With five lockups that are dangerously understaffed, a turnover rate of 70 percent that has most new hires in and out within six months, teachers and caseworkers routinely working in security roles, and nearly 600 youth often locked alone in cramped cells for 23 hours a day, Texas’ juvenile prison system is nearing total collapse, KSAT reports. The agency has largely stopped accepting newly sentenced teenagers from crowded county detention centers, fearing it can’t even protect the children already in its care.
Nearly half of the children locked in the state’s juvenile prisons this year have been on suicide watch. In addition, a 5 percent budget cut ordered by state leaders at the beginning of the pandemic temporarily eliminated prevention and intervention services that juvenile justice experts say are the best way to keep children out of the criminal justice system. The needs of the detainees have changed, and providing adequate safety and rehabilitation requires more resources.