Dear colleagues,
I am pleased to share with you a copy of my new report, "Understanding and Addressing Youth Violence in the Texas Juvenile Justice Department." This report, co-authored with a team of my amazing graduate students at the LBJ School, was written on behalf of the Independent Ombudsman (OIO) for TJJD, and was a project requested by the OIO in the wake of numerous accounts of increasing youth violence in the state-run secure juvenile facilities during 2012. The project involved eight months of intense work and analyzes in-depth all available data through the end of 2012. The report was released by the OIO at the TJJD Board meeting last week.
The report is forward-looking and emphasizes strategies for reducing violence in juvenile settings rather than assessing blame. We recognize that reforms within the agency are well underway, and our hope is that the information in this report can help guide some of TJJD's continuing reform efforts. The report offers a number of recommendations directed to TJJD administrators and legislators.
There are several findings in the report that raise particular concerns:
--Youth violence and disruptive behavior are ongoing and increasing problems, as are non-violent major rule violations. TJJD appears to have a problem with managing youth behavior generally, not just a problem with violence.--To date, youth violence has been treated as a short-term crisis to be solved, rather than as a long-term chronic issue to be managed through comprehensive and proactive approaches to behavior management.--Different types of behavioral problems predominate at each TJJD facility, suggesting a lack of consistency in the way programs and procedures are implemented across the agency.--The Corsicana facility for youth with serious mental illness has by far the highest levels of youth violence and disruptive behavior in TJJD, calling into question the effectiveness of this setting for a treatment purpose.--Security units are vastly overused as a behavior management tool, and the data suggest that the placement of youth in these punitive settings may in fact be contributing to misbehavior rather than deterring it. Some weeks, in fact, there are more referrals to the security units than there are youth in the facilities.
On the positive side, despite the large numbers of violent and other serious incidents, youth generally report feeling safe within TJJD's secure facilities. Most incidents do not result in serious bodily injury and do not involve weapons. And of particular importance given the agency's history, youth do not report sexual assault to be a significant problem.
The report finds that the incidence of violence is unrelated to the presence of older youth in the facility, and indeed that younger youth (ages 14 and 15) are disproportionately likely to commit serious and violent incidents. Moreover, TJJD has the tools it needs to respond to the most serious forms of youth violence, through criminal prosecution of TJJD youth and transfer of determinate sentence youth to TDCJ (the adult prison system), and these tools are routinely employed.
The report contains a very detailed chapter describing nationally recognized best practices in youth behavior management. Drawing on the advice of top experts from around the country, we recommend the development of a multi-tiered behavior management plan that incorporates preventive elements, intervention strategies, and a graduated system of discipline that includes both intensified interventions and immediate consequences. Such comprehensive strategies have been very successful at reducing youth violence in juvenile systems around the country. This chapter of the report is not specific to TJJD and can be a useful resource to juvenile agencies at the state and local levels throughout the country. Many thanks to those of you who provided expert guidance to us in our research efforts.
I hope you will find this report informative and useful in your work. The report is attached, and may also be found at this link.
Best regards,
Michele
No comments:
Post a Comment