In recent years, Texas has broken new ground in combating and preventing crime, reaching its lowest crime rate in recent history while also controlling costs to taxpayers. Beginning in 2005, the Legislature focused its resources on proven strategies to enhance the public safety, such as targeted funding for probation and prison alternatives, which included substance abuse and mental illness treatment beds. Given that Texas has not lowered the potential sentences for crimes, decisions to utilize increasingly available alternatives for nonviolent offenders in appropriate cases are being made by judges and prosecutors at the local level who are most familiar with the case. This has enabled the state to avoid over $2 billion in prison construction and operating costs, even as crime has plummeted and violent offenders serve longer terms than ever before.