TYC deprioritized abuse allegations while media frenzy raged

The Texas Youth Commission Ombudsman's first ever report to the state's political leadership (pdf) of “particularly serious or flagrant” problems at the agency alleged that TYC had closed files on hundreds of allegations of staff-on-youth abuse without proper investigation. I've finally had a chance to look through the relevant documents, so here's my take what we've learned from this new report, at least in broad strokes:

The story begins in June 2007, when Governor Perry's "fixer" Jay Kimbrough left the TYC conservator's post for a cushier job at Texas A&M, and former TDCJ #2 man Ed Owens took over in his stead. At the time, I marveled that Governor Perry "appointed a man to run the agency for whom the state [in 2006] paid to settle allegations in a civil suit that he (and others) ignored sexual harassment complaints from subordinates at his old employer, the Texas Department of Criminal Justice."

By the time Owens ascended from interim executive director to conservator in June 2007, TYC and other agencies had established widely publicized hotlines to gather complaints of abuse, past and present, some of which turned out to be credible and spawned a flurry of mostly negative media attention about the agency throughout much of the year. Confounding the problem was a great deal of confusion and overstatement of aggregate data caused by uncoordinated systems that double-counted cases and made it difficult to track them internally.

It was at just this moment in July 2007, we learn in the Ombudsman's memo, that the Youth Rights Division was reorganized and "the number of Youth Care Investigators dropped from 21 to 8; a 62% decrease." Indeed, "two facilities did not have a Youth Care Investigator assigned at all."

So to summarize: The Governor brought in Ed Owens from TDCJ - a man for whom the state had previously paid a civil settlement over allegations he covered up sexual misconduct by a subordinate - who proceeded to slash the number of abuse investigators by 2/3 at a time when the volume of complaints was higher than ever. Though the Ombudsman's timeline is careful not to name names of individual decisionmakers, that sequence of events was the most astonishing revelation to me in the entire document.

However, the memo also raised additional, significant legal concerns. In an addendum to the original report, Assistant Ombudsman Kim Bennink wrote in an addendum (pdf) that "TYC is not in compliance at this time with the Evins [settlement] agreement" with the US Department of Justice because of the agency's inability/failure to document and track incidents of misconduct.

Bennink also raised "serious concerns about the agency's compliance with the Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 (PERA given the apparent status of the AMI system." In PREA, Congress asserted under the Act's findings that "The Supreme Court ruled that the deliberate indifference to the substantial risk of sexual assault violates prisoners rights unde rthe Cruel and Unusual Punishment Clause of the Eigth Amendment." I'm not sure whether slashing the number of investigators at a time when complaints were pouring in constitutes "deliberate indifference," but it's sure headed in that direction.

The good news is that many of these problems can and will be fixed going forward, though every delay risks the statute of limitations running out regarding some of the older cases. More than 500 cases will be revisited now by the Office of Inspector General, so ultimately the OIO report has identified - and the agency has agreed to implement - a way for TYC to work itself out of the dilemma created by lapsed investigations.

From a global perspective, I tend to agree with House Corrections Chairman Jerry Madden who told me last week that while he thought the Ombudsman's findings were significant, the situation now seemed to be under control. He considered this not nearly as critical as the special education shortcomings identified in a comprehensive OIO analysis released this summer, and on the whole I'd have to agree.

The decision to slash the number of investigators while the number of complaints was booming was made by specific agency leaders who are now gone. There's not much left to do in that regard but pick up the pieces - one more unhappy task awaiting the new Executive Director.

Here are the full, related materials from the OIO:

• Cover Letter (.pdf)
• Report on Evaluation of the Alleged Mistreatment System (.pdf)
• Addendum to Report on Evaluation of the Alleged Mistreatment System (.pdf)
• Response in Reference to Report Addendum (.pdf)
• TYC Press Release (.pdf)