House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence - 68th R.S. (1983)
Committee Members
- Wayne Peveto, Chair
- Terral R. Smith, Vice Chair
- Tom C. Waldrop, Chair - Budget & Oversight
- Dick Burnett
- Debra Danburg
- Al Granoff
- Joe Hernandez
- Samuel Hudson III
- James Hury
Charges
- To monitor all activities and have budget oversight responsibilities for those agencies, boards and commissions as listed in Rule 3, Section 6.
- To oversee the expenditure of the $3 million appropriations to the Texas Education Agency earmarked for a program designed to keep trouble students, truants, etc. enrolled in a classroom situation. To follow the guidelines set up by TEA for the participating school districts.
- To track the prison reform measures and see how they are being implemented, To determine the benefits derived from these measures, both in terms of recidivism and in terms of monetary savings.
- To study the concept of adding a new type of sentence alternative for persons convicted of a capital offense. Specifically, the idea of life without parole.
- To study the need/benefits of raising the jurisdictional age of TYC to age 21 from age 18 for certain instances when keeping the child past the age of 18 would be beneficial to child and/or society.
- To look into alternative programs for youths who have committed status crimes, i.e.. truancy, running away from home, etc. To find alternatives to sentencing in TYC facilities for property offenders, as well as some minor non-property offenders.
- To devise a policy to keep the Texas Penal Code standardized, so that specific crimes do not have separate forms of sentencing.
- To make a general interim study on the laws of fraud, fiduciary relationships, and white collar crime.
- Study the need to reform the charging instrument in Texas; consider whether the state should be allowed to prosecute crimes other than capital offenses on the basis of an information rather than an indictment issued by a grand jury.*
- Make recommendations regarding the non-substantive changes to the probation and parole laws currently found in Articles 42.12 and 42.13 of the Texas Code of Criminal Procedure.*
* This represents an abstract of the report contents. Charge text is incomplete or unavailable.
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