Violence at youth prisons blamed on lax discipline, structural problems ignored

Mike Ward at the Austin Statesman on Sunday offered a worm's-eye view of violence at youth prisons from the perspective of juvenile correctional officers (JCOs), many of whom, as anyone who reads Grits comments knows, blame increased violence on the head of the Texas Juvenile Justice Department, Cherie Townsend and lenient security policies on TYC campuses ("Workers trace youth lockup's problems to soft discipline," May 13).

Voicing the views of a dozen employees, Ward pinned the source of current problems to the period "after 2009, with a new management team in place at agency headquarters in Austin, some of the more punitive aspects of life inside the lockups were relaxed." What that ignores, though, is that many of those "punitive aspects" - particularly the first-resort use of pepper spray, which certainly boosted JCO's on-the-ground power over youth - were ended because of successful lawsuits. Moreover, the lawsuits and changes that ended use of many adult corrections practices among juveniles were largely spawned from reporting from people like Mike Ward, for example in a 2007 article voicing extensive criticisms of pepper spray use in juvenile facilities.

Further, the 1984 Morales v. Turman settlement (TYC's version of the Ruiz case) remains binding on TJJD and restricts a variety of the more punitive measures suggested mostly by folks from the adult prison system over the last five years.

In the past, Grits has argued that framing the debate around use of force levels or harsher discipline misstates the problem. If TYC's history is any indication (I haven't followed juvie stuff nearly as closely in the last year or so), the Juvenile Justice Department suffers from absurdly high turnover among frontline staff, who aren't paid very handsomely and must live in places like Giddings or Brownwood, which makes it especially difficult to staff specialized treatment positions. So TJJD isn't getting folks, say, with educational backgrounds in juvenile development, they're essentially competing with Walmart for employees. A report by the Sunset Commission in 2010 found a 25% turnover rate among staff at youth prisons, down from a high of 48% turnover in 2007, but still among the highest of all state agencies.

And while last I heard, TJJD has said it's meeting its 12-1 staffing ratio, the changing demographics of youth prisoners (less dangerous offenders diverted, more dangerous offenders concentrated into fewer units) may mean even that number is too high. Grits asked back in 2007, "Why not make youth prisons safer by staffing them properly? The unspoken answer: Because staff cost money, and by comparison pepper spray is cheap." Because I've had to quit tracking the agency closely, I can't say if that's a causal factor now, but it sure was when the identical complaints were aired in 2007.

Either way, these safety issues are really symptoms masking a more fundamental, underlying disease: A frontline staff neither trained, experienced, nor numerous enough to manage facilities which were designed along adult models rather than for the specific needs of youth.

The best solution would be structural, not just punitive: The Governor's blue-ribbon panel on reforming TYC recommended abolishing larger youth prisons like the one in Giddings in order to end a "punishment culture" that permeated the agency. The complaints aired by Ward IMO amount to revanchist nostalgia from disgruntled adherents to that "punishment culture," not sound advice for how state leaders should operate the system.

The blue ribbon commission recommended shifting away from larger adult-model facilities entirely and opening smaller facilities closer to urban areas so youth can be more closely supervised and have more interaction with their families. But nobody wanted to spend more money on youth corrections, and in fact legislative leaders exerted tremendous pressure to spend less. So rather than shift to smaller facilities as recommended, the Lege paid for a little remodeling and new security cameras, but stuck with the large-facility model. With the same large facilities populated by a more concentrated group of more serious offenders, however, the shortcomings of that approach were only exacerbated.

That decision, far more than any recent disempowerment of JCOs, explains why Texas youth prison problems were never truly fixed: The Legislature sought the best advice from the top minds in the juvenile justice field, got it, then ignored it because it would cost money. Now they wonder why things didn't turn out well and are looking for someone to blame. Cherie Townsend may not be perfect, no one is, but some of her legislative critics should find mirrors if they want to disparage those truly responsible.

Reform this agency or I'll cut you: Jay Kimbrough returns to TJJD

The Governor's "fixer," Jay Kimbrough, is going to resolve whatever's wrong with the Texas Juvenile Justice Department or else whip out his knife and cut anybody who gets in his way. At least part of me hopes so. If he brandishes it just once more at another government official, Kimbrough's would be the most famous Texan knife since Jim Bowie's! Okay, perhaps it won't come to that, but it's nearly the only way this whole TYC/TJJD saga could get any weirder, and when the going gets tough in Texas, the tough frequently get weird.

Kidding aside, the Texas Tribune's Brandi Grissom reports the remarkable news that Mr. Kimbrough will be returning to TJJD. Her story opens:

The man who has become Gov. Rick Perry's problem solver, Jay Kimbrough, is going back to the state's juvenile justice agency, which is facing a crisis again five years after the last time he helped bail the agency out of a major scandal.

