Reports: Little progress at teen lockups

Conditions compared to ‘Lord of the Flies’ as assaults, thefts belie claims of discipline

When oversight officials showed up for their monthly tour at the Gainesville State School, they again found signs of chaos at the troubled juvenile lockup: Kids had burgled the case manager’s office, graffiti coated the cells, required documentation was spotty, youth refused to leave solitary because they didn’t feel safe elsewhere, and teens ran through the hallways shouting obscenities at guards.

And it wasn’t just Gainesville: At Texas Juvenile Justice Department units across the state, site visits, records reviews and security footage revealed disarray and a lack of supervision, according to the latest reports from oversight officials with the Office of the Independent Ombudsman. Staff reported assaults, food fights, teens tattooing themselves, and understaffing so severe that multiple officers in recent months reported urinating on themselves because there was no one there to allow them a restroom break.

“These descriptions sound more befitting ‘Lord of the Flies’ than an agency charged with protecting and rehabilitating Texas’s most challenging youth,” attorney and juvenile justice expert Michele Deitch said. “The behaviors and problems described in some of these reports, especially at Gainesville, depict facilities out of control.”

Lawmakers had a chance to address the agency’s problems during the last legislative session — but the most substantive plans failed to gain traction, leaving some elected officials unsure about a path forward.

“I don’t know what to do,” said Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston. “The parents say they came back worse than when they sent them.”

But amid the months of problems — including everything from

a “gang war” to last year’s six-day mass disturbance — juvenile prison officials promised change.

“Progress takes time,” said agency spokesman Brian Sweany, touting a trauma-focused therapeutic approach and renewed focus on safety. “When people feel safe, they can begin to move forward. It will take time to implement, but we strongly believe it deserves attention and has the chance to be transformative for the juvenile justice system.”

‘Not an optimal response’

The most troubled of the agency’s five secure lockups, Gainesville has struggled since a 2017 sex abuse scandal and six-day, campus-wide disturbance in November sparked by boredom, protest and tension between Crips and Bloods. That unrest, and more that followed, led to talk of shuttering the facility that one officer had likened to the “Wild West.”

Oversight reports released last month show that the situation is little improved. In April, a power outage sparked what the ombudsman described as a “chaotic scene,” with kids running around the dorms, pushing each other around in a laundry cart, throwing food, shadow boxing in the hallways and wrapping shirts around their heads and faces as the lights flickered and a guard deployed pepper spray. One teen pushed a female guard into his room and security footage showed her and a youth with their arms around each others’ shoulders.

Afterward, the agency downplayed the events.

“The narrative of the serious incident report does not accurately describe the events,” oversight officials wrote, noting that more youth were pepper-sprayed than the reports indicated. “Although no sexual inappropriateness appears to have occurred, there appears to be numerous violations of agency policies and (Prison Rape Elimination Act) standards.”

The next day, a group of kids snuck into the case manager’s office after they jammed the door lock with toilet paper as a corrections officer looked the other way. They broke the locks on desk drawers and allegedly destroyed a computer to steal parts. Later, they said that the purloined items were likely “out on campus somewhere” — but the items still hadn’t been located when oversight officials showed up for a site visit.

“When asked where the (juvenile correctional officers) were and how the youth were able to get inside the office, one youth said, ‘Staff are dumb,’ ” oversight officials wrote. “During discussion with dorm staff, it appears the dorm was ‘short staffed’ and an inexperienced JCO was on duty during this incident.”

Prison staff didn’t record the office break-in in an incident report until three days later, though agency officials later said the delay was due to the loss of power and that the kids lied when they claimed to have swiped computer parts.

“Though not an optimal response for an ideal set of conditions,” the agency wrote regarding handling of the power outage, “given the demands of working in a significantly austere environment, staff were able to assure stability in the most expeditious fashion possible without realizing serious harm for youth or staff.”

When ombudsman officials showed up to visit four days later, three youth refused to leave their solitary security cells due to safety concerns, and the regular dorms still appeared in turmoil.

“Throughout the site visit,” ombudsman officials noted, “youth on the dorms were observed and heard cursing at staff members, using racial slurs, yelling, leaving case manager group, confronting staff members, telling staff members what to do, running up and down the hallways, sleeping during group and generally being noncompliant.”

