Criminologist Jeff Asher writes that Texas crime data from 2023 “points to a large scale decline in murder as well as declines in violent crime and property crime outside of auto theft statewide last year.” Texas is one of the leaders in reporting in the FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System (NIBRS), and is one of the first states in the country providing somewhat complete crime data on 2023. According to Asher, that data is significant beyond Texas, because “crime trend in Texas tends to give a good barometer of the national trend — especially as it relates to murder.”
Meanwhile, blogger Scott Henson notes that local jails and prisons in Texas are seeing population increases, due to increased immigration enforcement and new gun laws. He also argues that the state is “seeing the limits of progressives' ability to influence local criminal-justice politics,” noting that the mayors of both Dallas and Houston have taken a recent conservative turn. “We're keeping inmates longer, paroling them less often, and so health care costs increase for the older cohort remaining more rapidly than decarceration reduces costs from covering fewer people,” Henson writes.