Great (short) sentencing report from Texas

Folks concerned about harsh sentencing and excessive use of incarceration have a lot of new additions to their reading lists.  In addition to recent important reports from the Little Hoover Commission and from the Vera Institute, I just learned of a great new resource on Texas sentencing.  The resource, available here, is a special report on the topic of state sentencing policy coming from the director of the Texas Office of Court Administration.  Here is the set up:

In a nutshell, the [Texas] legislature confronts the first major decision between building additional prison capacity and other alternatives, since the building boom of over 100,000 beds culminated in 1995 and the state began to accept all "state ready" inmates from counties within 45 days. The legislature faces this decision after the demise of the Criminal Justice Policy Council in 2003, and in the absence of the unifying policy guidance that Dr. Fabelo provided.

In the first part of this report, I trace my own history of engagement with the issue of state sentencing, hopefully to inform today's debate from a historical perspective, but also to lay my own policy perspectives on the table. The other major themes in the report are (i) notable activity on state sentencing policy at the National Center for State Courts and elsewhere around the country, and (ii) constitutional issues to be aware of in the sentencing arena. For further background on the Texas situation, please see my recent summary, "Sentencing and Corrections: From Crowding to Equilibrium (and Back Again?)," in the March 2006 Texas Bar Journal, and other online resources listed in the final section below.