Governor Signs TYC Bill Into Law

It's finally happened. The TYC overhaul bill was signed by the governor on Friday, and went into effect immediately. This is a good change, and one that has been needed for years.

I am a TYC employee and have been for many years now. I assure you that most of the TYC employees are very happy to see many of the changes that will take place because of the new law.

One of the best changes is that 19 and 20 year olds will no longer be sent to the agency. The TYC program is geared toward helping minors. The 19 and 20 year olds are adults. They did not like being in the program and were seldom helped by the program. The only thing they usually did was to help the younger students become more accomplished and more dangerous criminals when they were released.

Another good change is to separate the younger and smaller students from those older and larger, and from those who are more violent. TYC used to do this in the 70's and 80's, and I never understood why they stopped it. This will help make the TYC environment safer for all of the students.

TYC will now have to lower the student-to-staff ratio to 1 staff JCO(Juvenile Correctional Officer) for every 12 students. In the past, TYC would tell you they had a 1 to 15 ratio, but it was not true. They counted many staff such as secretarys and administrators who did not directly supervise the students. The real ratio was about 1 to 20. The new ratio of 1 to 12 will only count those actually supervising students. This will make it safer for both the students and the staff.

The new law also creates a separate arm of the agancy, the Inspector General's Office, to investigate allegations of abuse and other crimes within the agency. It just makes sense that an investigator should be someone who is not a co-worker or friend of the person being accused. This should insure a more impartial investigation.

But, as with a lot of new laws, there are a couple of questionable parts to it. One is the exclusion of ALL misdemeanors as crimes for which a student can be sent to TYC. When many people think of misdemeanors, they think of relatively harmless crimes such as traffic tickets. They don't realize that some pretty serious crimes such as Assault With Injury and Possession Of A Firearm are currently misdemeanors in Texas law. Personally, I can think of few things more dangerous than a young criminal with a gun. This portion of the new law may actually make our communities a more dangerous place.

The new law also puts all employees on an "at will" employment basis. This means a supervisor no longer has to have "just cause" to terminate an employee. A supervisor can fire someone because he/she doesn't like their hair color (or some other equally ridiculous reason). Bad employees should be terminated, but it should be because they are not performing up to established standards -- not because some supervisor just doesn't like them.

Something that was discussed, but was left out of the law, was a significant raise. TYC employees are among the lowest-paid state employees in the nation, even though the job is both complex and dangerous. It would be much easier to attract competent staff and keep them, if salaries were raised to a more attractive level.

Overall, this was a good bill and contained many needed changes. Hopefully, the next legislature will tweak this new law and make it even better.