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 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.
A state jail felony is punishable by confinement in a state jail for a term from 180 days to 2 years and, in addition to confinement, an optional fine not to exceed $10,000 or Class A Misdemeanor punishment (mandatory post conviction community supervision).
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.