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bH TE TEXAS server Available at the following locations: Brazos Bookstore 2314 Bissonett Houston Paperbacks & Mas 1819 Blanco Road San Antonio Daily News & Tobacco 309-A Andrews Highway Midland The Common Market 1610 San Antonio Austin Old World Bakery 814 W. 12th Street Austin The Stoneleigh P 2926 Maple Ave. Dallas Guy’s News Stand 3700 Main Street Houston Only The Official Langoaxe Movement Bringx YOU: Texas in Translation akes Crtr- Finally! The Texas Map you EnglishSpeakers have been waiting for. Here is the New Texas, free of all those hard-topronounce place names. Here is Texas in English like God intended. Remember, it may be too late for English First, but not for English Now! YES. SEND ME JEFF DANZIGER’S AMENDED MAP OF TEXAS I ENCLOSE $5 TO COVER PRINTING, POSTAGE, & HANDLING name address city state zip The Texas Observer, 307 W. 7th, Austin, TX 78701 1 -1 we have approximately a 5,000-man pool of the lowest risk offenders available to the system and I say “lowest risk” because they meet the criteria of a bill that Rider Scott had a lot to do with pushing through. And we’ve got 5,000 of those people that are the most low-risk offenders available that I don’t know what’s being done with them while we’re still paroling the most highest risk offenders . . . now that’s not a matter of prison construction, folks; that’s a matter of faulty decisionmaking. A DUBIOUS TRACK RECORD Observer: Let me ask a brief question to the men on my right here. I’m going to quote from the preface by Harry Whittington who is a Republican as you know the preface to Steve’s book. He expressed the doubt that with this kind of buildup program “there will soon be more prisons, more prisoners, more guards, more profits to monitor, resulting in an increasingly complex prison system and an even greater opportunity for corruption, mismanagement, and mistreatment of inmates.” The question simply is, what makes you given the history of Texas prisons think that the Texas prison system can handle a 60 percent buildup? Scott: I think that that’s a very good point and let me point out that Harry Whittington served well as a member of the Board of Corrections. He served on the Board during the Governor’s first administration during a period of time when Steve was General Counsel to the Texas Department of Corrections; and, in fact, the history is not good. But I hope we can learn from that example and that we have moved forward. We have an articulate board, we have spokesmen like Steve who watch the prisons, that we have debates like this to bring it to the focal point of the public so that they see it. And I hope that our history is better in the future. It needs to be. Martin: Could I respond to that? It’s not to take issue with Rider at all; it’s really just kind of supporting what he says. But I would like to point out that the system has undergone dramatic change the past four to six years and it continues to undergo dramatic change the prison system I’m speaking of and there’s been a lot of turmoil, a lot of turnover in experienced administrators. And the plaintiffs’ lead counsel in the Ruiz prison case has gone on record as saying the greatest impediment to ending the federal court intervention in the prison in the Texas state prison system is this massive construction program. Because you can’t ask administrators who are battle weary and that are thin in the ranks from turnover and a lot of commotion, and under constant, ongoing scrutiny by the courts and other public interest groups to absorb a 60 percent more than doubling of their system in a four-year period which is a real brief period in the lifespan of a prison or a social institution and expect them to do well. And I will just close by adding that Mr. Whittington’s comments that he made in the preface of the book are to some extent at least already coming true in the California system where they’re starting to find there’s so much construction, so much money to be made, that they’re starting to find evidence of payoffs, evidence of things that we don’t like to see in government. 10 SEPTEMBER 2, 1988