DOJ finds all 5 of Texas juvenile detention centers violated youth offenders' rights

The U.S. Department of Justice found unconstitutional conditions at all five of Texas' juvenile detention facilities, where children were exposed to excessive force, sexual abuse, and, in the case of disabled children, discrimination that kept them in custody longer or sent them to adult prisons.

In a report released Thursday, the federal agency detailed the results of its investigation, which began in October 2021, into the Texas Juvenile Justice Department's facilities.

"TJJD falls short of creating an environment that fosters rehabilitation," U.S. Attorney Leigha Simonton for the Northern District of Texas, whose office helped carry out the investigation, said. "Instead, some of its personnel engage in the use of excessive force and subject children to prolonged isolation, both of which are damaging. Texans know that this is not how we rehabilitate our children."

Federal investigators found that the state agency excessively used pepper spray on children, employed dangerous restraint techniques, and kept children isolated for days or weeks on end. The Texas agency failed to implement measures to end sexual abuse, investigators concluded, describing a "pervasive atmosphere of sexual abuse, grooming, and lack of staff accountability and training."

Children who have been arrested for a crime and found to have engaged in "delinquent" conduct are sentenced to TJJD for rehabilitation. According to the DOJ, there were about 700 youth offenders ages 10 to 19 in the department's custody as of July 2024, around 80 percent of whom were Black or Latino. In 2021, the TJJD reported that around 65 percent of children in its custody had "significant" mental health issues.

The agency operates the facilities in Edinburg, Gainesville, Giddings, Mart, and Brownwood.

The Justice Department also found that TJJD failed to provide adequate mental health and education services.

The agency routinely denies disabled children "reasonable modifications" they need to successfully complete their incarceration. Instead, the report said, children are expelled from programming due to behavioral issues related to their disabilities and required to repeat it - extending their time in custody or leading to their transfer to an adult prison.

In addition, federal investigators concluded that incarcerated children with disabilities do not receive a "free appropriate public education," and that special education services within the department's facilities fell well short of the standard required by federal law.

And while most children in the facilities have severe mental health needs and require treatment, the report found that the agency was not providing adequate trauma-informed care, leaving children at substantial risk for self-harm or suicide.

"Children in TJJD's secure facilities are exposed to conditions that cause serious and lasting physical, mental, and emotional harm. At the same time, they are denied treatment and services they need to cope with their environment, earn release, return to their communities and become productive citizens," the report said. "This harmful environment undermines any rehabilitative purpose in their commitment."

Agency staff used pepper spray on children "far more frequently than necessary to meet the threat posed," according to the report, which detailed instances in which children were sprayed directly in the face or before any effort to engage them verbally.

The state agency also overly relied on isolation, keeping children in segregated cells for up to 24 hours a day for days or weeks on end - when time in such a unit is meant to be limited to one to two hours, investigators found.

TJJD, in a statement, said that it had worked closely with federal investigators during site visits in 2022, when the agency was at the "peak" of "unprecedented staffing shortages."

"At TJJD, we are continually working to improve our operations and services to the youth in our care and the communities of Texas we protect," the agency said. "We have a zero-tolerance policy toward abuse and neglect and have always fully rejected any abusive behaviors at our campuses."

The agency added that it has "made several recent significant improvements," including boosting the ranks of its officers by raising salaries by 15% in 2022 and another 5% in 2023 as approved by the Texas Legislature, hiring more mental health professionals, improving staff training, and adding a "holistic rehabilitative program."

This is not the first time abusive conditions at Texas' juvenile detention facilities have been raised.

The agency, then operating as the Texas Youth Commission, was placed under a conservatorship in the early 2000s in response to repeated allegations of physical and sexual abuse, operational and safety problems, and a cover-up effort by high-level staff.

In 2007, the Justice Department found that the agency failed to keep children safe from violence in the Evins Regional Juvenile Center in Edinburg. Four years later, after reports of sexual abuse and operational problems across the system, the state Legislature combined the Texas Youth Commission and the Texas Juvenile Probation Commission to create the Texas Juvenile Justice Department.

In 2017 and 2021, Gov. Greg Abbott ordered two investigations of sexual abuse and "potentially illegal behavior" at the agency's facilities.

Over the past three decades, the overall population of children held in the agency's facilities declined - with eight of those facilities shutting down after the agency's reorganization - but, according to the report, "the needs of the children that remained in custody intensified."

"We have made progress in the sense that there are fewer kids in these facilities, but we haven't improved things for youth who are in the facilities," Brett Merfish, director of youth justice at Texas Appleseed, a nonprofit that asked the federal government in 2020 to open an investigation into unconstitutional conditions in the agency's facilities, said.

A continuing cause of poor conditions within the agency's facilities, Merfish said, is persistent understaffing fueled by insufficient pay for difficult working environments and the remote locations of most of the facilities.

The report outlined a number of "recommended minimum remedial measures," including requiring non-force interventions be used whenever possible, eliminating the use of pepper spray in canisters designed for large crowd management, and limiting periods of isolation.

The Justice Department said it was "hopeful" about entering into an agreement with the state of Texas about implementing those measures, according to Merfish. But the federal government could sue the state if it felt that Texas officials were not sufficiently addressing its concerns.

"The report affirms many of our fears about what's been happening. We've had individual stories, but it takes an investigation like this to prove a systemwide failing. This is confirmation that Texas juvenile prisons need a wholesale change," Merfish said.

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