henson’s article, reducing these two penalties would mean,

"Ninety thousand fewer people to process through intake and potentially house, clothe, feed and supervise, coupled with millions in reduced indigent defense costs would actually help reduce the burden on one of county government’s primary budget drivers: county jails."

Have you been arrested for a crime? Call my office: 817-689-7002. Come into the office for a free and confidential case evaluation. Our office is downtown: 108 Main Street, Fort Worth, TX,76102