Youths jailed for technical offenses
County records show minors face detention due to small violations
Hundreds of juveniles are jailed in Harris County often for weeks at a time for infractions as minor as failing drugs tests, violating curfews, running away or failing to attend school classes or rehabilitative programs, according to county records.
The records show a “pattern and practice” of detaining juveniles for technical violations that should instead be handled through the probation system, according to attorneys and juvenile justice advocates.
“You’re not complying with the terms of probation, but you’re not actually a risk to public safety,” said Elizabeth Henneke, executive director of the Lone Star Justice Alliance, which advocates against incarcerating juvenile offenders.
“You never want to have a technical violation, especially for a kid, result in detention, because we know the negative effects,” she said. “Even a short amount of time can be problematic for kids, but long, protracted, weeks out of school — weeks out of your home environment — that can have
really big consequences for them.”
Of the 1,055 juveniles cited for a probation violation in 2016, nearly 73 percent were detained, a proportion Henneke said is alarming, particularly in a county where the 250-capacity juvenile justice center has faced recurrent overcrowding problems for several years.
It is the largest percentage of juveniles ordered detained on probation violations since at least 2003, when 69 percent of 1,502 juveniles were detained, according to data from the Harris County Juvenile Probation Department.
The most recent 2017 data, which goes through Oct. 15, shows that 73 percent of juveniles continued to be jailed for probation violations — an average of 55 kids each day.
The average length of time spent behind bars on the violations ranged from nine days for leaving the county without permission to 30 days for violating special probationary terms, which can include specific judge-ordered requirements such as routine drug assessments or compliance with taking medication.
State District Judge Michael Schneider, one of three judges who preside over juvenile cases in Harris County, said the findings raise concern and said he would try to seek help from academic professionals to analyze why low-level juvenile offenders are being held behind bars.
“The entire juvenile system should have nothing to do with punishment,” he said.
“If you look at what the Legislature said, it should only be about rehabilitation. You take that a step further, when they’re in detention and there’s not even been a finding that they committed the offense or the violation of probation that they’re accused of, I think you need to be even more careful about who you lock up.”
Juvenile Court Judges Glenn Devlin and John Phillips did not respond to emailed requests for comment or messages left through their court coordinators. Tom Brooks, executive director of the Harris County Juvenile Probation Department, declined comment. Short-lived alternatives
Harris County has consistently jailed juveniles for breaking rules instead of laws over the past 15 years, the records show.
The vast majority were locked up for technical violations, though about 14 percent of juveniles were detained after being accused of committing a new crime while on probation.
From 2003 to 2009, the Chronicle found, anywhere from 53 to 69 percent of juveniles were detained for probation violations out of an average 1,800 juveniles cited for violations each year.
Noticeable declines in the pattern appear to have unfolded, however, in the years after Harris County adopted the Juvenile Detention Alternative Initiative’s principles in 2007 — a national initiative run by the Annie E. Casey Foundation that strongly discourages detaining kids for things such as probation violations.
But JDAI’s impact on probation violators appears short-lived. Declines in detaining those kids were sustained for only three years, from 2010 to 2012, when between 39 and 44 percent were detained. By 2016, Harris County was detaining nearly threequarters of them, 761 out of 1,055 accused violators.
Nate Balis, director of the foundation’s juvenile justice strategy group, said that Harris County is far from the only jurisdiction in the nation that appears to be jailing kids for minor violations.
“It’s pretty common around the country that young people end up being detained for things that are not a function of a risk of public safety, and it’s certainly not unusual to have kids locked up in detention centers for technical violations of probation,” he said. “But it’s not good.”
Balis said juvenile justice departments need to focus on trying to figure out why the juveniles failed: Do they need additional services or programs? Is the current program not working? And if they repeatedly keep violating rules in spite of being offered these programs, he said, is detention really going to help anything?
“Detention as a response to noncompliance is never a good idea,” he said. “It’s understandable that a judge gets to a point of frustration if a young person is constantly brought back before them and they’re breaking rules. But is there a case where the number of rules broken are enough to say he should be in detention? It presumes that our main thing is that we should be sanctioning them if they break rules rather than getting them back on the right track.”
Schneider said that expansion of programs such as one he helps lead, My Brother’s Keeper, which works with boys of color who may face a socio-economic disadvantage, is one example of ways to steer youths out of juvenile detention centers. Get them out quickly
Schneider said his own research has revealed an uptick in juveniles detained on misdemeanors.
“What disturbs me and what I think we need to worry about is why do we have more misdemeanants detained, when we have the discretion to have them released?” he asked.
Equally troubling, he said, is how long the youths stay behind bars on minor violations.
“You’ve got to focus on the length of stay,” he said. “It’s one thing to have an emergency that makes you worry about the safety of someone — those kinds of things happen — but you need to figure out a way, at every level of the system, to get them out as quickly as possible.”
Schneider said he has no blanket policy about probation violators and makes each decision based on the individual. But he was clear that a decision to detain a probation violator would be made only if there were a public safety threat or extenuating circumstances, such as a mental health crisis or turmoil at the child’s home.
He said it would be unusual if someone were detained for a single curfew violation or failed drug test; usually it would be the result of repeated violations, he said. Such circumstances are not reflected in the data.
Still, he said, even if extenuating circumstances warrant detention, the next question should be: Do they really belong there for weeks?
“Cutting down the length of stay would be really important in getting our (population) numbers down in a way that doesn’t compromise any public safety,” Schneider said. “There may be a case where reasonable minds might differ. Is there an acute issue right now where someone might need to be detained? That’s a completely different question than: Should this kid be in for 10 days, 20 days, 30 days? Is there really an ongoing risk?” New detention facility
Officials are working now to relieve the crowded conditions at the Harris County Juvenile Detention Center.
Last year, Harris County rolled out initial plans to build a new juvenile detention facility on Chimney Rock Road and gave official approval to the project in January.
The design phase alone is expected to cost about $8 million. A construction company has since been chosen to carry out those plans.
But Michele Deitch, a senior lecturer at the University of Texas who has published extensive research on juvenile detention alternatives, said county officials need to take a closer look at whom Harris County is detaining at its current facility.
As of Jan. 23, the number of youths detained in the facility was 239. Deitch said removing juveniles detained on probation violations could make plenty of room.
“We expect more from Harris County because they are a JDAI site,” Deitch said, “and they’re well-aware of what other kinds of best practices they should be using with these youth.”