You think they have a choice, looking at their statistics:
Texas has a rate of 1,035 people behind bars for every 100,000 in
the population,15 the second highest incarceration rate in the
nation (second only to Louisiana). If Texas was a nation separate
from the United States, it would have the world's highest
incarceration rate--significantly higher than the United States
(682), and Russia (685) which has 1 million prisoners, the world's
third biggest prison system. Texas' incarceration rate is also
higher than China (115), which has the world's second largest
prison population (1.4 million prisoners).16
If the US shared the incarceration rate of Texas, there would be
nearly three million Americans behind bars (2,822,300)--instead of
our current 2 million prisoners.
The Texas prison population tripled since 1990, and rose 61.5% in
the last five years of this decade alone. In 1994, there were 92,
669 prisoners in Texas. This number had increased to 149,684 by
mid-year 1999.17
The Texas correctional system has grown so large that in July 2000,
corrections officials ran out of six digit numbers to assign
inmates, and officially created prisoner number
1,000,000.18
