80TH LEGISLATURE

Texas Youth Commission moves to single-sex facilities

Confidential report calls for the action

In a major operations change, Texas Youth Commission officials are quietly implementing plans to segregate lockups across the state by gender for the first time in more than a decade, designating a Brownwood lockup with a history of abuse complaints as the place for girls.

Commission spokesman Jim Hurley confirmed this afternoon that the two-unit Ron Jackson State Juvenile Correctional Complex — which has housed both boys and girls since at least 1995 — will soon house only girls.

At the same time, the co-ed Giddings State School is being converted to house only boys.

In early May, agency statistics show, 395 of the 3,300 youths in Youth Commission lockups were girls; 17 girls were among 240 youths in halfway houses; 41 were among about 425 youths in contract centers; and only 330 were among the 3,600 on parole.

"We have 11 girls left at Giddings and we hope to have them out by the end of this week," Hurley said. "Then, we'll only have girls at Corsicana (Residential Treatment Center, the agency's psychiatric center) . . . and we're even looking at changing that and perhaps providing those services at Ron Jackson."

By today, officials at the unit said all but about 70 boys had been moved from Brownwood.

Details of the operational change were first disclosed in a confidential report forwarded to legislative leaders.

The report by the American Civil Liberties Union's Women's Rights Project also discloses that when the Youth Commission's intake center in Marlin is transferred soon to the adult prison system, intake for girls will be done at the Brownwood lockup, and for boys at a youth prison in Mart, outside Waco.

In its report, the ACLU urges that girls in the custody of the Youth Commission be provided specialized programs and that a new high-level administrator will serve as an official advocate for girls.

According to the report, the agency has agreed to participate with the Women's Rights Project to conduct research on priorities needed to successfully and appropriately house girls in youth lockups. Youth Commission officials said that study is ongoing.

"Girls who are in TYC custody need, but are not receiving, individualized counseling necessary to cope with childhood disadvantage, familial abuse and psychological damage," the report states. "Major aspects of TYC, including its range of available placement for girls, its institutional culture and its rehabilitative programming, fall short of meeting the needs of girls."

When it was opened in 1970, the 560-bed, twin Brownwood lockup only housed girls. It was also the intake center for all girls who were sent to the Youth Commission.

The 380-bed Giddings lockup, opened in 1972, originally housed only boys.

"I think this plan might have merit," Sen. Juan Hinojosa, D-McAllen, the author of the Youth Commission's sweeping reform bill, said. "I hadn't heard about this, but it might make sense. They keep them separate in the adult system.

Internal records show that the Jackson center, made up of two lockups next to each other, logged the second-highest number of abuse and neglect reports among the 14 Youth Commission prisons statewide during a three-year period, starting in March 2001.

The 148 abuse and neglect reports filed there were second only to the Corsicana Residential Treatment Center, a center for emotionally disturbed youths where 176 reports were logged.

Three former employees at the Brownwood have been charged with crimes — two involving alleged sexual assaults, one for aggravated assault — since the Youth Commission scandal erupted in February. Only one other has that many: the West Texas State School, where sex-abuse and cover-up allegations sparked the scandal.

Hurley said the past problems are just that — past. "There is no tolerance now in this agency on any form of abuse," he said.

Having girls held at one facility could allow for better, more specialized programming, and provide a better environment for rehabilitation, he said.

"We have 125 sex offenders at Giddings, so why would you want to have girls exposed to them?" he asked.

In addition to the Brownwood lockup, Hurley said current plans call for girls the Willoughby House in Fort Worth to remain as the sole halfway house for girls.

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