"I am pleased that Jay has agreed to help TJJD as we restore legislative, public and employee confidence that Texas is operating facilities that are safe for both employees and youth,” Texas Juvenile Justice Department Executive Director Cherie Townsend said in a press statement on Tuesday.

Kimbrough, who will be on loan from the Texas Department of Public Safety, where he serves as assistant director of homeland security, served as conservator of the Texas Youth Commission in 2007 after investigative news reports revealed horrendous sexual and physical abuse at juvenile lockups. He will act as special assistant for safety and security at TJJD.

Long time readers will recall Kimbrough was briefly assigned to oversee the Texas Youth Commission in the early days after the media reports revealed the agency had covered-up sex scandals and tolerating abusive employees. He left to make way for Ed Owens' disastrous conservatorship, which sought to turn TYC into a mini-adult prison system, bringing in fumbling leadership from TDCJ as well as an adult security mentality heavily reliant on pepper spray and solitary confinement. Repeating that failed approach would be a nightmare.

On the other hand, it was also Kimbrough who authored TYC's initial moves to reduce youth inmate populations, an approach that has worked well beyond anyone's imagination, allowing the state to close multiple youth prison units while juvenile crime has continued to plummet.

So I'm at least slightly sanguine that Kimbrough's appointment won't necessarily spawn a repeat of the unhappy era when Ed Owens and his associates from TDCJ drew down a bevy of lawsuits and near-rebellion among staff. Whether or not it was Kimbrough's intention to foist adult practices onto juvenile corrections, he's now seen that approach didn't work and he's nothing if not a pragmatic man. A fellow as fond as Kimbrough of bold moves can't help but sometimes make a wrong turn, but in my observation he's not the type of fellow to make the same mistake twice. And he may decide the state should double down on the part of his strategy that did work: Further de-incarceration and shifting responsibility for supervising more delinquent youth back to the local level.

Even longer-time readers will recall Kimbrough's "fixer" stint helping the the Department of Public Safety try to rein in Texas' regional narcotics task forces in the wake of 2005 legislation putting them under the command and control of the DPS Narcotics division. Many task forces simply refused to comply, and the Governor's Criminal Justice Division ultimately eliminated their funding entirely in 2006, shifting the federal grant money which for two decades had supported hundreds of narcotics officers to a combination of border enforcement and diversion programming, with an emphasis on specialty courts. In essence, they shifted responsibility for drug-enforcement downstream to the local level much like TYC shifted responsibility for supervising more delinquent youth back to the counties.

At TYC, Kimbrough had good instincts about reducing inmate populations but not about putting Ed Owens and his TDCJ cadres in charge when he left, to the extent that was his call. OTOH, in my view he knocked the drug-task force issue out of the park. And in both instances, one notes, part of his approach was to eliminate failing institutions instead of reform them, which may give a hint as to one possible approach he could take at TJJD along the same lines.

One of the major alternatives being bandied about is to eliminate most of the rest of juvenile detention facilities (they probably can't get rid of the mental health beds) and shift more money and responsibility to counties to manage delinquent youth. If Kimbrough decides Texas youth prisons are completely dysfunctional, as was the case with the drug-task force system, will he similarly recommend a wipe-the-slate-clean approach? At this point nothing would surprise me.

At least formally, Kimbrough has been brought in as an assistant to Cherie Townsend, though a "special assistant" with the Governor on speed dial won't always be perceived or necessarily behave as a subordinate. Hold onto your hats. The agency is no doubt in for another tumultuous year between now and the end of the 2013 legislative session.

TJJD contracts questioned

An audit found poor documentation for much of the construction and other contract spending by the Texas Youth Commission, now the Juvenile Justice Department, reported the Austin Statesman's Mike Ward on Saturday. The story opened:

During the past five years, the Texas Juvenile Justice Department relied heavily on change orders to pay for construction work that was not within the scope of the original contracts and failed to document the changes as required, a new audit revealed Friday.

In addition, the internal audit found that in more than half of the files examined, change orders that required the approval of top agency officials had none.

The audit does not provide detail on the contracts. Officials said Friday that those details were not immediately available.

The agency and its predecessor had more than $35.3 million in construction projects under way or queued up during the period that the auditors reviewed. While they reviewed only nine contracts in detail, such samples are commonly used as an indicator of potentially larger problems.

Robin McKeever, the agency's deputy executive director, who was previously chief financial officer with purview over contracts, said that eight of the nine contracts examined in the audit had change orders — more than 30 orders, in all.

On Friday, the agency's 13-member governing board approved new policies designed to curb those problems — the latest issue to buffet a department facing a legislative investigation over safety and security lapses at the Giddings State School and other lockups.

Adult, juvie corrections took 39% of state employee reductions in last year

After the Texas Legislature finished its budget cutting last year and the dust finally settled, a whopping 39% of Texas state employee reductions in the last year came from two agencies: the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) and the recently merged Juvenile Justice Department (TJJD).

