Juvenile Justice Initiative: Creating Avenues to Success for Troubled Youth and Families
TCJC Rolls Out New Initiative Focusing on Increasing the Chances of Success for Troubled Youth
BY ISELA GUTIÉRREZ
TCJC created the Juvenile Justice Initiative in December, 2006, to provide policy-makers with well-researched, thoughtful analysis about best practices in juvenile justice, as well as to collaborate with key stakeholders like youth corrections officers and the Texas Coalition Advocating Justice for Juveniles (TCAJJ).
In February, 2007, investigative reporters for The Texas Observer and The Dallas Morning News exposed sexual abuse of youth by administrators in a Texas Youth Commission (TYC) facility in West Texas. This unmasked a subsequent cover-up by TYC and an appalling lack of action by virtually all public officials involved. Continued media reports revealed serious mismanagement of TYC and shocking deficiencies in conditions of confinement for youth incarcerated in TYC facilities – endemic violence, deeply deficient medical care, and ineffective treatment programs.
But lawmakers needed real solutions, and with our allies we found ourselves in the midst of a perfect storm where reforms we could never have conceived of just months before became possible. While TCAJJ brought the direct experience of families and youth to policy-makers, the Juvenile Justice Initiative participated in bringing forward those solutions. TYC’s first major overhaul in more than a decade has been signed by the Governor, and nearly everyone predicts more reforms will follow in 2009.
Solutions for safer youth and safer communities
The collaboration between the Juvenile Justice Initiative, TCAJJ, youth corrections officials, juvenile judges, and lawmakers resulted in significant key reforms included in SB 103, just signed into law:
· A system for the inspection and supervision of all youth detention facilities, public or private;
· Enhanced community-based supervision programs as an alternative to detention;
· Sentencing guidelines to ensure that youth are not incarcerated unnecessarily;
· Rules for the placement of very young offenders in safe facilities, free from abuse by older youth;
· A parents’ Bill of Rights;
· A special prosecution system and an Office of Inspector General for the independent investigation and prosecution of crimes occurring in youth detention facilities, an independent ombudsman for youth victims, and public reporting of cases of abuse;
· Improved procedures governing the termination of a child’s placement in TYC and improved re-integration back into his or her home community; and
· A governing board for the Youth Commission to include a majority of people with experience addressing rehabilitation and reestablishment in society of youth offenders.
There is much more to be done!
Lawmakers directed Youth Commission officials to investigate a range of key reforms needed to make our youth corrections system functional for both youth and the communities from which they came. Those additional solutions include:
· Transition towards a regionalized juvenile corrections system with smaller facilities closer to children’s families;
· Improved governance structure for youth corrections;
· Equity in programs, treatment, and facilities between girls and boys detained in TYC facilities;
· And much more.
To ensure that urgently needed reform efforts do not languish as public attention wanes, the Juvenile Justice Initiative will create avenues to success for troubled youth and families by working with juvenile justice stakeholders like TCAJJ, advocating for proven-effective youth corrections models and alternatives to detention for youth offenders, and monitoring the implementation of SB 103 and other policies.
With continued research and collaboration among stakeholders, Texas’ juvenile justice paradigm can change from one that is over-reliant on incarceration to a more rehabilitative approach that will improve the chances of success for troubled youth.
Join and be a part of the solution!
The Juvenile Justice Initiative is a natural and strategic next step in the evolution of TCJC’s University Leadership Initiative (ULI), which worked to train and involve college students and other young people in our efforts to prevent youth from being sent to prison. The Juvenile Justice Initiative will take that vision a step further by involving not only students, but formerly incarcerated youth, their families, youth correctional officials, and other key juvenile justice stakeholders and researchers to improve conditions of confinement for incarcerated youth and to divert youth from correctional institutions to more effective community-based alternatives to incarceration.
Your help – whether you are a parent, a juvenile corrections or probation officer, a judge, a treatment provider, a county commissioner, a prosecutor, or an interested member of the public – is critical to our success.
To assist us in our efforts, contact Isela Gutiérrez at