Will Juvenile Justice Be Sacrificed To The Budget ?

It's no secret that the state of Texas is in financial trouble.   Under Republican leadership, the state is facing a budget shortfall of around $27 billion dollars in the next biennium (the Texas budget is done in two-year increments since the legislature only meets once every two years).

The Republicans, who hold substantial majorities in both houses of the legislature and the governor's office, campaigned on a promise of "no new taxes".   Now they are faced with keeping that pledge while maintaining an adequate level of state services -- no small feat.   The federal government will be providing about $7 billion dollars, but that still leaves nearly $20 billion that would have to be cut from a projected expenditure of $99 billion (to maintain current expenditure levels).

Yesterday the state's Sunset Advisory Commission, which advises the legislature on which agencies to retain or abolish, made a recommendation about the state's juvenile justice system.   They again made the same recommendation that they made two years ago -- that the state abolish the Texas Youth Commission (TYC) and the Texas Juvenile Probation Commission (TJPC), and merge those two agencies into a single unit called the Texas Juvenile Justice Department.   The legislature ignored the recommendation two years ago, but may consider it this time.

The two agencies do not have any overlapping functions, so it hard to see how much money could be saved by combining them.   TJPC partially funds and lays down regulations and guidelines for probation department throughout the state (and oversees compliance with state regulations).   The probation departments are run by the individual counties.   On the other hand, TYC runs the state juvenile facilities and parole.   This is where the juvenile offenders are sent when the community-based probation departments can't handle them -- it's the state's version of juvenile prison.

TYC can only take students that are under the age of 19 and have committed felonies -- like burglary, theft, armed robbery, aggravated assault, child molestation, attempted murder, sexual assault, and murder.   These juveniles are not sent to TYC until churches, schools, probation, and other community-based organizations have failed in dealing with them.   They are, in essence, the worst juveniles the state has, and comprise less than one-half of one percent of the juveniles in Texas.   They are serious criminals, and yet TYC has a remarkable rate of rehabilitation with these juveniles (somewhere between 40-50%).   Even though understaffed and underfunded, they do an excellent job.

Some in the legislature think a ton of money can be saved by combining the two agencies, resulting in a pared down version of TYC with more community-based programs.   One legislator, Sen. Whitmire (D-Houston), has said he believes $200 million can be saved.   Frankly, I think this estimate is ridiculous.   That's nearly half the budget of TYC, which operates 10 institutions, 9 halfway houses and a parole system.

To save that much money, at least 5 juvenile institutions and 5 halfway houses would have to be closed -- and this in spite of the fact the TYC is already smaller now than it's been in decades (due to cuts made by the last legislature).   Even then, that would mean no more money for the community-based programs than they now receive -- thereby negating the expansion of community-based programs that the combining of TYC and TJPC is supposed to produce.

What is going to happen to these juveniles?   Since both state and community-based programs are operating near capacity, there is only two options for dealing with these juveniles -- put them back on the street or send them to adult prison, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ).   And both are already happening.

When TYC was pared down two years ago, the agency reduced the amount of time a juvenile stayed in the institution.   Many were released whether they were rehabilitated or not.   In fact, the amount of time a juvenile was institutionalized fell to just 2 or 3 months for many, and a parole violator did even less time (sometimes not even a month).  

This put the counties in a squeeze.   They couldn't let these criminals stay on the streets because they were still committing new crimes, and TYC didn't have the capacity to keep them as long as necessary (and community-based programs had already failed with these juveniles).   They did the only thing they could do.   They started sending more juvenile criminals to TDCJ (adult prison).   I find it hard to believe this was what reformers of TYC intended to happen.

But that is what's happening, and it will increase if the legislature follows through on the Senset Advisory Commission's recommendation.   It may or may not be a good idea to combine TYC and TJPC, but combining them will not save any real money -- not without putting more juvenile criminals on the street (endangering communities) and into adult prison (endangering the juveniles).  

Trying to save more money in juvenile justice at this time is just a very bad idea -- for both the communities and the juveniles.

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In the interest of full disclosure, I need to relate that I am currently a retired state employee. I spent over twenty years working at the Texas Youth Commission and the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.