Front Burners

The following editorial, published yesterday in the New York Times, highlights the importance of following through the process to create systematic change.

Like Texas, Florida has seen the need to lay a pathway to a new system of care for juveniles involved with the Department of Juvenile Justice. Experts, stakeholders, policy makers and communities from around the state are coming together to create a Blueprint for Juvenile Justice.

Although this is a commendable step to improving the system, it is only a step to the final goal. If we don't generate support for the Blueprint being developed, Florida could end up the same way Texas has, with all of the information available but struggling mightily with the follow through. 

Click here to read the full Texas Blueprint Task Force Report

Roy Miller
President
Children’s Campaign, Inc.

November 2, 2007

Editorial

Starting Over in Texas

Texas is reeling from the allegations of brutality, neglect and sexual abuse that have rocked its juvenile justice system. Heads have rolled and reforms signed into law this summer by Gov. Rick Perry have eased the crisis, for the moment. The only real way to remedy the situation is to raze Texas’s deeply flawed system and build a new one from the ground up.

The juvenile justice system’s Blue Ribbon Task Force has laid out a sensible and far-sighted plan for doing that. Unfortunately, it has gotten far too little support.

The panel rightly calls on Texas to replace its far-flung and understaffed archipelago of youth prisons with small, local facilities that would concentrate on rehabilitation and education. The proposed system would in many ways emulate Missouri’s juvenile justice system, which is the national model for how to deal successfully with troubled children.

The panel blames some of Texas’s high juvenile detention rate on poorly run schools. In far too many communities, children with learning, achievement or behavior problems that should be handled at school are probably being suspended or expelled, which makes them more likely to commit crimes. About 40 percent of the children sent off to detention centers appear to have learning disabilities that the schools have either failed to recognize or treat — a disproportionately high number of those are black and Hispanic.

These detention centers also have little capacity for addressing these children’s problems. The tiny communities where the prisons and detention centers are located — sometimes more than a day’s drive away from the children’s families — must surely have trouble attracting teachers, psychologists and well-trained corrections workers. Not surprisingly, about half of these young people end up back inside after being released.

Earlier this year, the Texas Legislature ordered the system to improve staff-to-student ratios and barred the courts from sending children to state institutions for committing misdemeanors. But the blue ribbon panel wants more fundamental changes.

Under the new proposal, young people would be housed in smaller centers nearer to their homes, where families, schools, churches and community organizations could play active roles in rehabilitation. These centers would make education a real priority. The proposed system would also focus on guiding students once they are released to make sure that they have a better chance at forging successful lives.

The reorganization project will require a lot of political will. The toughest opposition will likely come from legislators who talk a good game about reform but want to keep open detention centers in their districts to preserve local jobs. Given all the failures and abuses, there is no looking backward.