Youth advocates say environment wrong for teens
A1 mythical bird that rises from the ashes. “Safety and security is the goal.”
But youth advocates and some critics of the agency are not so sure, cautioning that a prisonlike environment for 15to 18-year-olds might not prove to be a long-term fix, because it could end up making them more incorrigible by not properly addressing their anger and other issues.
In addition, poorly trained staff, security lapses and operational issues have continued to plague the state-run youth lockups despite five years’ work to fix the systemic problems — an issue that some advocates and legislative leaders think may remain the biggest problem.
“It’s promising to hear the youth in the Phoenix Program say the 1-to-4 staff-to-youth ratio creates a supportive environment,” said Lauren Rose, mental health and juvenile justice policy fellow with Texans Care for Children, one of several advocacy groups monitoring the program.
“The success these kids are seeing within the program reflects what the research tells us: Reduced staff-to-youth ratios and smaller youth populations lead to better outcomes. I have concerns that positive elements of the program such as that ratio are not safeguarded by being in adopted agency rules.”
Such objections aside, state Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman John Whitmire, a Houston Democrat who pushed for the program last spring, said its initial goal to curb the violence that began escalating more than a year ago “seems to be working.”
“It’s a shame this wasn’t done a long time ago,” he said. “It’s a win for the staff and other youths who were getting hurt and were having programs disrupted, and for the youths who were responsible for the violence. They can now get the attention they need to turn themselves around.”
In law-and-order Texas, where there has been a reluctance to lock youths in prison except for the most serious crimes, the state’s juvenile justice system has changed drastically in five years. Thanks to sweeping reforms after a sex abuse scandal in 2007, the number of incarcerated youths has dropped by more than 70 percent. Most teenage offenders are now placed in community-based rehabilitation programs, instead of state-run lockups — a shift away from the tougher, boot-camp mentality that was popular across the country during the 1990s. Other states have found community-based programs successful at turning around low-level, nonviolent offenders as well.
But the youths who are left in state lockups tend to be more prone to violence. To deal with that, states are locking more youths in prisonlike institutions or sending them to intensive therapy programs to get a handle on the violence.
Texas is trying a mix of both.
On a recent morning, as legislative aides, youth advocates and reporters toured the Phoenix Program’s cellblock, four youths in T-shirts and black shorts played basketball on a court enclosed by chain-link. They were marched in with their hands cuffed behind their backs, and they left the same way — the rule every time they leave their cellblock.
In an adjacent wing, youths sat at tables across from their single cells, where vacant walls were freshly painted and each of the bunks was neatly made up. There were no TVs, no personal property allowed in cells, no shouting or loud noises. The staffing ratio is 1 employee for every 4 youths.
In regular dorms elsewhere at the Mart facility and other state lockups, youths are allowed to move about more freely — without handcuffs and shackles — on a less regimented schedule, and to have personal belongings in rooms with less resemblance to cells. There, the staffing ratio is 1-to-12.
For the recent tour of the Phoenix Program, a group of youths lined up to answer visitors’ questions.
“I assaulted staff,” a 16-year-old from Brownsville says matter-of-factly. “Staff would make me mad a lot. I would attack them.”
Another youth said he beat up a guard. Another said he assaulted another youth.
Looking away, another mumbled that he beat up “some people.”
Another acknowledged he has “four or five