In 1992 the Texas Department of Criminal Justice began a massive prison-building program that tripled the state's inmate capacity to 150,000. Longer mandatory sentences and fewer possibilities for parole had created a surging and hardening inmate population. Officials were worried about how to deal with this population, and they argued that the only way to maintain order would be to build additional ad-seg units. This is the ultimate result of long-term incarceration with little chance of release.
Inmates become much more dangerous, assault each other and the staff, and tear up prison property.
Hard' also goes to the way you treat the inmates. The state legislature responded to such concerns by voting to fund five new hard units. A prototype was designed by the Department of Criminal Justice and opened in Huntsville in June 1997. With solid steel doors instead of bars, and no windows, the cells offer inmates little interaction with the surrounding environment. But that is not our problem.