The agency is so understaffed that teens have reported spending up to 23 hours locked in their cells, using water bottles to go to the bathroom. A staggering number have hurt themselves or been placed on suicide watch.
and provided emergency funding and Texas Rangers to further investigate criminal behavior among staff.In recent years, a new focus on keeping kids in trouble closer to home and a drop in juvenile arrests have led to far fewer kids being sent to a shrinking number of state-run prisons, a feat celebrated by both juvenile justice advocates and state leaders.
He noted that fights, sometimes gang-related, tend to break out when teens from separate dorms are moved around the campuses for things like education or recreation. Other children at the Gainesville prison in North Texas have told state inspectors, who visit the five prisons once a month, that they have used cups or water bottles as makeshift toilets on weekends, according to inspection reports. An officer said kids were given extra cups and bottles specifically for this purpose. TJJD officials called the practice “entirely unacceptable” and said it had not been reported recently.
“They let us know on Friday that on Monday we would be working the [control room], and they gave us no training on it,” he said. “They weren’t sure where we were going to be or what we were going to do until literally we were walking out the door.” Despite the loss of programming and safety in the units, Abbott has not personally spoken out on the move to halt intake this month. When asked about the crisis last month, his staff said that the governor considers safety at TJJD a priority, while defending repeated transfers of money away from the department by saying it had a net-zero impact on the budget.
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Almost 600 Texas youth are trapped in a juvenile prison system on the brink of collapseThe agency is so understaffed that teens have reported spending up to 23 hours locked in their cells, using water bottles to go to the bathroom. A staggering number have hurt themselves or been placed on suicide watch.
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Almost 600 Texas youth are trapped in a juvenile prison system on the brink of collapseTeachers and caseworkers routinely work in security roles so the prisons’ nearly 600 youth can get out of their cells to go to the bathroom or take showers. Still, children have reported being left to use bottles as makeshift toilets. | via TexasTribune
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