Report criticizes Harris County juvenile facilities; 3/24/2008
HOUSTON CHRONICLE: Local judges, probation employees and others are operating under a patchwork of sometimes quirky standards for deciding which youths get sent to Harris County's crowded juvenile detention facilities, according to a new study. One juvenile court judge, for example, orders youths with cases in his court into a detention facility if they miss school seven days, a report by the Annie E. Casey Foundation found. Other youths who possibly should be detained before trial are released because there is no space to hold them.
Editorial: Texas' pipeline to youth prison; 3/24/2008
DALLAS MORNING NEWS: When a teenager waves a gun in your face and steals your wallet, it's hard to think empathetically about a time when he was just a little boy with dreams of being an astronaut or firefighter. For you, he's a criminal who belongs behind bars. Prison might be the best option for some, but experts on the root causes of youth crime say there are smarter ways to turn wayward kids' lives around. At a recent Children's Defense Fund conference in Houston, specialists from around the country criticized the Texas education and juvenile justice systems for putting too much emphasis on get-tough tactics and too little on prevention.
AP: 13,000 abuse claims in juvie centers; 3/02/2008
HOUSTON CHRONICLE: The Columbia Training School — pleasant on the outside, austere on the inside — has been home to 37 of the most troubled young women in Mississippi. If some of those girls and their advocates are to be believed, it is also a cruel and frightening place. The school has been sued twice in the past four years. One suit brought by the U.S. Justice Department, which the state settled in 2005, claimed detainees were thrown naked in to cells and forced to eat their own vomit. The second one, brought by eight girls last year, said they were subjected to "horrendous physical and sexual abuse."