Updated, 5 p.m. June 1: with an interview with Texas Juvenile Justice Department Executive Director Camille Cain.
AUSTIN — Arguably the most beleaguered state agency in Texas has a new plan.
After years of turmoil, scandal and inconsistency in its top ranks, the Texas Juvenile Justice Department has given Gov. Greg Abbott a new set of goals to get the agency back on track with its core function — rehabilitating underage lawbreakers. Executive Director Camille Cain explained the goals to The Dallas Morning News after the release of her 10-page report Friday.
Since her appointment in January, Cain said she's focused on cutting the number of kids in the state's five juvenile prisons to improve safety and security. In the long term, she has two hopes — to shore up the facilities while moving more offenders closer to their homes and families, and to shift the state's perception of the kids, recognizing the trauma they likely endured that landed them behind bars.
"A lot of these kids lived their childhoods in survival mode," Cain said. "The object here is not so much to punish, but to correct."
Advocates largely welcomed her plan but cautioned that without continuous political and financial support from the governor and state lawmakers, it won't go far, just like similar proposals pushed for more than a decade.
"If the Legislature doesn't see this their way, what is their Plan B?" Deborah Fowler, executive director with the nonprofit advocacy group Texas Appleseed, asked Friday. "Texas cannot continue to have taxpayers footing the bill for facilities that have bad outcomes and that harm the kids that are meant to be helping."
Short-term solutions
In the wake of The News' reporting that several guards had been arrested for physical and sexual abuse last year — the latest black mark for the department — Abbott shook up the agency by appointing new top staff and asking the Texas Rangers to investigate the sexual abuse.
Safety and security problems at the facilities were tied to poor and inadequate staffing, so Cain spent her first six months cutting the number of kids in state lockup to the lowest level in decades. Short term, the agency will also review its training program and revamp overtime and vacation policies "to better support our staff, decrease stress, and improve retention."
To ensure kids are not victimized by guards, the agency is also reviewing its background check process and will provide body cameras to correctional officers who interact with offenders by year's end.
Cain recognizes that fixing these problems will take support from the Legislature, but she said these small changes have already improved safety and security somewhat. Last month, for example, was the first where not one juvenile correctional officer quit at the Gainesville State School north of Dallas, she said.
She said she hopes safety improves "just enough" to stop the cycle of staff turnover while they work on long-term goals.
Closer to home
But it's Cain's long-term goals that will determine whether the agency can turn around its image and outcomes. She said she will present options to the Legislature, which meets next in January, but there are a few specific points she wants them to back — her "vision for a reformed system."
Pulling out a map of Texas, Cain said the agency looked at the 900 or so underage offenders in the five facilities. Then, using their home ZIP codes, they mapped out how many were housed within two hours of their families. About 3 in 5 met that goal, leaving 40 percent more than 120 miles from home.
Cain wants to close this gap by finding space in rural areas of Texas where there are no state-run facilities, specifically the Panhandle, East Texas and El Paso. The Houston and Gulf Coast region also has capacity problems, she said, because it has a state lockup, but there are too many offenders from the area to house them all.
Accommodating offenders closer to home — long a top priority for juvenile justice advocates — could mean opening newer, smaller facilities in far-flung areas of Texas, Cain said. Or it could mean contracting with a provider who can offer the 10 beds they need in El Paso, or retrofitting a shuttered prison in West Texas.
It will also mean funneling more support — and state cash — to county probation departments to help them house more offenders, in the hopes of improving services at the local level while reducing the number of kids in state lockups.
"It is clear that the approach of TJJD must shift from a primary focus on the small number of youth in our institutions to a fuller focus on the system as a whole, with local probation departments having a significant voice and TJJD taking on a more supportive role," the report reads.
Mike Griffith, who once had Cain's job at the state agency and now leads juvenile probation in Dallas County, called this aspect of the plan "encouraging."
"They're [moving] in the right direction," he said. "We endorse the movements to improve the state facilities and the long-term initiative that was rolled out today to push some funding to enhance the services at the local level."
Trauma-informed care
Twenty-five years ago, Texas politicians fought to be dubbed the most "tough on crime" candidate. Drugs, guns and gangs were rampant, kids were out of control and locking them up was the answer, they argued.
Gov. Ann Richards promised to build more juvenile prisons during her re-election campaign. When George W. Bush beat her in 1995, he picked up his Democratic rival's mantle, pushing through a 107-page bill to toughen the state's penal code for juveniles. The state's underage lockups swelled and kids in them were branded "juvenile delinquents."
The state has moved away from that, but Cain wants to leave the concept in the dust. For the first time, she said the agency is measuring each offender's risk factors — called their Adverse Childhood Experiences, or ACEs — which include physical abuse and family violence or whether an adult family member is also behind bars.
Kids in the juvenile system are 3.5 times more likely to have four or more risk factors than the general public, the agency has found, and a handful have all nine ACEs. Knowing this, the agency will weave "trauma-informed care" in its staff training, Cain said, and will roll out a pilot program at two facilities with its most at-risk boys and girls.
"Youth in the juvenile justice system have extremely high instances of childhood trauma that can affect their brain development, their ability to trust others, and their ability to make rational choices and regulate their own behavior," Cain wrote in the report.
The public should care, she said, because a kid who can be taught to shed this trauma "is a kid who's unlikely to commit crime again."
Fowler, the advocate with Texas Appleseed, said while she doesn't disagree with much in Cain's plan, she's worried about whether lawmakers will back it. Similar goals have been rolled out in the past, but the Legislature has either chosen or forgotten to spend political or actual capital making them a reality.
Plus, she added, Texas should still push to shutter at least one state-run lockup in the next two years or else it may kick the can down the road to the next legislative session in 2021.
"My concern is that if the Legislature isn't interested in continuing to fund these existing facilities, and at the same time put additional money into the budget for new facilities, that we're just going to see the status quo maintained," Fowler said. "We've had a number of good administrators at the agency over the last 10 years who have tried and failed."
The options are still being weighed, but Cain doesn't want to discuss closing facilities until they ensure they have the services necessary to rehabilitate troubled kids.
She also has confidence lawmakers will act.
"Everyone has their roles," she said. "I trust them."