TDCJ lost 2,035 FTEs (full-time equivalent positions), and TJJD lost 816.5, according to a recent state auditor's report (pdf). All told, according to a summary, "As of the end of the second quarter of fiscal year 2012, agencies reported that they employed 147,100.4 FTEs. That was a decrease of 7,321.6 (4.7 percent) FTEs since the end of the second quarter of fiscal year 2011." TDCJ's staff was reduced by 5%, TJJD's by 23%.

Of course, both these agencies suffer from high turnover among front-line staff, so relatively few of those reductions represent layoffs, particularly on the adult side. But Texas' corrections footprint declined in the last year in more ways than just from the closure of the Central Unit and lowered jail populations: Prisons and jails have gone from a reliably expanding government sector to among the first areas to be cut when Texas policymakers must prioritize in the face of tight budgets. That's a big change in political priorities from just a few short years ago.

In 2013 when legislators again face tough, arguably tougher budget choices even than last session, Texas could not conceivably focus employment reductions as heavily in corrections without closing (probably several) more prison units. For these and related reasons, Grits remains convinced that budgets will stymie the growth of the prison-industrial complex long before any brand of moral outrage might convince state leaders to reduce it.

Might Texas close more juvie lockups in wake of ongoing woes?

In response to the latest accusations of abuse and violence at Texas youth prisons, reported Brandi Grissom at the Texas Tribune, "some advocates are urging lawmakers to consider closing more state youth institutions."

Given that Texas youth prison populations have already declined by around 2/3 since the 2007 "reforms" (which, since they apparently haven't reformed much, perhaps henceforth we should just call "changes") while juvenile crime has continued to fall, perhaps now's the right time to finish the remarkable de-institutionalization of juvenile justice begun five years ago.

California is doing the same thing on a much smaller scale to reduce prison populations in their adult system - shifting supervision of lower level offenders to counties in a process they call "realignment." Texas counties may not relish the new responsibilities for dealing with the worst behaved youth that comes with realignment in the juvenile justice system, but by all indications over the last five years it has generated superior  outcomes. It makes sense at this point to double down on the policy.

Déjà vu at TJJD: 2007 all over again?

Reports Mike Ward at the Austin Statesman:

As the former superintendent of the Giddings State School claimed in a lawsuit that he was fired in March for reporting violations of state law and growing safety issues at the troubled lockup, a legislative inquiry was expanded Wednesday to focus on whether 5-year-old reforms to the troubled system are still working.

"Everything is on the table now as far as I'm concerned," said Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman John Whitmire, a Houston Democrat who authored many of the reforms.

"Based on reports that we have confirmed from independent sources, it would appear that the management of the (Texas Juvenile Justice Department) has not been properly managing or protecting the youth and staff. You could change the names and dates, and it would be 2007 all over again."

If you'll excuse me, please go here to read the rest of Ward's missive, and I'm going to walk outside now to pound my head against the side of a tree.

Ombudsman beefs with alleged bullying, extortion at Giddings state school

Yet more allegations of serious safety issues at the Gidding State School, indicating five years of reform and merger of agencies into the new Juvenile Justice Department have not yet resolved lingering problems. Reports the Austin Statesman's Mike Ward ("Lawmaker livid over reports of coercion, extortion at Giddings youth lockup," April 17):

Two legislative architects of Texas' sweeping reforms in juvenile justice after a sex-abuse scandal five years are fuming over a new report that questions security and safety at the Giddings State School.

The report includes allegations that youths are being "bought and owned" by other youths for cigarettes, illicit drugs and money at the lockup about 50 miles east of Austin.

The nine-page investigative report by Ombudsman Debbie Unruh that legislative leaders received on Tuesday lists an array of other issues: Youth ringleaders are "controlling the culture on this campus," staff have a lack of control over youths, youths have refused to leave security detention for fear of their safety, and bullying and extortion of food are common.

In the report, agency officials said they have identified five ringleaders, including one youth who was caught on a security camera stealing food from another youth. Random drug tests and dorm searches have been initiated to curb contraband trafficking, the report states.

The Senate Criminal Justice Committee will hold a hearing to examine the report's findings in May. Added Ward, "Release of the report comes as the latest in a series of reported problems at the lockup — from last September, when a youth offender stabbed a female correctional officer, to management issues that have kept top Austin officials at Giddings for months to a recent survey of more than 100 youths at Giddings by the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition who reported their highest concern was being assaulted by other youths."

UPDATE: Thanks to an attentive reader for identifying a link to the above-referenced Ombudsman's report (pdf), and a related article by Brandi Grissom at the Texas Tribune last week.

