TW: Self-harm, abuse, violence
Twenty-three hours out of the day, youth in juvenile detention facilities in McLennan County, Texas are being locked in their cells for solitary confinement. Just a couple miles away at a youth prison in North Texas, children reported using water bottles as makeshift toilets because they were prevented from leaving their cells to use the bathroom. For decades, the juvenile justice system in Texas has been plagued with violence, scandal, and abuse. Currently, the five remaining state-run juvenile detention facilities administered by the Texas Juvenile Justice Department are undergoing investigation by the Department of Justice. Decades of harm have led to both minute and sometimes even large-scale reforms. However, reports of violence and abuse seem to repeatedly resurface in the public eye.
Even while investing resources into its juvenile justice system, Texas continually turns a blind eye toward the needs of its incarcerated youth. Texas’ negligence toward incarcerated youth is part of a larger agenda to legitimize the carceral system. It symbolizes the justification of violence toward communities of marginalized youth under the pretext of preserving public safety and keeping “violent kids” out of our communities.
To understand this culture of scandal and abuse that emerged from the Texas Juvenile Justice Department, formerly known as the Texas Youth Commission (TYC), we can trace back to the institution’s roots in the 19th and 20th centuries. In the late 1800s, several reform schools were established throughout Texas to handle youth offenders and reform delinquent behavior. These facilities were located in rural areas of Texas with minimal oversight and funding while being intentionally located far from urban centers so that youth were isolated from their families and communities. Gatesville State School for Boys, one of the state’s first reform schools built in 1889, was notorious for its culture of abuse and scandal. One of the most infamous incidents occurred in 1921 when a young 15-year-old boy named Dell Thames was strangled to death by a prison guard. Additionally, the Gatesville facility was well-known for its cemetery located on the prison’s grounds, which held the remains of 16 boys who died in custody at the facility.
In Gainesville State School, a reform school for girls built in 1916, a young 16-year-old girl was found to have been placed in isolation for 200 days within the facility after forcibly being sedated with barbiturates administered by the male prison guards. In another reform school for girls, the Brady School for Black Delinquent Girls, young Black girls were charged and blamed for inflicting U.S. troop officers with venereal disease. Furthermore, in the 1890s, youth in many facilities, particularly the reform schools for boys, were subjected to physical labor in fields and experienced abuse from prison guards. During the mid-to-late 1900s, many of the juvenile detention centers and reform schools lacked adequate medical care and educational services for youth within the facilities. In 1974, investigators, psychologists, and juvenile justice advocates found that extreme isolation, punitive labor practices, corporal punishment, and psychotropic medication were present in many of Texas’ reform schools. Over time, these incidents of abuse and scandal collectively formed the cultural bedrock of TJJD in its formative stages and established a precedent for what future juvenile correctional facilities should look like. Consequently, a culture of abuse, cruelty, and punishment became deeply embedded in the state’s approach toward juvenile justice and still persists today.
Texas’ violent history has once again repeated itself in recent months. Despite TJJD facilities being afflicted with severe understaffing, a nearly 70% employee turnover rate, increasing suicide rates for juvenile inmates, and reports of sexual and physical violence occurring amongst incarcerated youth, the state has recently sanctioned the construction of new juvenile detention facilities. During the recent 88th legislative session, Texas allocated approximately $200 million to the development of two-to-three new juvenile detention facilities. The state has justified these actions by stating that the facilities will be located in urban areas, leading to increased opportunities for employment and greater proximity to the families of incarcerated youth. In reality, however, new facilities would create more beds to accommodate more youth in the system and would lead to an overall increase in the number of youth referred to TJJD facilities in coming years.
Additionally, the primary targets of youth incarceration are youth of color, particularly Black youth. Approximately 29% of youth who are referred to TJJD facilities are Black despite the fact that Black youth comprise only 11% of the Texas juvenile population. Hispanic youth comprise 47% of the population of youth in TJJD facilities, which is approximately proportional to the total population of Hispanic youth in Texas. However, racial disparities are evident when comparing Hispanic and Black youth to their White counterparts, who are relatively underrepresented in TJJD facilities since they comprise almost a third of the overall youth population in Texas, but less than a quarter of juvenile inmates in TJJD facilities. Collectively, then, Black and Hispanic youth comprise 76% of the total population of youth in all five TJJD facilities. Such disparities point to structures of white supremacy and racial violence deeply ingrained within the juvenile justice system in Texas.
