Texas is spending $200 million on new youth prisons that would be much better spent on earlier mental health intervention.

The state is failing its troubled youth, and locking up more kids will only make things worse. All informed parties agree that the Texas Juvenile Justice Department in its current form is a Dickensian nightmare.

Allegations of kids in the department’s care suffering physical and sexual abuse at the hands of staff and inmates have dogged the TJJD for years. Conditions became so bad in recent years that the Department of Justice has stepped in to investigate. Now, dire staff shortages are making crucial reforms near impossible. In the fiscal year 2021, the department saw a staggering 71% turnover rate. The labor situation has since improved thanks to pay increases, but roughly 15% of new hires still leave within the first month, according to a TJJD spokeswoman.

During the latest legislative session, James Talarico, D-Round Rock, made a radical but popular proposal to dissolve the entire juvenile justice department and close its five prisons. Instead, legislators earmarked $200 million to build three additional state-run prisons and to accommodate more youth in the draconian adult lockups. These measures fly in the face of all evidence that such punishment does nothing to reduce recidivism among under-18-year-olds.

One defense attorney specializing in juvenile cases said the Texas Juvenile Justice Department’s prisons are already a dumping ground for severely mentally ill kids. If the money were spent on reviving the Youth Empowerment Services waiver, a Medicaid program that’s supposed to provide a “wraparound” suite of services to troubled youth, it would be a lot easier to break the cycle of youth violence, said Seth Fuller, who works as a defense attorney for North Texas kids out of his office in Denton. A 2022 Austin American-Statesman report revealed that the state has starved the waiver programs for handicapped and mentally ill Texans of funding and resources.

An 11-year-old with bipolar disorder who attacks a teacher clearly needs psychiatric help, not a spell behind bars.

Not a proper setting

The Texas Juvenile Justice Department has pushed more understanding approaches on staff in at least one of its prisons. But prison is not the setting for mental health care. The mismatch between prison officers’ training and the needs of mentally ill inmates is one reason that nobody stays in their department job long, said Fuller. The department cannot even adequately staff the facilities it currently operates, which makes the Legislature’s expansion plans puzzling.

“I don’t understand how that will address a labor shortage,” Fuller said. “The entire juvenile justice system is falling apart here.”

To improve retention, the Texas Juvenile Justice Department raised pay for all staff who have direct contact with inmates by 15% as of July 2022 and will raise wages by another 5% this year, said spokeswoman Barbara Kessler, in an email.

“We believe these pay hikes will help recruitment and retention at TJJD and are grateful to the Legislature for recognizing the need for better compensation,” Kessler said.

For much of the 20th century, Texas routinely locked up thousands of kids in juvenile state prisons. In recent decades, the majority of those prisons were closed, and those that remained open moved, at least in theory, towards rehabilitation rather than a punitive approach.

Nowadays, if a minor is accused of a crime at school or on the street, he or she is likely to be temporarily placed in an alternative school. At schools such as the Courage to Change program in Denton or Youth Village in Dallas, the emphasis is on education and social readjustment. If the violent behavior persists, the next step is a local detention center or a mental hospital, depending on psychiatric evaluations.

Unfortunately, there are almost no admissions at North Texas private mental hospitals for kids between the ages of 10 and 12 who have displayed violent behavior, Fuller said. The waitlist for the state school mental hospital in Denton can be a month or more, he added.

This results in tragic scenes where kids hardly old enough to spend an hour alone at home are locked up in jail for six weeks at a time. Most Texans would be shocked by the scenes at these facilities.

“If the kids weren’t there, you would not be able to distinguish it from the adults’ jail next door,” said Fuller of the Denton detention facility. “It’s all the same stuff; nothing special, nothing extra; except a classroom down the end of the cells instead of an office. They’re sleeping on concrete blocks with about a quarter-inch pad.”

Several times, Fuller said, he has witnessed a client as young as 11 watching television through the “heavy metal peephole” in the jail door on a screen wheeled into position by jailers.

Re-offenders

Not surprisingly, the kids confined in these lockups at such tender ages often re-offend when they are released, even after completing 90-day stays at state mental institutions.

One youngster whom Fuller represents is suing Denton County after a former officer at the youth detention center was convicted of sexually abusing the girl shortly after she was released from the officer’s care in the jail.

One reading of the Making a Murderer true-crime series on Netflix is that Steven Avery’s first prison sentence, served for a crime of which he was wrongfully convicted, turned him into the murderer who is currently serving a life sentence for an even more heinous crime he almost certainly did commit.

If there’s anywhere capable of creating a monster in the modern world, it’s the adult prison system.

Texas criminal-justice officials have long used “determinate sentencing,” where juvenile offenders start their sentences in specialized youth facilities but are funneled into adult prisons at the earliest opportunity. A bill waiting for Gov. Greg Abbott’s signature mandates the transfer of any youth who commits a felony in a Texas Juvenile Justice Department facility to adult prison, another grievous mistake.

Kessler, the spokeswoman for the Texas Juvenile Justice Department, expects the new facilities will be close to labor pools, which should mitigate staffing issues. The new facilities, she said, will relieve pressure on the existing prison system. The department tries to ensure kids with mental health problems have access to the appropriate care.

Still, “community mental health intervention can help,” Kessler said. “TJJD youth often are involved in multiple state systems prior to their arrival. Enhancing the resources within community-based interventions would inherently benefit the youth involved in state systems.”

We all make mistakes as kids. Condemning juveniles, even those with violent track records, to a prison life is no way to correct those mistakes.

Rob Curran is a freelance writer in Denton and a contributing columnist for The Dallas Morning News.