Strunggling agency seeks savior
New Juvenile Justice chief must deal with scandals, shortages.
Camille Cain has worked for several Texas governors and one president. She has been a consultant and helped manage billions of dollars in grant funding for statewide and national criminal justice programs.
But one thing the new head of the Texas Juvenile Justice Department hasn’t done is work directly with incarcerated kids.
That gap in her résumé made her an unconventional hire by the department’s board, which voted 12-1 to name her the agency’s executive director last month. The two people who held the job before Cain had run county juvenile probation departments. But state leaders hope her bureaucratic experience will enable her to do something those hires couldn’t: save an agency that has long struggled with violence and sexual abuse scandals and staffing shortages.
“I’m very optimistic,” said John Whitmire, D-Houston, chairman of the Texas Senate’s Criminal Justice Committee. “I think she’s going out there with a commitment to make a difference.”
Cain, 50, said she plans to use her background to work closely with experts inside the department and out, including lawmakers, juvenile probation department chiefs and advocates, to immediately make youth lockups safer and eventually place more minors in local facilities instead of state-run ones.
“I strongly believe in the power of bringing together the ideas of diverse groups of experts and weaving those ideas together into solid strategies with a clear, well understood vision,” she said.
Turning the agency around won’t be easy. Last November, after a department report obtained by the Dallas Morning News revealed that guards at the Gainesville State School in North
Texas were accused of sexually abusing youths, reform advocates called for the closure of the five state-run lockups that generally house violent juveniles. Last month, several state senators said in a hearing that the department was in need of “drastic action” and a “total shakedown.”
Gov. Greg Abbott sent in the Texas Rangers to investigate the alleged misconduct and said in a letter that the department should reduce the number of juveniles kept at the remote facilities.
To most, Cain’s hiring was unexpected. With political turmoil brewing, the agency’s board was quietly searching to replace its retiring director, David Reilly. Despite calls for transparency in the hiring process, reform advocates, Whitmire and the chair of the department’s advisory council said they didn’t know who Cain was until the choice was narrowed to two finalists.
There was no news release announcing her hire, with the department opting to put the news on its Facebook page after she was selected at a board meeting. According to a record of the meeting, she was given a $205,879 annual salary. No board member responded to requests for comment on the hiring process.
People she’s worked with cited her organizational skills and methodical decision-making as reasons she’ll excel in her new role, especially with the department in crisis. In multiple interviews, former colleagues described her as thorough and strategic — using evidence, never impulse — in her policy decisions.
“She’s a straight shooter,” said Kevin O’Connor, a former U.S. associate attorney general who was Cain’s boss when she helped manage national criminal justice funding in the George W. Bush administration. “When an agency or any organization goes through those kind of scandals, it’s important that leadership come in and be people with integrity. And I have no doubts in that regard that Camille has the requisite integrity and experience.”
Still, some juvenile justice reform advocates have expressed concern about developments since Cain took over. Recently she told the department’s advisory council that a longtime push to raise the age of adult criminal responsibility from 17 to 18 would “break us” by flooding juvenile lockups with more youths. Many criminal justice advocates have called for raising the age, saying 17-year-olds are too young and vulnerable to serve time in an adult population.
The Houston Chronicle also reported last week that the department is reviewing the possible transfer of dozens of violent detainees to the adult prison system.
More simply, the advocates have expressed concern about Cain’s lack of hands-on experience in the field.
“I do think that it’s always preferable for someone who is going to be in charge with tens of thousands of youth to have experience with youth,” said Lindsey Linder, a policy attorney at the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition, citing the more than 1,000 juveniles in state lockups and the many more referred to probation departments across the state.
A different management style
Cain most recently led Abbott’s Criminal Justice Division, which allocates hundreds of millions of state and federal dollars to justice initiatives, including youth programs. During her more than two years there, the division developed a team to tackle child sex trafficking and made investments to reduce the number of children sleeping in Child Protective Services offices, according to the governor’s office.
Early indications suggest that Abbott will remain an ally in her new job. In a letter sent Thursday, Abbott told Cain he would allocate money to the department for things such as assisting the Texas Rangers in their current investigation and providing training for agency gang investigators.
Those who worked closely with Cain touted her willingness to learn by reaching out to others in the field. Tony Fabello, a longtime criminal justice policy wonk in Texas who has had a working relationship with Cain for more than two decades, said she understands her limits and has a broad set of national and statewide consultants she can turn to from her years of experience.
“The myth here is that these large agencies, you really have to be getting your hands dirty. You don’t,” said Fabello, now deputy director of the Council of State Governments Justice Center. “You just have to be savvy enough to understand how to reach out to the expert staff that you have and put all their thinking and expertise together.”
One of Cain’s strengths, which the previous two directors lacked, he said, is her ability to work well with the governor’s office and legislators.
History repeats itself
The juvenile justice system has undergone major shifts before, only to circle back to similar problems. In 2007, after media reports highlighted physical and sexual abuse at state-run facilities, concerned judges stopped committing as many juveniles to state custody and the Legislature implemented several reforms to shift money from the state’s lockups and into local probation departments. By 2012, average populations at the lockups had dropped 66 percent, according to a 2015 report.
But with fewer kids came less funding, and with five remaining secure facilities for juveniles spread out in rural areas throughout the state, keeping staffers has been a consistent problem. The Gainesville facility had a guard turnover rate of more than 50 percent last fiscal year.
That number skyrocketed to almost 80 percent between September and November, according to a report card of the agency released ahead of a Friday board meeting.
Cain said the turnover rate is “alarming” and said she will review and add training for guards and look to get tenured guards into leadership roles.
She also said the department will be “much clearer with candidates about what the job truly entails.”
“We are looking at our resources and what we have available to bring those changes — at this point, no options are off the table,” she said.