Please see the attached editorial from the New York Times. To put this in perspective:Whitmire has been advocating for some time now to abolish the Texas Youth Commission in its entirety and as much as they've successfully downsized, it's hard to argue with his approach. As in New York, at least the possible path is visible. The devil is in the details, particularly the availability of and funding for viable, local alternatives, but it looks a lot more likely today than it did to me not long ago when Texas youth prison populations topped 4,500. TYC is up for Sunset review again next spring, along with the Juvenile Probation Commission, so expect these issues to come up for discussion then.
Where you see New York, put Texas.
Where you see $170 million annual budget, put $231 million.
Where you see 2,000 employees, put 3,000.
Where you see 700 children, put 1,520.
Where you see $220,000 to house a child in a state facility, put $124,000.
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
'Wasteful and Ineffective'
According to a memo forwarded me by his staff, State Sen. John Whitmire forwarded a New York Times editorial about the Empire State's dysfunctional juvenile corrections system titled "Two Words: Wasteful and Ineffective" to Members of the Texas Legislature and the board of the Texas Youth Commission with the following addenda:
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To take one example consider a math class at TYC. At anyplace else this class would be effective, informative and would run smoothly. I have observed a lot of these classes at TYC but I'm not a teacher. The teachers are motivated and properly educated and trained. The textbooks are the same. What is the difference?
In the math classes at TYC the students may be sitting there for 50 minutes having fantasies of killing the teacher. They may be planning their next gang related assault when they get back to the dorm. They may be thinking of a dozen ways to sabotage whatever order the dorm staff will try to maintain. He may be thinking of ways to show his ass, create a scene, impress his peers and struggle with security staff during this math hour.
What does math mean to him? Does he see any relevance to his life in something as uncool as math? How much of the lessons actually sinks in?
Now take the other 20 class or groups run by TYC. The same conditions prevail. Little is accomplished when barely suppressed anarchy prevails. Very often a fight breaks out or someone starts throwing things. That's why they were removed from their regular classroom starting at age 10 and that's why they are now in TYC.
Grits,
I think the key phrase here is "availability of and funding for viable, local alternatives."
Who will oversee the quality of local programs? Who will advocate/represent these programs to the lege, to ensure that funding levels don't drop off?
What safeguard will be in place to ensure that we do not return to another frenzy of youth prison construction the next time a few violent juvenile crimes are in the media?
In short, are we more concerned about the "wasteful" or the "ineffective" part of the equation?
Bill Bush
There will ALWAYS be a need for a "last resort" agency of some sort. How many beds? Oh maybe 1200-1800, IMO. There are no county, private, or non-profits out here to deal with violent kids who are a continual threat to public safety and demonsstrate it everytime they are in the free.. Not sure there are programs anywhere to successfully deal with this population either. Sad fact but true. Maybe BB can point the way.
Plato
Time and again, Whitmire appears here as a hero. When will people realize that he's the reason that the juvenile justice system has be a dismal failure. He's been in charge the whole time.
You know...
... if we are serious about spending money in the communities where juveniles are coming from, why not invest in programs that will impact them before, not after, they enter the juvenile justice system.
Whitmire has up until now had a lot of say over the budget allocated to TYC. He has set them up for failure by underfunding and then coming back and accusing that they couldn't medicate, educate or resocialize. All you TYC employees need to join our union and get ready for the fight again this session. He wants you all gone. The counties can't afford to do what he wants them to, so everyone help your counties out by advocating funding.
Gangland Senator Whitmire could take a look at his own backyard.
Violent gangs and drug traffickers in the Houston area are growing stronger and more international, spreading into the suburbs as they bulk up on new found connections with Mexico's lucrative and brazen organized crime syndicates.
The region is home to far more gang members than anywhere in Texas, according to the National Gang Threat Assessment.
As of this year, there were 225 documented gangs roaming the area, according to intelligence reports, the biggest being the "Houstones."
The number of gang members that have been confirmed by police is only a small fraction of the real total.
