Texas Youth Commission Can’t Seem To Get Its Act Together

Out of the public eye for a bit following the close of the 80th Legislature, it seems that—somehow—the Texas Youth Commission still can’t get its act together:

Red-faced officials at the scandal-racked Texas Youth Commission on Thursday canceled the release on parole of more than 150 teenage offenders after discovering that many had served little time on their sentences for serious violent crimes such as murder, aggravated sexual assault, aggravated robbery and aggravated kidnapping.

They also announced a top-to-bottom review of their parole criteria as a result.

One youth on the recent list had been sentenced to 40 years in the knife slaying of a classmate, who was stabbed 15 times. He had served less than three before the agency recommended his release.

Another, serving time for molesting six children, was recommended for release even though he had numerous write-ups in youth prisons for indecent exposure and for possessing a weapon. One was a sex offender who assaulted a Youth Commission employee about a year earlier.

Two of those recommended for parole were escapees who are still at large.

“They all did meet the existing TYC standards for release on parole,” said Jim Hurley, the Youth Commission’s public affairs director. “But after further consideration, we are not comfortable with our recommendation, and we are pulling all of them back for a much more in-depth review. We are going to take a good, hard look at all those files.”

But, isn’t the “good, hard look” the type of look you should have already given? And, evidently that, “good, hard look” didn’t evidently take more than a few minutes:

Even so, within hours, officials with the state’s adult parole system confirmed they received a new list of about 70 youths that had been approved for parole — many of them on the previous list that had been withdrawn.

Obviously, there is some legislative outcry:

“Some of these crimes were horrendous. There’s no way these offenders should be on the street,” said House Corrections Committee Chairman Jerry Madden, R-Richardson, after reviewing the first list Thursday. He demanded all the cases be sent back to the Youth Commission for review, and officials there quickly complied.

“It’s incredulous to me that this could happen. After all the work the Legislature did last spring to clean up this agency, and now I see this, it’s clear the Legislature has not gotten what it wanted.”

Nope. And it’s so obvious Ray Charles could have told you that before Sine Die.

The fact that the Joint Select Committee on the Management and Oversight of the Texas Youth Commission seemed to “fizzle” about mid-way through the session may have something to do with that. They took a lot of testimony early on, but missed a tremendous opportunity to subpoena the hell out of hundreds of TYC officials and stage a more full-blown inquiry. I think this is what Texans expected, although it didn’t seem to happen.

I know there were issues about calling some people because they may plead the Fifth Amendment before the Committee and because it could have potentially interfered with ongoing investigations by law enforcement, but at the very least, the Committee really should have made more noise throughout the session–and should still be doing so regardless of whether things like this disaster continue to crop up.