DALLAS MORNING NEWS: Ten months after its self-destruction – the abrupt payoff for years of beatings, rapes and depravities that made it a national disgrace – the Texas Youth Commission stumbles toward reform. It has fresh programs, as ordered by the Legislature, and new management in place. But as Jon Halt sees it, one basic defect remains: "They still treat kids like dirt." Mr. Halt's 16-year-old son was sexually assaulted by another inmate at a TYC prison in March.
DALLAS MORNING NEWS: The Texas Youth Commission's drug treatment program produces graduates who are more likely to re-offend after release than addicted inmates who did not participate. While TYC has known internally for years that the effectiveness of its chemical dependency program was negligible at best, officials continued to boast of its groundbreaking rehabilitation work with delinquent juveniles to state legislators.
KHOU (Houston): When a teenager is accused of murder, should they be tried as adult? One such case come to an end last week: Ashley Benton getting probation after her murder trial ended in a hung jury. Harris County is the toughest in Texas on teen criminals, but some question whether it’s the right approach, or just passing the buck. It is a case that symbolizes kids becoming criminals: a city park where baseball bats were used not for a game, but for a gang fight.
THE FACTS: Ashton Carmen said he tried to run away from home and his father. The 14-year-old Pearland teen was waiting for his father to come home Dec. 8, 2005, so he could talk to him. The talk turned into an argument. When Reginald Carmen, 50, tried to charge his son, Ashton Carmen said he pulled out his father’s pistol and fired, killing him. “When I first stumbled upon the gun, I was going to take it with me for protection” on the streets, Carmen, now 16, said Monday through a glass window at the Clemens Unit near Brazoria. “The first thing I thought to do was to try and scare him. I didn’t have any true intentions of hurting him.”
NEW YORK TIMES: The Justice Department has the authority to sue juvenile detention systems that allow detainees to be abused or that fail to provide safe conditions. The department, which has invoked this authority many times in the past, should take a hard look at Texas’s notoriously troubled juvenile justice system. The Texas Youth Commission attracted the national spotlight earlier this year, when allegations of brutality, neglect and sexual abuse by detention center staff members made headlines. The state cleaned house and passed an ambitious reform package.
DALLAS MORNING NEWS: Advocates for juvenile inmates on Monday urged the Texas Youth Commission to reject a proposal they say would boost the use of pepper spray against inmates, arguing that it should be used only as a last resort if at all. Several advocacy groups argued against the proposed rule at a public hearing. A decision whether to adopt the rule could be weeks away, TYC spokesman Jim Hurley said.
WACO TRIBUNE: You almost expect one day to find out that at some remote location someone had taken out the waterboarding manual to deal with an unruly inmate at the Texas Youth Commission. Revelations keep piling up in a year of horrors about the TYC. The agency came under the Legislature’s thumb this session after reports of abuse and malfeasance. Just this week TYC was acknowledging the overuse of pepper spray to subdue children.