There are many factors at play here for those who retaliate against rehabilitation methods; mental health is probably much less of a factor than fundamentals such as basic positive social connectivity. These children are destine for failure and social deviance from birth. For many their only hope exists in what little social training may come from the public school system because their home environment instills and encourages their current status; they simply aren’t given the tools to overcome their circumstances and for all practical purposes they are living out the only socially disconnected life they have ever known and will ever know. Their social deviance is a way of life.
The answer isn’t (more), its less. The New York Times editorial is absolutely correct in its summation. The only ones that should be given over to state juvenile detention should be the worst and most violent and these at risk youth need as much individual attention as possible. The article suggests that a huge part of the problem is the unions.
The public school system is not equipped to deal with students in lower economical neighborhoods comprised mostly of welfare households nor do the public schools in these areas offer equivalent educational opportunity. The exact opposite should be true, these public school areas should be given all the tools necessary to offer a more individualized curriculum tailored to structure and control with the very best we have to offer in instruction and counseling if we have any intention of providing these at risk youth with a fighting chance.
Perhaps this type of small classroom highly controlled environment could provide students with a fundamental choice and help guide them away from what they cannot control at home.
These are social issues that encompass for the most part a welfare system that should be designed to move people away from welfare at all cost if ever we want society to overcome the platitudes of welfare life and the criminal connectives that surround it; this is where we should begin with root cause evaluation and foundational remedies.
"Underfunded" my ass! @$124K per kid per year? IMO - the administrative infrastructure needs to be cut by 50-60%. TYC needs a central office presence about the same as TJPC.
There is definitely some dead weight in TYC central office. Much more, incompetence runs rampant. And, they spend a great deal of their time trying to dodge, deflect, and retaliate against unit employees for pointing out the problems the CO admins themselves create.
However, there are MANY kids in TYC that you will NEVER be able to release to the public school system, and many more that would never be educated by the public school system.
SHUT THEM DOWN!!!!
Too much waste. Let the counties have the money for prevention services and the violent ones create a SMALL unit for them.
“However, there are MANY kids in TYC that you will NEVER be able to release to the public school system, and many more that would never be educated by the public school system.”
The public schools where most of these kids come from are designed for controlling the masses not educating them. And historically speaking its always been about controlling THESE masses. Low paying gov’ment J O B or no pay gov’ment enslavement, pick your career path.
I’ve written this on Grits many times and speak out publicly regarding tyc needs to be abolished as a state agency and rolled up into a juvenile corrections department managed by tdcj. A central repository to warehouse these really messed up kids and let people who know how to do it do it. The tyc has been playing prison since the beginning and has found themselves wasting a lot of resources covering up for it. The tyc has imps whining about how bad these kids are, how bad their overseers are, how waist full the agency is, the deplorable working conditions, the mockery’s that are referred to as school and therapy. Roll tyc up, and go from wasting 124k per kid a year to prolong the inevitable to around 19k per kid per year. The kids want to be grown, let them be grown. I’m sure tdcj will hire tyc team playa’s, and the rest can repent, get retrained if possible, and get a better career.
As the world shrinks with today’s media, exposed daily is this culture of wretchedness that this 120 year old state sponsored child abusing agency perpetuates, the type of children it serves, and the sheer stupidity of the people who are enslaved/imployed by it. Texas needs a last resort for at risk teens, a place for a kid to be sent, not dumped, when the county programs fail them. Any legislator who allows tyc to continue existing and says their tough on crime is a liar. If our legislators truly want to be “Tough on Crime” and save the tax payers money too, rolling up tyc to tdcj is a good move. Let the professionals warehouse these kids who were failed by parents, pubic school unionites, and local county gov’ment imps.
Sheldon tyc#47333 II c/s
TYC is the most wasteful agency with state funds. It is shameful to spend so much money per youth, and get nothing in return. The central office should be abolished. TYC should be a part of the adult prison system with strict controls on inmates, staffers and leaders. Too much waste and abuse has occured to allow this wild agency to continue. Many old-timers are hid away and continue to direct the downhill direction of the agency.