Report to analyze student assessments in school discipline programs

The Texas Juvenile Justice Department is compiling a report on how students in Juvenile Justice Alternative Education Programs (JJAEPs) performed on the TAKS test, and though data hasn't been released yet, they leaked a bit of good news to the juvie probation department in Wichita Falls ("JJAEP students pass '11 reading TAKS," April 10):

Linda Brooke of the Texas Juvenile Justice Department in Austin was preparing a report on the TAKS pass rates of students in the state's juvenile education program when she ran across something so surprising that she couldn't keep it to herself.

She emailed Kirk Wolfe, Wichita County's Juvenile Justice Alternative Education Program director, to congratulate him on his high-performing JJAEP.

According to her data, 100 percent of students in the Wichita County JJAEP program passed the reading TAKS test in 2011.

"Since we have been looking at this passage rate, nobody has ever achieved a 100 percent passage rate," she wrote to Wolfe in an email Tuesday. "The average for JJAEPs in the area is 68.8 percent."

She told Wolfe that the accomplishment was "outstanding" and wrote, "Just wanted to tell you what a great job you and your staff are doing."

The full 2012 report, called The Juvenile Justice Alternative Education Performance Assessment Report, is due out May 1.

Kudos to Wolfe, his team and his students on the accomplishment. Here are a few more preliminary data:

Social studies had the highest pass rate among all discipline students statewide, with 80 percent meeting the state's standard, according to Texas Education Agency data on 2011 statewide TAKS test results of discipline students, published Oct. 27.

Pass rates decreased from there: Writing, 75.8 percent; reading, 67.7 percent; science, 54.4 percent; math, 46.1 percent.

Not all of the 55,952 disciplinary students took all tests. In social studies, 36.9 percent were tested; in writing, 13.2 percent; in reading, 84.7 percent; in science 39.3 percent; in math, 81.8 percent.

The TEA information did not break down the data into counties or school districts. That will come in the May 1 report.

I'm not sure I understand why not all disciplinary students were tested. According to the Texas Education Agency, "students who have been removed from their current placements for disciplinary reasons (i.e. suspended, expelled, or otherwise assigned to an IAES or other setting) must participate in all general state and district-wide assessments." For more information and data on assessment of disciplinary students, see this link-filled page on the TEA website.

TCJC: Giddings youth feel safe, though 85% were in a fight since arrival

Via Brandi Grissom at the Texas Tribune:

More than 100 youths surveyed at one of the state's largest juvenile correctional facilities said their most important concern is attacks from their peers, according to a report released today by the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition.

"They had a lot of concerns about staff being really negative to them, and they had a lot of concerns about youth-on-youth violence," said Benet Magnuson, juvenile justice analyst at the coalition, which advocates for incarcerated youths.

Magnuson and a team of interviewers surveyed 115 youths at the Giddings State School in January and asked them about living conditions, services and treatment at the facility, which housed about 270 youths on average in 2011. The majority of youths reported that they felt safe and were hopeful about their future. But they also noted negative interactions with staff and worries about fights with other youths.

Reports Grissom:

In the survey, 89 percent of the youths said they felt OK, kind of safe or very safe at the Giddings facility. Only 2 percent reported feeling very unsafe.

But the youths also reported a significant amount of fighting and gang-related activity at the facility. About 85 percent of the youths said they had been in a physical fight during their stay. And 70 percent said that gangs had either a lot of power or a huge amount of power at Giddings.

"There’s too much fighting on this campus. Fights, riots, gangs – trying to see who’s tougher. It makes me feel less safe," one youth wrote in a survey response.

Looking at the report, this tidbit stood out:

Although positive family involvement significantly improves outcomes both during and aft er placement in secure facilities,1 the youth reported that the long distance between home and the state secure facilities caused family visits to drop precipitously following commitment to the state secure facilities. 62 percent reported receiving visits at least once per week while in county facilities, but only 15 percent reported receiving visits at least once per week while in a state secure facility.

TCJC also expressed concern that Giddings' rural location limited access to mentoring opportunities, though noting that "TJJD reports that mentored youth in its state secure facilities achieve significantly better education and recidivism outcomes than non-mentored youth." This was cited as one of several arguments for enhancing and funding policies to keep kids closer to their home counties instead of being sent to rural TJJD lockups.

Another notable recommendation arising from the survey:

From the perspective of the surveyed youth, negative staff interactions increase misbehavior, hinder treatment, and create a perception of favoritism and unfair rule enforcement. Based on informal conversations with staff and administrators, those negative interactions also increase staff turnover, injuries, and job dissatisfaction. Not surprisingly, the surveyed youth identified negative staff interactions as the greatest barrier to their rehabilitation. Policy-makers and TJJD should support positive staff interactions by increasing funding for training programs at state and county facilities, such as Bexar County’s successful Restraint and Seclusion Reduction Initiative training program. (Emphasis in original.)

A press release accompanying the survey said "The Giddings facility has been in the news lately following a riot on the campus in late November and a report last month that youth-on-youth violence at the facility was increasing. [TCJC attorney Benet] Magnuson says the survey results are a wake-up call for leaders to double down on reforms to expand local programs for kids in trouble."

