Come on people. This is Texas were talking about. Conservative Captiol of the U.S. Saving money and jail space is a nice angle to try out but I doubt it will succeed at all. J. VELASCO Brownsville Texas.

I was convicted in Harris County for Possession of a conntrolled substance in 1996. I can't believe the process that this took. I completed my felony probation and the case was closed. I had less than 1 gran of cocaine in my car that didn't belong to me. I don't think that its fair that I can't get a decent job now because of this. I do not hang around those kind of people any more and have not been in trouble since. The amount of money and time that is put into these sinple cases are clogging up the felony courts. In he meantime the "true" felons are getting away with crimes that deserve the prison space and time that simple crimes such as a posession charge are taking up. At present, the sentence is a state jail felony, there is wait time to get to the state jail, then you are let out on parole. This makes no sense when you think about how much all this costs. I do not thik George Bush considered this when he was governor and made his "lock em up and throw away the key" philosophy. He built all those prisons and couoldn't find the money to run them all. He thought he would make maney off the federal government by "housing inmates" more of your tax money going to failed programs. McSpadden is right in proposing this, and although I am a convicted felon speaking from first hand experience in Harris County criminal courts, I do agree with him. I have a different view on how the court system works and do respect the courts now. However in most states a simple act of possessing less than 1 gram is a misdameanor

To my knowledge possession of less than 2 ounces is a Class B misdemeanor as my police officer teacher says.

I strongly feel that we have to do something in our society to address this issue. We continue to allow drugs to sift into our society and then we are ruining these young kids lives when they experiment with them. My 19 year old son was arrested for possession of 1 pill. This is his first ever drug charge. He made a mistake but his entire life has been permantely effected by this mistake. He has a felony on his record preventing him from pursuing a career as a firefighter, x-ray tech, or airline mechanic the three top choices for his career. He was given a 5 year probation along with this felony that was not adjudicated. He has been sitting in jail for nearly 6 months because a judge decided he needed rehab although he was evaluated by a drug and alcohol rehab counselor and stated he did not have a drug problem that was severe enough to need rehab. He is waiting on a bed for a rehab facility and will have to do another 6 months in a rehab and then get out and do the 5 years probation but the maximum on this sentence is 2 years. This child's life has been totally turned upside down due to the possession of 1 pill. But we have pro ball players spending 24 days in jail for killing a child, what is wrong with our legal system?

When my daughter turned 18 she wanted to live on her own and was convinced she could do it by a 32 year old felon who had a background of drug abuse, as did his family. This man had her thinking he was the best thing that had ever happend to her. She let him drive her car, rented an apartment in her name, and many other stupid things. Making a long story short, she was stopped and there were drugs in the trunk of the car, "trace" of meth and some xanac, with all the other items that belonged to him. She spent two weeks in jail because I did not have the $1500 to bail her out. It was exactly one year from the day she was arrested to the day they indicted her. Since no one, not even our attorney, knew she had been indicted, her picture was in the local paper as one of the "10 most wanted" along with a murderer. She lost her job, had to give herself up, pay another $1500 in bond, and pay the attorney another $7500 (we had already paid him $1500 to get her car back (they wanted seize it) and $3000 to retain him) for him to go to court. The DA has offered her 10 years probabtion and she would keep the felony charges, but we said HELL NO, so we are paying another $4000 to go to trial. If she if found guilty of these charges she will be a felon for life! She will not have a chance to be a productive member of society because she was stupid at 18. She will not be able to vote, get help to go to college, become anything that requires a background check. I am a teacher and if it had not been for my parents she would be using a public defender and have no chance of a life. We still don't know what will happen because the DA will not back off. I hope he has a daughter that makes a stupid mistake at 18 and there is nothing he can do about it. I wish I knew how many kids this has happened to! How many of them are in jail because they couldn't pay the outrageous fines or couldn't keep up with probation because they either don't have a car, have to work, etc etc etc. We are just making a state of seasoned criminals by putting this non-violent young people in prison.