TYC has never been the same since Steve Robinson and Sandy Burnam left (former Executive Director and Deputy Executive Director). Those two were leaders and communicated very well with those downtown. The institutions were a lot safer back then, unlike what we’re hearing now.
Many of the comments about how TYC is addressing juvenile delinquents is a sad reflection on its current leadership. My bet is Whitmire's latest attack on TYC won't elicit a response from the current leader in TYC. She just simply sits back and lets all these negative attacks continue. TYC employees deserve better. I’d advise my former colleagues to bail out of that shit if she stays on board.
If TYC ever needed a change, try starting at the top. A strong and effective leader is what it’ll take to get the ship sailing again.
TYC has never been the same since Dr. James Turman left. A leader and communicated very well with those downtown. The institutions were a lot safer back then, unlike what we’re hearing now.
DR Turman was a change agent, lol.
How are you supposed to offer services to a juvenile in the small counties where there IS NO services and very small budgets? Let Whitmire take some of these so called not so bad kids home with him to live with him and his family ! ! You folks do not understand that these are bad kids that eventually go to TYC... Do you want the kid who killed someone to walk the streets walk or go to TYC ??
NO! But the public is tired of TYC abusing all youth in the name of BAD youth. Grow up or get out of the field!. You don't kill everyone for one bad person.
In all fairness, I have to agree with Whitmire:
TYC's leader is Cheri Townsend. A few words comes to mind:
- Ineffective
- Over-her-head
- Ineffective
- Workers compensation leads all state agencies
- General Counsel has no juvenile justice experience
- Inexperienced
- Arizona is not Texas
In Texas, we need someone who is appointed by the gov and approved by the senate to avoid debacles like what we're seeing here.
Texas doesn't want an introverted "stay quiet and hush" leader when it comes to defending it's citizens. It needs a leader. In Juvenile Justice, it needs someone other than Cheri Townsend, the Executive Director (not) for the Texas Youth Commission.
Dont tell me to grow up until you walk in my shoes..
If we abolish TYC, what do we do with the kids that kill their teachers or the gang members that kill our loved ones? Many times the youth are too young to go to TDC. What do we do if there is no TYC?
You really need a foundation to have feet - thus shoes.
Walk in my shoes - CRAP. You are not the first person in juvenile justice - grow up. Your attitude is the problem...poor me and poor kids. Grow some onions if you know what I mean or get the he...ll out of JC. Money and kind hearts do not fix bad kids...OR bad employees. A catch-all agency, out of touch with reality...die now.
Leave it to a thug like Sheldon! Hell, losers like him sometimes make a point! A felon with a TDC education!
"See Sheldon? Hug that thug Sheldon, Harley and all."
Hell, vote for Sheldon and lock'em up like Sheldon was and be done with it! That's the answer! You too can be a engineer!
If Whitmire had a clue he would not compare New York with Texas, but any idiot could see this.
The agency did move from 4500 to 1500 youth in little over two years. Reforms take time, it is too bad that this same Senator can make no headway with TDCJ. TDCJ of all agencies needs reform but for some reason he just cannot seem to crack this nut, maybe another cell phone call to his family by an inmate on death row might just wake him up, but I am fooling myself, anyone who would compare New York to Texas should be voted out and sent there, now that would be SWEET.
01:00am - You are the typical TYC employee that hates youth. You seem upset and even envious that Sheldon did good in his life and you are still at TYC on the night shift. Who is really ahead? Loser.
Really, its just TYC's turn. Every state agency at one time or another has a scandal. You name it they have at some point in the past embarrassed Texas as a state. Its just who's pants are down the furthest when the lege comes to town. You can't run the state from Austin. Bureaucrats don't know diddly about getting problems handled, they have to create problems, in order to justify their existence. No problems means budget cuts, so they are forced by a system of their own creation to to walk a fine line between enough problems to justify budgets and not enough to keep their jobs. When will elected officials get it? The people who were smart enough to elect you, are probably smart enough to handle their own problems. Oh, and saying that they are not, is another bureaucratic reason for existence.