While a considerable proportion of youth in TJJD facilities come from larger, more populated counties in Texas, a substantial number also come from poorer counties with large Hispanic populations. Specifically, El Paso, Hidalgo, and Cameron counties significantly contribute to the state’s juvenile justice system with each county referring a total of 813, 750, and 588 youth in 2020, respectively. These counties have the highest Hispanic populations in the state and also yield relatively high poverty rates in Texas. Consequently, youth from counties that are both poor and predominantly of color are likely to be referred to the state’s juvenile facilities as opposed to regional detention centers, which is largely due to the lack of resources and infrastructure needed to address delinquent misconduct in poorer counties. Therefore, Texas’ lack of investment in regional and local juvenile justice systems contributes to the steady influx of youth into the state’s juvenile detention facilities.
In the past, Texas has made significant efforts to reform its juvenile justice system, yet as scandals of abuse repeatedly resurface, it is evident that substantive progress has still not yet been made. According to the Texas Center for Justice and Equity’s policy report on the Texas Juvenile Justice Department, between 2007 to 2011, the Texas legislature committed to closing eight of the state’s correctional facilities. Notably, however, these facility closures were not intended to be part of a coordinated effort to reform the state’s juvenile justice system, but rather were a result of various factors that collectively put pressure on the legislature to take action by shutting down existing facilities. Specifically, a culmination of reports of scandals within the facilities, staffing shortages, federal funding for community reinvestment incentives, and increased decarceration efforts across the state eventually left Texas legislators with no other option than to close existing facilities.
Despite these efforts to close the facilities and pass reforms to limit the incarceration rates of youth, recidivism rates for youth in Texas still remained particularly high. In 2010, a study reported that 64% of the total youth within a county probation department were rearrested within three years of their release, and in state correctional facilities, the recidivism rate was even higher at 77%. Additionally, even after the Texas legislature implemented reforms in 2007, high-risk juvenile offenders were placed in the same facilities as low-risk youth, which led to an overall increase in the development of violent tendencies amongst low-risk youth.
Past juvenile justice reforms have largely been ineffective primarily due to this simple fact: incarceration fails to address the root causes of juvenile delinquency and violent behavior, merely reproducing the cycles of violence that youth are exposed to, albeit in a different setting. Specifically, incarceration fails to address the catalysts that put young people at heightened risk of engaging in violence and behavioral misconduct, such as childhood trauma, early exposure to violence and abuse, and adverse childhood experiences. Consequently, shutting down only some of TJJD’s facilities without targeting the whole institution and closing all remaining facilities does nothing more than merely reduce the number of facilities in which violence from the prison system reproduces itself.
It is apparent that Texas has a history of overlooking the abuses occurring to youth in its juvenile justice system. However, what is perhaps more perplexing is the state’s continued investment in a system that reaps no substantive benefits, especially given that there are no economic incentives nor increases in public safety that have resulted from building youth prisons. According to the Criminal and Juvenile Justice Uniform Cost Report for the fiscal year 2021-2022, Texas spends $709.66 per day, or approximately $260,000 per year, to incarcerate a child in a youth prison. These lofty investments, despite their lack of return, indicate the extent of the state leaders’ dedication to implementing punitive measures and retribution for Texas’ youth population.
There are a variety of services and alternative solutions to incarceration that the state’s money and resources could be better allocated toward. Rehabilitative and educational services, such as community-based schooling, tutoring, mentorship, therapy, after-school care programs, and diversion programs, are simply a few of the many alternatives that could truly help rehabilitate youth. Despite decades of constant pressure from juvenile justice advocates, policy makers, community members, and TJJD staff to end the cycle of abuse and violence in the juvenile justice system, the Texas legislature refuses to deliver anything more than empty promises and ineffective reforms due to their commitment toward punitivity and retribution as opposed to rehabilitation and healing.
There are two factors at play that explain this repeated cycle of harm. First, we stigmatize and dehumanize those who have made mistakes. Second, we collectively lack the ability to envision a different and better world. The dehumanization stemming from incarceration enables us to become complacent with not imagining a better, more just world because those in power believe that incarcerated people are not worthy of living in a better, more just society and rather deserve to be punished. However, in order for us to create a system with true accountability where people who cause harm understand what they did and how to repair the damage they have done, it is necessary to envision a world in which we do not rely on punitive justice and rather focus on restorative justice.
The foundation of the Texas juvenile justice system was established on flawed principles to begin with. Therefore, no reforms can substantively repair the institution’s culture of violence. As long as Texas continues this abusive cycle of repair and reform without adequately focusing on rehabilitating youth back into their communities, we will continue to witness the abuse and violence occurring within a system that has repeatedly failed our young people.
