tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8597101.post4751539185842581924..comments2024-03-25T20:06:39.794-05:00Comments on Grits for Breakfast: Pre-Hearing MSM Roundup on TYCGritsforbreakfasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10152152869466958902noreply@blogger.comBlogger4125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8597101.post-1711858868820842732007-08-30T09:32:00.000-05:002007-08-30T09:32:00.000-05:00Does anyone ever wonder why some of the kids act t...Does anyone ever wonder why some of the kids act the way they do? Well, look at the number of one parent homes and the women who continue to have babies for the money they receive. They could care less about what happens to these children and I have heard some of the women say, as soon as this kid is 16 they are gone from my house. <BR/><BR/>We should stop paying for womene to have babies and this would stop some of the kids or hopefully stop some of the kids from never feeling love of two parents and growing up in a home where Mom sleeps with a different man each night or leaves the oldest and goes out and parties.<BR/><BR/>We as a society have caused a lot of this behavior, it is time to put a stop to this and the sooner the better. Don't think I have not witnessed this, I taught in a school and one of the women taking one of my classes had 5 kids, all from different fathers and was pregnant with her six, you guessed it, different father. None of these men are dads to them and the mothers can't wait for those checks to come in and we pay them to go to school also.<BR/><BR/>Got to the heart of the problem and some of the will stop after awhile. Like every other bill passed by the Lege, they seem to take forever to get done!!!Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8597101.post-56041072576744961962007-08-29T14:10:00.000-05:002007-08-29T14:10:00.000-05:0020 percent of TYC youths quickly back in trouble W...20 percent of TYC youths quickly back in trouble <BR/><BR/>Web Posted: 08/28/2007 12:06 AM CDT<BR/><BR/>Lisa Sandberg<BR/>Austin Bureau <BR/><BR/>CORSICANA — Thirteen days after Howard McJunkin was paroled from a Texas Youth Commission facility after beating and raping an elderly woman in this East Texas town, authorities say he committed the same crime again. <BR/>McJunkin is one of 2,200 offenders the TYC rushed to release this year as part of an effort to drastically reduce the population of the scandal-plagued juvenile corrections system. Nearly one in five of those parolees, a full 408, have been rearrested for new offenses, including McJunkin and 42 others for violent crimes, documents obtained by the San Antonio Express-News reveal. While high recidivism rates have long been a fact of life for TYC — 50 percent of parolees re-offend within three years — the rapid rearrest of offenders released in a hurry this year has residents in this town of 25,000 demanding to know exactly who's getting out and how decisions are being made. <BR/><BR/>"If a kid commits a rape like that when they're that young, put 'em in there and keep 'em in there," said Shane, a woman who lives down the street from McJunkin's second accuser and who asked that her full name not be printed. "I had no idea (the suspect) lived on the next street. My godchildren play out in the backyard. I'm sometimes here at night by myself." <BR/><BR/>A TYC spokesman said the agency is doing as much as it can to assess the risk of offenders, and that it releases only those who are suitable parole candidates. But there are no guarantees. <BR/><BR/><BR/>"There are people who are going to get out and reoffend. We know that," spokesman Jim Hurley said. "These kinds of things happen in every state in the union and in every country in the world. Somebody gets paroled and they commit another crime. It is horrific that these things happen, but we have to make decisions based on the law." <BR/><BR/>While the Legislature this spring enacted a series of agency wide reforms in an effort to address a sex abuse scandal, including closing TYC facilities to offenders between the ages of 19 and 21 and those sent in for misdemeanor offenses, they left untouched the agency's current criteria to parole juveniles. <BR/><BR/>Staff members who make parole decisions can consider neither the seriousness of the offenders' original crimes nor their sentences — just their behavior inside TYC. Juveniles sentenced to long terms for violent crimes typically serve just a fraction of their sentence. In contrast, violent offenders in the adult system are required to serve at least half their sentences behind bars. <BR/><BR/>Officials are looking at revising the parole guidelines but Hurley said the agency is unlikely to require original offenses to be considered without lawmakers ordering it. <BR/><BR/>State prosecutors highlight what they insist are the consequences of such a policy, combined now with the state mandate that TYC's population be reduced by much as 40 percent. <BR/><BR/>In three separate incidents in Harris County, three recently released TYC parolees have been rearrested on allegations of aggravated robbery, the same crime that landed two of them at TYC, said Bill Hawkins, chief of the juvenile division at the Harris County district attorney's office. <BR/><BR/>"I'll be surprised if we don't get more of these cases," Hawkins said. <BR/><BR/>Police in San Antonio last month arrested two TYC offenders, paroled to a local halfway house, who allegedly escaped, drove to Abilene in a stolen car and kidnapped and raped a woman there, authorities say. <BR/><BR/>Greg Cloud, a detective with the Corsicana police's juvenile division, remembers having had a bad feeling in his gut when McJunkin, 20, showed up at his office last month to register as a sex offender. <BR/><BR/>McJunkin had been sent to TYC several years earlier for beating and raping an elderly woman whose lawn he once mowed. The crime shocked the community, both because it was so brutal and because the assailant, then about 15, was so young. <BR/><BR/>As McJunkin sat before him, Cloud remembers thinking, "What rehabilitation could have taken place?" <BR/><BR/>If police are correct, not much. <BR/><BR/>Less than two weeks after his release from TYC, McJunkin was rearrested and charged as an adult with aggravated sexual assault. Corsicana's police captain, Kenneth Kirkwood said that in the early hours of July 22, McJunkin broke into the home of a 79-year-old neighbor, who lived alone, and raped her. Kirkwood said the alleged rape occurred so soon after his release that local authorities had not had time to post McJunkin's photo on the state's sex offender Web site. <BR/><BR/>McJunkin, who refused a request at the local jail to be interviewed, was taken into custody after authorities say the victim identified him in a police lineup. <BR/><BR/>As a grand jury decides this week whether to indict McJunkin, TYC is trying to figure out what to do with 150 offenders between the ages of 19 and 21 who, under the new reforms, can no longer remain at TYC. <BR/><BR/>"Just because the crime is really egregious doesn't mean we can automatically send a kid to the adult prison," Hurley said. <BR/><BR/>http://64.233.167.104/search?q=cache:YkpNcnJt5KAJ:www.mysanantonio.com/news/metro/stories/MYSA0828.01A..tycparole.344e95f.html+tyc+youths+going+back+to+jail+2007+tx&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4&gl=usAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8597101.post-32403952548371193742007-08-29T10:42:00.000-05:002007-08-29T10:42:00.000-05:00ED : Quality of life for Staff and Youth has gr...ED : Quality of life for Staff and Youth has greatly improved over the last 100 days.........<BR/><BR/>GEEZAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8597101.post-50879370738745326202007-08-29T10:33:00.000-05:002007-08-29T10:33:00.000-05:00Ed's first statement.........The Staff and Youth a...Ed's first statement.........The Staff and Youth are better off since June 1st........ ( Spaceship To MARS )Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com