Wrong again. TYC has proven over and over it cannot exist within itself. It is wasteful. It harms youth rather than helps youth. It has been a state embarrasment for fifteen years now. Most of the employees only have ged-equivilents or high school and the ones with degrees are questionable and of lower status. So, you see the results that TYC provides to youth and the state. NO MUCH. Time to abolish and start clean with new folks and new management.
English as a fourth language.
01:46 You have hit on something that so far has not been admitted to at TYC. "Most of the employees only have ged-equivilents...."
For those of you who are wondering what we teach youth at TYC this GED level of staff training has a consequence. Most of TYC staff never utter a sentence in standard English - it's strictly ghetto. Many of the students feel comfortable in that language and for the rest its sort of an immersion course in ghetto English. They master it before they get out of orientation.
Then there is Spanish, of course. That makes two languages. The main language seems a bit odd at first to the first time volunteer. When they believe they hear something that sounds vaguely like some form of human speech they look around and nobody's lips are moving. However, there is that low pitched undifferentiated rumble that seems to be a vague remnant of speech.
The person "speaking" appears inflicted with a serious case of lazy mouth and by not articulating his words they are so undifferentiated that the word shank sounds just like the word television. If you look for body clues, all you see behind droopy eyelids is part indifference and part menace.
So, what is the fourth language? Many of the teachers and some staff members with degrees still speak English as amazing as it sounds.
01:00:00 said "Hell, vote for Sheldon and lock'em up like Sheldon was and be done with it! That's the answer! You too can be a engineer!"
If TYC doesn't work, how do we explain Sheldon, he acts like he turned around and made it as an engineer with employees. I'm not sure he would have had the same outcome if he went to TDCJ ID. So TYC worked for some.....
Ham2mtr
As hard as the tyc culture tried to break my sprit they could not. Right off the bat I knew I didn’t belong there. I wasn’t defeated or beat down nor was I some bad ass. I came from a good well connected family and was not the normal kid who found themselves in tyc. At 15 it was obvious to me I was smarter than all of my peers and the majority of the staff. Not because I was 15 but because it was actually true. The staff knew it and protected themselves against it. To this day I think Harold, the trash haul man was the smartest of them all. I was provided the means to control every aspect of my time there, I did pretty much what I wanted. The culture of tyc allowed me to hone my skills in organized crime. I learned in that world that people are nothing more than pawns to be used and abused at my whim. If I were in tdc today I would most likely have a very lucrative cell phone business. My time in tyc changed me from a misguided teenager into a monster who had no respect for human beings. Somehow around 20 I figured that was no way to live life. I’ve been battling the psychological effects and expectations of time spent in that culture for 30 years. That’s my true success.
About the language, one of the things from a tyc investigation in 1969, one of many in this 120 year history, was that tyc was a world of its own, having its own language. There was fear mongering that if something wasn’t done it could spread to the free world. We spoke what was called “state talk” back then. I remember in the 80’s when ebonics became an official language and how I joked that state talk is now an official language called ebonics. Now it’s simply called ghetto. When I came home from gatesville my Mom would say to me stop talking like a schvatza you sound ignorant. Terrace was a predominately black school and the hillbillies in diagnostics figured a Jewish kid was a minority but added to the needed white boy count, geniuses every one of them.lol
My wife of 25 years has never heard me speak state talk, after a few times volunteering at tyc, it just came out and she heard me. Her response, stop talking like a schvatza you sound ignorant. I’m still fluent, just dated.
Sheldon tyc#47333 II c/s
Sheldon,
I wonder how speaking "state talk" for 24-36 months prepares a youth for a job interview.
It can't be worse than being taught by teachers that can't work in the free. Drawn from the bottom of the barrel, TYC educators lack the onions and ability to teach youth very much. A stinky situation which leads to more problems for the youth.
Sheldon,
Believe it or not, the Dallas Morning News ran a piece about Gatesville way back in 1912 that pointed out the prison-like language.