In most cases, officials said, the behavior went uncorrected, though sometimes staffers shouted back or gave into the kids’ demands.

Amid the chaos, some teens complained about schedule changes and a lack of activities: After shuttering the equine therapy program last year, the facility was forced to end its dog training program this year when the partner shelter declined to renew its agreement.

The most recently released ombudsman reports stem from an April site visit — but at least some of the troubles appear to be ongoing. In June, one youth broke an officer’s wrist, and a week later another child broke an officer’s ribs.

Outbursts in the Valley

More than 500 miles south of Gainesville, the 120-prisoner Rio Grande Valley facility grapples with similar problems. During April site visits at the Evins Regional Juvenile Center in Edinburg, ombudsman officials walked into one pod to find kids running around, throwing trash and papers, and jumping on the tables. In another, teens threw food, ice chests and water during dinner.

Officers repeatedly complained about an uptick in violence after the restructuring of the Re-Direct Program, an intensive treatment intervention for some of the system’s most troubled kids.

“The staff reported that physical restraints and assaults occur on a daily basis,” ombudsman officials wrote, adding that “as a result of restraints and assaults, staff injuries have resulted in broken bones, concussions, and the loss of bodily functions.”

Though removing some kids from the program later helped bring a respite, state data shows the facility has seen an uptick in violence in the last 12 months. When comparing the first three months of this year with the first three months of last year, youth-onyouth assaults and youth-on-staff assaults both nearly doubled, and gang-related incidents increased five-fold.

The South Texas facility has had additional problems recently. When oversight officials showed up in March, they found one youth sported two new face tattoos, and teens told the ombudsman representatives that it was easy to ink themselves because the guards didn’t pay attention.

At that same visit, two youth told officials they’d been put in security the previous night without a mattress because there was a shortage in the unit. In a written response, the agency promised to make sure kids brought their bedding with them when they moved to security. When officials showed up in April, there were no kids sleeping without mattresses.

‘Lack of structure, control’

At the McLennan County Juvenile Correctional Facility in Mart, oversight officials were met with the same.

“There continues to be a lack of structure and staff control,” officials wrote after the April visit. “Youth were observed cursing, threatening others, being disrespectful to staff, horse playing, and not following the dress code and had their pants sagging where their underwear could be seen.”

There was gang tagging on the tables, doors and window frames, and one kid had a full page newspaper ad hung up showing various guns for sale. During group, officials spotted kids lying on the floors, sleeping, and sitting on filing cabinets with only a case manager to supervise them.

Oversight officials noted that the facility has seen an uptick in the use of restraints and pepper spray since January, though the agency attributed that to a small group of youth who were assaulting staff and engaging in self harm. They’ve since been transferred to the state hospital.

The Texas Model

Despite the ongoing troubles, Sweany remained optimistic, given the agency’s focus on its “Texas Model,” which aims to keep kids in smaller facilities and closer to home, as well as to expand local probation department resources with the goal of continuing to lower the TJJD population.

“We believe that the Texas Model provides the strategic reform plan to address many of the issues that the agency has faced over the years,” he said, highlighting the push for trauma-informed care and more structured schedules. “It’s a focus on safety for everyone touching the system.”

But Whitmire, who chairs the state Senate’s Criminal Justice Committee, took a dimmer view.

“It is getting worse,” he said, “and the worst problem is that the Legislature has met and left with everyone knowing that it’s getting worse and no decisions made toward changing the operations.”

Though lawmakers this year did bump up correctional officer salaries to help address understaffing, they didn’t agree on any of the proposals to relocate the teens or close the most troubled facilities. Now, Whitmire said, action might need to come from the governor’s office.

Like Whitmire, Deitch agreed that large facilities in remote locations aren’t good places to rehabilitate troubled kids. Instead, she pointed to research supporting the use of smaller facilities, individualized therapy, better-trained staff and more family engagement.

“The problem is how to get there from here,” she said. “You can’t do the good stuff that TJJD wants to do when kids and staff are afraid for their safety.”

Some of the state’s youth prisons, she added, may be beyond help.

“Sometimes the culture of a facility is so deeply problematic,” she said, “that when combined with the fact it is the wrong size and poorly located, there are few solutions but to shut it down.”