The State legislature approved 25,000 new prison beds to deal with a growing backlog of State inmates in county jails. These included 2,000 in-prison therapeutic community beds and 12,000 substance abuse felony punishment beds for probation and parole violators. The program was expected to by the country's largest correctional drug abuse treatment venture and to be fully operational by late 1996. The evaluation indicated that recidivism was significantly reduced for offenders completing the program. However, a large number of offenders did not complete treatment, and those persons had recidivism rates comparable to those not participating. In addition, the rapid expansion of these programs caused problems associated with client selection, program consistency, and retention in treatment. Research showed that the operational features were not in place to effectively expand these programs from 5,000 beds to the originally planned 14,000 beds. Based on these findings, the Texas legislature decided against expansion. The evaluation also showed the importance of independent policy research, in which no stakeholders control the information. Figures and 15 references (Author abstract modified)