Texans for Public Safety Solutions is working on legislation that will modernize the state laws to reduce the amount of time and money spent on nonviolent and victimless crimes. By doing so, our law enforcement, justice, and penal departments can allocate more resources to catch serious offenders who have caused or may cause direct and irreparable harm to another.
Potential solutions include:
- Giving police officers the option to issue citations (promises to appear in court) for certain Class B misdemeanors, instead of requiring arrest, which is currently the only method they have for handling such offenses.
- Sending first time drug offenders to rehabilitation or treatment facilities, rather than jail or prison.
- Modernizing the terms of probation to limit the number of revocations to jail or prison, particularly for technical violations, which result in an average sentence of 2.5 years.