See the full report here (pdf).

Townsend: 52% in Texas youth prisons suffer mental health problems

It's been frequently observed that adult jails and prisons are becoming society's de facto inpatient mental health facilities because they incarcerate so many offenders with serious mental illnesses. But if official data are to be believed, that may be even more true in the juvenile system. Reporting on a House Corrections Committee hearing yesterday on juvenile justice, AP says ("Mental health issues common among youth prisoners," Mar. 7) that:

More than half of the people in Texas' youth prisons have a moderate or high need for mental health care, and officials should improve their early intervention efforts to help those young people before they end up behind bars, the head of a new state agency told lawmakers Tuesday.

Cherie Townsend, executive director of the Texas Juvenile Justice Department, said more than 52 percent of teens and other youngsters held at the state's six juvenile detention facilities have been diagnosed with at least moderate mental health problems.

Including those with at least some kind of mental health care needs would make that tally much higher, she said.

"The numbers are increasing, and the percentages are increasing," Townsend told members of the Texas House Corrections Committee, referring to the number of juvenile detainees who have mental health problems and their proportion of the state's total youth population at detention facilities.

Not everybody, though, agreed that Texas youth prisons are morphing into insane asylums. One legislator suggested perhaps overdiagnosis played a role:

Rep. Charles Perry suggested authorities might be classifying too many young people as having mental health problems.

"I'm a little nervous about the discussion," said Perry, a Lubbock Republican, "because I know kids that act out that have no mental health issues, and just act out because they act out."

I don't doubt that mentally ill youth disproportionately end up in youth prisons and it wouldn't surprise me if the ratio is greater than in the adult system. But I also agree with Rep. Perry that youth in the juvenile justice system may be diagnosed with mental illnesses too frequently, and sometimes inappropriately, in hope that their behavior issues can be medicated away - or as so-called "chemical restraint." Hell, it's well known that some schools and psychiatrists promote psychoactive drugs at relatively young ages to counter children's behavioral problems, even for non-delinquents. Foster children are also reportedly overmedicated. So it's unsurprising that youth who've worked their way up to outright criminal behavior have racked up enough diagnoses and prescriptions over the years to appear on paper as though they're suffering from a mental illness. In some cases, that's surely true. But particularly with some common diagnoses, often the child's most fundamental problems stem from other issues like, say,  a crappy home life, absent or ineffective parents, poverty, grief, etc..

Recently Grits mentioned the irony that the Texas Youth Commission had prescribed an off-label antipsychotic medication more than 3,000 times during the same period that the AG was suing the company for marketing the drug for use with juveniles without adequate FDA testing. Given such examples and the ubiquity of overmedicating children, I'm not sure it's appropriate to define the number of mentally ill youth by the number receiving some psychoactive drug. Those medication decisions in some instances may tell us more about our society's desire to fix every problem with a pill than they do about the real mental health needs of the majority of Texas youth prison inmates. (Grits can't back that assertion up with data off the top of my head, but that's my sense.)

That said, I also notice Townsend's 52% number is for youth with "at least moderate mental health problems." By contrast, when similar numbers are calculated in the adult system, they only include diagnoses for the three categories of severe mental illness prioritized by the Department of State Health Services - major depression, schizophrenia, and bipolar disorder. So, though 52% sounds like a much larger number than the 1/4 to 1/3 of offenders with mental illness in the adult system, those aren't apples-to-apples comparisons. Perhaps if you included those with "moderate" mental illness in the adult system, the number would rise above 50% as well. Last week the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee heard testimony that the adult justice system often ignores treatable mental health problems like anxiety disorders that can have as significant a crime-causing effect as the "big three" diagnoses.

What do you think? Are there disproportionately that many more mentally ill inmates in youth prisons than adult ones? Is the statistic misleading because of over-diagnosis and over-prescription? Or are youth inmates being treated at appropriate levels - dealing with "moderate" instead of only "severe" mental illness - and it's the adult system that's underdiagnosed, because the state doesn't document any but the most extreme mental ailments?

Here's the link if you want to watch the 4+ hour hearing for yourself.

Violence rates in youth lockups went up after 2007 juvie reforms

At the Texas Tribune on Sunday, Brandi Grissom and Becca Aaronson had a story about rising violence rates at state youth lockups since the 2007 sex scandal at what was then the Texas Youth Commission:

10 years’ worth of data on the number of physical and sexual assaults and pepper-spray incidents at youth correctional facilities across the state indicates that this serene atmosphere is often disrupted by violence among the youths.

Overall, the rate of confirmed youth-on-youth assaults has more than tripled at the secure juvenile offender facilities statewide in the five years since lawmakers approved those reforms. Attacks on staff members have also increased.

The data do show progress for the reform efforts, including reductions in violence perpetrated by staff and in all types of sexual assaults. Cherie Townsend, executive director of the juvenile justice agency, acknowledged there is room for more work, but she said that reforms are making the facilities safer.

