TEXAS YOUTH COMMISSION

Youth Commission to close Sheffield Boot Camp

Closure of remote West Texas facility is first for troubled agency.

Texas Youth Commission officials said Thursday they plan to close the Sheffield Boot Camp in remote West Texas, a facility that has been plagued for months by staff shortages and a dwindling number of incarcerated youths.

The camp that once housed 128 boys held just 17 on Wednesday and had 59 staff members, officials said.

The closure of the state-run lockup is the first for the troubled agency, after months of rumors that Sheffield and other lockups were targeted. The number of offenders in Youth Commission facilities has been reduced by about half since a sex-abuse scandal last year.

In October, Dimitria Pope, then the Youth Commission's acting executive director, ordered a privately run, contract lockup in Coke County closed for health and safety violations. The 190 youths there were moved to several of the Youth Commission's 15 lockups operated by the state.

"It is apparent that the agency will continue to experience staffing difficulties that make the long-term viability of the Sheffield facility tenuous," Youth Commission Conservator Richard Nedelkoff said in a letter Thursday to legislative leaders. "We are putting together a plan to transition all youth and employees at Sheffield to other TYC facilities by the end of March 2008. ... I do not believe there are any remaining options for this facility."

At a time when several Youth Commission lockups still do not meet the 12-to-1 offender-to-staff member ratio, as mandated by law, Sheffield, which is off Interstate 10 in Pecos County, had about one youth to three staff members. The youth population there was drastically cut in October because there were not enough staff members to properly guard the inmates.

Two weeks ago, the Youth Commission was 528 correctional officers short of a budgeted staff of 2,776.

In his letter, Nedelkoff said that though a review continues on the possible closing of other youth lockups, "I anticipate we will need to utilize the remaining facilities" through August 2009.

Legislative leaders had said that as many as three lockups might be closed in the coming months. In addition to Sheffield, the Victory Field boot camp in Vernon, west of Wichita Falls, and the West Texas State School in remote Pyote, southwest of Odessa, had been listed as candidates for closure.

The West Texas State School is where allegations arose last year that incarcerated teenage boys were being sexually assaulted by lockup officials while top Youth Commission officials looked the other way.

The revelations triggered a scandal that resulted in the firing of top managers and the agency being placed in conservatorship.

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