Almost two years after the Texas Youth Commission imploded in scandal, yesterday Federal District Judge Lee Yeakel signed off on a settlement agreement between the agency and four former inmates who were sexually or physically abused in its facilities. What’s remarkable is that it isn’t about money: The agreement goes a long way to re-writing the operations manual for the agency by implementing meaningful changes in how and where children are locked up.
What’s depressing is that a lot of the changes to operations are things that it’s kind of surprising that they weren’t in place already. That includes separating violent and non-violent offenders, being responsive to its ombudsman, and abolishing ‘open bay’ dorms that allow abuse to flourish.
But the biggest change, according to the press release from the Texas Civil Rights Project, is “Keeping children closer to home by adopting more ‘regionalized’ facilities.” Half of the problem before was that kids from Houston and Dallas were being sent to the back-end of nowhere: away from family, from real state oversight, and from the bigger pools of skilled counselling staff that cities provide. Moving closer to what is commonly called The Missouri Model is a huge gain for critics of the structure of TYC.
This article appears in John McCain.