BB
State talk prepares a kid for a job interview. It depends on the job. Prospecting for a criminal street gang or a job in government you’re most likely good, and I would think in many cases it’s a plus. However a professional job or simply trying to survive in college you are out of luck. Again just another way the thugs holding dorms are preparing the kids according to the implied mission of a prison preparatory school.
I mean it’s really said how stupid people sound speaking ghetto. I just ordered a book entitled Negrophilia: From Slave Block to Pedestal - America's Racial Obsession by Erik Rush that discusses this love of the ghetto gangster culture and how it’s a very subtle form of racism. Placing a positive spin on negative black American stereotypes only enforces the black negative stereotype and the latest form of Jim Crow, this so-called war on drugs.
I failed to mention the clothing style we use to call counting that is commonly called in today’s vernacular saggin. If you still counted in the free it was considered foolishness. Today you can hardly get on the train without seeing kids saggin. I always like to ask, what’s up with the saggy pants you just get out of tyc? Rarely does a kid answer yes.
When I speak to the tyc kids you should see the laughter I get from them when they see a middle-aged white man with saggy pants speaking ghetto. I remind them that I count over all of them because I’m a 2 timer and my case number is 47333, well below the 118xxx that most of them sport on the shirts these days. It’s an attention getter. Then I tell them like it is, where they stand in society, how to deal with the people watching over them and how to get out from under that control. For many it’s an AH Ha moment. However, tyc people have lead me to believe that what I tell the kids its very similar to going into Schlotzskys and telling them how great Subway is. It’s like how dare I tell these kids how it is and potentially rob the criminal justice system of yet another victim.
BTW the local tyc parole offices, at least the one in Dallas has a food pantry and a clothes closet. Please consider donating to these efforts. These kids need nice clothes for interviews and jobs as well as food and toiletry items. Many are thrust right back where they came from but with the added stigma, and psychological issues that go along with time spent in tyc. If you want to do something beyond anonymously ragging on a pathetic agency in a blog while not getting your hands dirty with these evil state kids this is a great opportunity to really help a victim of tyc. To me one of the biggest paybacks I can do to tyc and tdcj is to prevent it from gaining more customers. It does not make me popular to fans of the criminal justice system, it’s a daunting and never ending task against a machine with no heart or soul, yet I’m satisfied I’m making right a wrong somewhere, and it feels good.
Sheldon
Sagging pants - what does it mean?
They say that in India wealthy men used to let their fingernails grow to a foot in length or longer. What was the purpose in that? It was to show that they didn't have to work and didn't do any work. I suspect that this is the same reason that our urban hipsters let their pants sag.
I was on Congress Avenue last week when I saw a young man who seemed to be setting a record in the sagging department. I noticed that his left hand was completely occupied in keeping his pants from goings below his knees. His right hand had probably also seldom been put to any productive use in years. Is that what he is bragging about? "I'm am a completely unproductive member of society and I choose to spend my time on my pants rather than work." With every step he was at risk of tripping. He made a sharp turn and was almost flat on the pavement before catching himself. His entire consciousness was consumed with keeping his pants four inches below his boxers and above his knees - pulled up but not pulled up. What dedication!
In Houston we have imported about 600,000 illegal workers to do the work that the 600,000 chronically unemployed theoretically could do. Those 600,000 cannot get a job or will not fill the jobs that are available.
Thanks. Its actually comical to watch these idiots almost tripping and using one hand to hold their pants at the bottom of their hips. Most are probably kin to 'O'.
Or 'Che', the terriorist
A tip to saggers:
Your mistake is to keep buying pants of regular length. This causes you to have 12 inches of extra pants to be tripping up your feet. If you wore only short pants they would fit nicely right above your shoes and not trip you up bro.
They dress like idiots then wonder why the rest of society looks down on them. A waste...relocate to Africa or Mexico.
232: Most of the people you are addressing do not have the intelligence to understand what you told them. They do as their stoolies do...monkey see...monkey do; monkey be monkie.
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