Advocates and experts, however, say the rise in youth-on-youth assaults and attacks on staff indicate there is still critical work to be done.

“It’s really disappointing,” said Deborah Fowler, deputy director of Texas Appleseed, a nonprofit organization that advocates juvenile justice reform. “The implementation has not been what we hoped for.”

In 2007, following reports that staff at what was then the Texas Youth Commission had sexually and physically abused youths in their custody, legislators passed laws intended to improve conditions at the lockups. They gave counties incentives to keep low-level offenders in their communities, where they could be close to treatment services and support systems. Only felony offenders who had failed at other programs would serve sentences at secure state facilities. Lawmakers also prohibited the incarceration of anyone older than 18 at the facilities.

The average daily population at the secure facilities has dropped to about 1,200 in 2011 from nearly 3,000 in 2007.

Several factbites from the story were downright stunning: "The rate of confirmed youth-on-youth physical assaults at state secure facilities grew to 54 assaults per 100 youths in 2011 from 17 assaults per 100 youths in 2007."  And, "Staff assaults by youths have climbed to 37 confirmed assaults per 100 youths last year from a rate of 10 per 100 youths in 2007." Notably, "The data do show progress for the reform efforts, including reductions in violence perpetrated by staff and in all types of sexual assaults." (See various charts and data collected by the reporters in this interactive format.)

Grits suspects, though, that the massive decline in youth prisoners explains most of the increased violence rates, which are reported not as raw numbers but as assaults, etc., per 100 youths. That's because the pool of youth in 2007 were much less serious offenders, as a class, than the smaller group of more hard-core kids who go to youth prisons under the new regime. If the rate of youth on youth assaults tripled and the number of youth incarcerated declined by roughly 2/3, then there are roughly the same number of assaults today as in 2007, just concentrated among fewer prisoners.

In prison as in everywhere else in life, a small subset of offenders accounts for the majority of serious misbehavior, and those troublemakers are precisely the type of youth that still end up in TYC despite the expanded emphasis on diversion, probation, etc.. While youth violence went up, it's also true that the proportion of youth incarcerated for violent crimes as a percentage of the whole increased substantially over the same period. If the number of prey dwindles but you keep most of the predators, you'd expect the violence rate to go up because reducing the number of victims they have access to does not in and of itself reduce the violent tendencies of those who remain. That's not to excuse rising violence rates, but I think that's what's driving it. Possibly the staffing ratios and policies from the ancien regime weren't adequate for the types of offenders who now end up in TJJD lockups, and certainly the data call into question whether programming at the units is working to change youth behavior. Good reporting from the Trib.

On texting, driving, fact checking, murder rates, borderline competency and global security

A few, disparate tidbits:

Houston 2011 murder rate nearly as low as Mexico City
The murder rate in Houston is at its lowest since 1965,  (and nearly the lowest since data began to be recorded), with 198 murders last year compared to a high of 701 in 1981, reported KUHF radio. Still, the murder rate of 9.4 per 100,000 is substantially higher than the statewide murder rate of 5.0 in 2010, according to DPS data (pdf). To put that number into perspective, Mexico City's murder rate is 8.3 per 100,000, so in that light 9.4 perhaps isn't exactly being all you can be. Still, Less Murders = Good. MORE: From Kuff.

After death, inquiry finds most youth at Granbury juvie detention in isolation for unjustified reasons
Now that the new Texas Juvenile Justice Department is up and running, there's no time to lose in exercising its oversight function. Reports the Weatherford Democrat, "A state investigation of the Granbury Regional Juvenile Justice Center following the death of a 14-year-old Cleburne boy in October has raised questions about the role of the facility’s non-compliance with detention facility standards in the boy’s death." Said the paper, a TJJD "report released last week found several violations related to keeping the juveniles in isolation nearly all day on Oct. 10 outside of the physical presence of a juvenile supervision officer. The 11 residents of 'Alpha Pod' were kept locked in their rooms most of the day, not allowed to participate in educational and other activities as required and left without the supervision level required during daytime program hours, the TJJD investigation found." Further, "Investigators found that only one of the 11 residents of 'Alpha Pod' was 'confined for a reason justified by standards, namely the resident’s disciplinary seclusion status.'" In other words, 10 of the 11 kids in isolation at the time of the boys death shouldn't have even been there.

Borderline competency: Good question, no easy answers
Asks a prosecutor on the DA Association user forum, "What do you do with those VERY low functioning defendants who are already receiving services from MHMR and whose competency is borderline?... Seems they are getting more plentiful." While one wag replied, "Send them off to law school?," others including John Bradley noted there are no easy answers, particularly in the wake of budget cuts to mental health services in the most recent legislative session.

Constable resigns in lieu of prosecution
The DA in Lubbock won't pursue criminal charges against a local constable in exchange for his resignation and lifetime ban from serving as a peace officer.

