TO: | Honorable Abel Herrero, Chair, House Committee on Criminal Jurisprudence |
FROM: | Ursula Parks, Director, Legislative Budget Board |
IN RE: | HB2979 by Parker (Relating to the prosecution and punishment of certain offenses involving injury to a child, elderly individual, or disabled individual. ), Committee Report 1st House, Substituted |
The bill increases the penalty for certain offenses and creates a new felony offense. Increasing the penalty for any criminal offense is expected to increase demands on state and/or county correctional agency resources due to longer terms of community supervision, county jail confinement, state correctional institution confinement, and/or parole. The bill is expected to have a negative fiscal impact by increasing the number of people incarcerated within state correctional institutions for certain offenses. Whether the bill would result in a significant cost to the state is indeterminate due to a lack of statewide data on the exact amount of a people who would be affected by the bill's provisions. At present, data do not exist that would indicate the number of people who would be convicted under the newly created offense. Reliable data are available for the bill's other provisions. The number of people expected to be incarcerated under the bill's other provisions would not significantly impact state correctional agencies' workload and programs. In fiscal year 2012, an estimated 31 offenders were placed on community supervision for first-degree child injury offenses causing serious bodily injury or serious mental deficiency, impairment, or injury. In fiscal year 2012, an estimated 20 offenders were admitted to state correctional facilities for first-degree child injury offenses causing serious mental deficiency, impairment, or injury. However, only 3 of the twenty 20 offenders served less than half of their sentence or less than two years, meaning only 3 of the offenders would have been affected by this provision of the bill.
Source Agencies: |
LBB Staff: | UP, GG, JGA
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