Texas Legislature enacts diversion-based criminal justice reform, avoiding prison expansion

The Texas Legislature passed a $241 million package of criminal justice reforms in 2007 that funded drug treatment courts, expanded probation capacity, and created diversion programs for nonviolent offenders, allowing the state to cancel plans to build three new prisons. Governor Rick Perry signed the legislation, which the state had projected it would need for 17,000 new inmates by 2012 without the reforms. The package marked the first time Texas reduced its incarceration growth trajectory through treatment investment rather than construction, and became the foundational model for the national Right on Crime coalition.