H-Town burglar alarm fees don't pay for city services
In Houston, according to HPD's website, "The cost of responding to alarm calls for service in FY2007 was approximately $11.8 million dollars and exceeded the City's total annual revenues in that fiscal year ($7.99 million dollars) derived from permit fees and penalties associated with burglar, panic, holdup and similar alarm systems."

Balko: Anger vs. Lykos stems from 'efforts to change the culture'
Radley Balko suggests that in the Harris County District Attorney primary, "intra-party anger seems to stem mostly from [Pat Lykos'] efforts to change the culture in the Harris County DA’s office." Exactly. There's an odd nostalgia among her most ardent critics which Grits suspects can never be satisfied. It's a new century, and whatever happens in April or November, Johnny Holmes won't be walking through the door anytime soon.

Problem with texting while driving is the driving, not the texting
Fascinating. Fewer teens are driving and studies say cars are no longer the status symbol of freedom that they once were among young Americans, particularly in cities. Texting while driving is bad, argues Lisa Hymas at Grist, but more importantly, "we need to work urgently on making driving less necessary in the first place." Great line from Clive Thompson at Wired: "When we worry about driving and texting, we assume that the most important thing the person is doing is piloting the car. But what if the most important thing they're doing is texting? How do we free them up so they can text without needing to worry about driving?" How's that for reframing the question? I'm still rather amazed that Gov. Perry vetoed the texting while driving ban passed in Texas this year.

Iran, Pakistan, Mexico, None-Of-The-Above: Which is biggest threat to world stability?
This is nuts to me: From any rational American perspective - certainly for those of us living in border states - the biggest threat to stability in 2012 isn't Iran, surely it's from drug violence and instability in Mexico and Latin America, arguably followed by anti-western sentiment in already-nuclear Pakistan, where our troops are entrenched across the border for the foreseeable future. In Grits' book, I'd put high food prices (at least) third on the list. Why downplay instability in a nation that already has nukes, much less massive corruption and bloodshed on the US southern border, to proclaim Iran the ultimate threat? That's the sort of demagoguery that makes people vote for Ron Paul. Which is more dangerous for world security: A nuclear Iran or a starving Africa?

Fact check this
Greg Marx at the Columbia Journalism Review has an essay articulating numerous criticisms which have been gelling in Grits' own mind in recent months about so-called "fact checking" services like Politifact and the limits of the framework under which they operate, particularly regarding legal issues. I finished his piece and thought, "Damn, I wish I'd written that," which of course is the highest compliment one writer can pay to another. My biggest frustration with Politifact, et. al.: Grits despises the notion that fact checking should be somehow considered specialty work among journalists, implying that most journalists are mere mouthpieces for special interests who don't provide a significant truth filter between their sources and the public. That may be accurate as a practical, workaday matter, but it's not a model to aspire to.

Juvie, adult prison guards atop list of high-turnover state jobs

The combined turnover rate for Texas juvenile and adult correctional officers (i.e., prison guards) in FY 2011 was 23.4%, according to a new report (pdf) on state employee turnover by the state auditor. That's 22.3% for adult COs, and 39.6 for JCOs, including layoffs. Other key highlights:

Statewide, 29.6% of turnover came from involuntary separations - either firings or other reductions in force (RIF), sometimes for budgetary reason, with 14% of departing employees dismissed for cause and another 9% resigning in lieu of dismissal.

The Texas Education Agency had a higher one-year turnover rate than TDCJ, but that's a statistical fluke resulting from a budgetary RIF. TDCJ "accounted for the largest percentage of separations (29.6 percent) within the State. The majority of the separations at TDCJ during fiscal year 2011 were voluntary. TDCJ’s turnover rate was 19.2 percent in fiscal year 2011."

The most experienced staff are more likely to retire these days: Statewide across all agencies, "Between fiscal years 2007 and 2011, retirements increased by 40.6 percent." (Some of those folks may still be working: A wag might add that even Governor Rick Perry has taken retirement, and is surely counted among those statistics.) The number of voluntary separations increased 12.9% over last year.

"Thirty-four state agencies experienced reductions in force. The Texas Youth Commission, the Texas Education Agency, and the Department of Criminal Justice accounted for 72.6 percent of all staff reductions due to reductions in force in fiscal year 2011."

Reductions as TYC was merged into the new Juvenile Justice Department accounted for a large chunk of involuntary separations: "The three job classification series with the most separations as a result of reductions in force in fiscal year 2011 were Juvenile Correctional Officers, Program Specialists, and Administrative Assistants."

TDCJ lost 8,116 employees in FY 2011, 3,025 of them via involuntary separation (including layoffs).

The turnover rate at the Department of Public Safety was 9.9%, with 66 involuntary departures out of 846 total.

Via the Austin Market Examiner.

