A coupla upcoming interim Texas legislative hearings may interest Grits readers. Tomorrow morning, the House Criminal Jurisprudence Committee
will consider sentencing issues related to the mentally ill and implementation of the new eyewitness ID bill. Then next Tuesday, the House Corrections Committee will
hold a hearing on an array of juvenile justice topics including the creation of the new Juvenile Justice Department. Both hearings you can
watch online.
Mental health is a major issue. The juvenile system gets cases dumped on them, they end up an adult and we have to deal with them in th criminal justice system because of a lack of services for them. It ends up costing taxpayers far more at that point than it does to prevent them from entering the system to begin with. The juvenile end has focused on diverting kids from incarceration and has done a fantastic job of it too. But, if facilities keep shutting doors on adolescents then the former TYC units will start filling up with the mental cases and they will ebd up with us in the adult system.
ReplyDeleteWhy are they having more hearings on the creation of TJJD? I thought it was supposed to be up and running on all cylinders and doing a wonderful job by now. Maybe they can discuss ways to stop all the staff from leaving, the astronomically high overtime being accrued, how to get control over the number of 12+ hour shifts staff are required to work to meet coverage or coming up with a "real" treatment program.Maybe they can talk about the safety of the kids and the staff. Or not!!!
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