Texas’ rate of incarceration is the third highest in the United States, and the United States’ rate of incarceration is the highest in the world. While Western Europe has about one citizen in a thousand in jail or prison at any given time, Texas’ number is about 10 times that - 976 per 100,000 residents in 2005.

This number might be appropriate if violent crime was rampant or sexual predators were constantly on the prowl, but the data just doesn’t support that. 924,473 adults were arrested in 2005, which represents over 5.5% of the population. Of those arrests, 28% were for violence, property, and sex crimes, 28% were for alcohol and disturbance violations (including DWI), 12% were for drug violations (88.5% of which were for possession alone), less than 1% for gambling violations, and over 31% were arrested for “other” charges that DPS doesn’t even specify on its data.

The burden of prosecuting these arrests is considerable. In most cases, it takes a police officer 3-4 hours to process a simple misdemeanor, time that could otherwise be spent generating citation revenue or stopping serious crimes in progress. Counties all over the state are talking about spending hundreds of millions of dollars to build additional jail facilities, because their beds are constantly overcrowded. Law enforcement, justice, and penal departments spend a combined average of $10,000 per arrest, and perhaps $3,000 or more on misdemeanors alone (felonies cost three times as much as misdemeanors to arrest and prosecute). And if someone happens to be sentenced to the maximum 180 days in jail for a Class B misdemeanor, the burden to taxpayers is in excess of $15,000.