Spriggs takes CASA post; out of running for new TX Juvenile Justice Department

For those speculating who may lead the new Texas Juvenile Justice Department, scratch Vicki Spriggs' name off the short list. The former Juvenile Probation Commission Director took a job at Texas CASA - "Court Appointed Special Advocates" - which is "the statewide association for 69 local programs that advocate through volunteers for children in the foster care system." See the full announcement on their website. Good luck, Vicki!

Rough waters lie ahead for yet-to-be-named captain of new Juvenile Justice Department

Though due to a sheer lack of bandwidth Grits has been forced to curtail juvenile justice coverage, the biggest (if little-discussed) criminal justice story in the state this month surely is the abolition on December 1st of the Texas Youth Commission and the Juvenile Probation Commission, merging the two agencies into the new Juvenile Justice Department, whose board (see a list and descriptions) met for the first time last week.  At the Texas Tribune, Brandi Grissom's story on the transition opens:

The Texas Youth Commission and the Texas Juvenile Probation Commission are officially gone, and in their place, a new agency is taking shape — lawmakers and advocates hope — to more efficiently and effectively deal with young offenders.

The new Texas Juvenile Justice Department's oversight board met for the first time last week, appointing an advisory panel to take recommendations as it merges the agency's two predecessors. They expect to hire a new agency leader as soon as next month.

Throughout the story legislators and policy wonks predict budget savings from the merger, and perhaps that will be the case, but it's also the case that the Lege needs to make targeted investments in community-based  services to ensure that kids diverted from youth prisons, and those supervising them, have adequate resources and support. In an article earlier this week from the Fort Worth Star-Telegram ("Tarrant juvenile justice officials wary about new combined state agency," Dec. 4), TJJD boardmember Scott Fisher said he thinks that will happen: "I think you're seeing a greater level of state funding of community-based programs than has existed in the past, because community-based programs do have a higher success rate with the population they deal with."

A judge in the Startlegram story questioned whether the agency would come to be dominated by youth prisons at the expense of probation and community-based programs, as has happened in the adult prison system: 

"The concern I think that we all have is that ... when we get in a funding crunch, then the needs of an institution -- which is basically what the Texas Youth Commission was, basically a juvenile prison -- might draw money away from the needs of children in the community," said Jean Boyd, a Tarrant County family law judge who was on the board of the Juvenile Probation Commission until it folded.

Boyd had opposed the merger, but she is now waiting to see how the new agency develops.

"I have to be hopeful," she said. "I support juvenile justice, and I want the agency to be successful, because we need it to be successful for our children."

Who will lead the new agency?

The newly appointed 13-member board met for the first time Thursday and launched a search for a new executive director.

The executive directors of the two previous agencies have applied for the post, and both were placed on paid leave until the board makes its decision on hiring when it meets again next month, Fisher said. Dr. Robin McKeever, the former deputy director of the youth commission, was named interim director.

No employees have lost their jobs, and all positions have been merged into the new agency while officials look for duplication. The Texas Youth Commission had about 3,500 employees, most of whom work in detention facilities. The Texas Juvenile Probation Commission had about 75 employees.

"You're taking two agencies and combining them, so there's going to be some change," Fisher said. "I think there's some uncertainty in the ranks out there."

Not only is there uncertainty in the ranks, it's fair to predict based on past experience with the state merging other agencies that rocky transitions are nearly inevitable - a regrettable feature of the process, not a bug. It's the little stuff that's most difficult: Are the computer systems compatible? How will information management systems be merged? How will the web sites be integrated? Should probation and parole supervision functions be merged? What differences in agency cultures and/or historic priorities will create internal friction? Nobody knows yet and it will take quite some time for the biggest challenges to even become fully apparent. For that reason, my hope is that the Lege will focus for a session or two on finding resources for community-based programming and keep their mitts off the agency's governing structure until the new, yet-to-be appointed leadership team has a chance to get their feet under them.

Speaking of whom, the head of the new agency could be Vicki Spriggs or Cherie Townsend, the past executive directors of the Juvenile Probation Commission and the Youth Commission respectively, or conceivably somebody else, though the smart money is on one of those two getting it. [Grits readers should express their preference in the comments, with two caveats in the interests of constructive civility: 1) be polite, respectful and avoid name calling or I'll delete your comments and shut down the string and 2) don't advocate one or the other candidate without giving a reason why.]

I respect both candidates, but my gut tells me drawing leadership from the Juvenile Probation Commission may better focus agency priorities on the needs of probation, with a shorter ramp up period than we might see hiring from TYC. Vicki knows the local systems much better and would have less of a learning curve coming in to address the main challenge facing the agency - beefing up local, community-based services. That's only my tentative sense, though, and Cherie Townsend also brings many strengths to the table. Both women were given a month off with pay while the new TJJD board figure out what they want to do.

Here's Townsend's farewell letter to TYC employees and more background on TJPC's website.