Honorable Abel Herrero, Chair, House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence
FROM:
Ursula Parks, Director, Legislative Budget Board
IN RE:
HB3406 by Riddle (Relating to creating an offense for persons imprisoned or confined in correctional facilities to threaten to harm certain other persons by certain means of communication.), As Introduced
The probable fiscal impact of implementing the bill is indeterminate due to the unavailability of data related to the number of people who would be charged and convicted under the new offense.
The bill would amend the Penal Code and Code of Criminal Procedure to create a state jail felony offense for inmates using mail, electronic mail, or the telephone to threaten to harm another person on account of the service or status of a public official.
The bill creates a criminal offense for certain threats of harm. Creating any criminal offense is expected to increase demands on state and/or county correctional agency resources by increasing the number of people under community supervision, county jail confinement, state correctional institution confinement, and/or parole. Whether the bill would result in significant cost to the state is indeterminate due to a lack of statewide data on the number of people who would commit this new offense. At present, data do not exist that would enable the identification of these cases and no similar offenses were identified to provide comparable information.
Local Government Impact
No significant fiscal implication to units of local government is anticipated.