Madden Disagrees With TYC Report On Abuse & Neglect Cases
October 1, 2008 by Vince Leibowitz · Leave a Comment
State Rep. Jerry Madden (R-Plano), chairman of the Joint Committee on Management and Oversight of the Texas Youth Commission yesterday told the San Antonio Express-news that problems related to reporting abuse and neglect allegations within the troubled juvenile prison system don’t appear as bad as agency watchdogs have claimed.
Jaworski, Matula & More To Headline Blogger’s Caucus!
June 1, 2008 by Vince Leibowitz · Leave a Comment
On Thursday night, when Texas bloggers and progressive netroots activists from across the Lone Star State gather with many of our readers and Democratic activists for our Third Biennial Blogger’s Caucus, we will be joined by many of the great candidates on the ballot this year, as well as many incumbent Democratic officeholders.
TYC Will Abandon Remote Youth Prisons
April 17, 2008 by Vince Leibowitz · Comments Off
It looks like some interesting news came out of yesterday’s hearing on the joint select committee overseeing the Texas Youth Commission:
TYC Acting Director Resigns
February 12, 2008 by Vince Leibowitz · Leave a Comment
Last week, when TYC Acting Executive Director Dimitria Pope told a legislative committee she wasn’t sure if she’d be at the agency this week, I’m not sure that we actually thought that, by Monday night, she’d be gone. But, she was. She resigned:
Dimitria Pope, acting executive director of the Texas Youth Commission, resigned her post Monday evening, officials said.
Ms. Pope, who had held the job since June, had been told by TYC’s conservator Monday morning she would be fired if she did not quit.
Pope, of course, was a major source of controversy at the troubled TYC, as the Houston Chronicle’s Texas Politics blog noted:
Texas Youth Commission Leadership Gives Conflicting Answers, Fails To Satisfy House Committee
February 7, 2008 by Vince Leibowitz · Leave a Comment
Richard Nedelkoff, the newly appointed conservator of the still-troubled Texas Youth Commission got raked over the coals on Wednesday (and deservedly so, it seems) over his business ties to consultants he has brought in to assess the situation at the agency, and over whether or not Dimitria Pope would remain on as Executive Director of the agency.
First, the Pope situation. Pope told the House Appropriations Subcommittee on Criminal Justice she was told she wouldn’t get the ED’s post permanently, but Nedelkoff seemed non-committal in that regard:
“I applied but I was told I was not a candidate for the position. I can’t sit here and lie to you,” Dimitria Pope told lawmakers with a House subcommittee on criminal justice.
“I don’t know if I’ll be here next month or next week. I don’t know if I’ll be here tomorrow,” she said.
Her failure to snag the permanent executive director position did not surprise insiders.
Pope, who has worked more than two decades inside the adult prison system, has clashed bitterly with so-called “reformers” since being appointed acting executive director last spring.
She was criticized for stepping up the use of pepper spray against unruly youths; allegedly ignoring reports that more youths were being kept in isolation as punishment for poor behavior; and for spending hundreds of thousands of dollars on office furniture and remodeling that was apparently meant for hiring correctional staff.
Nedelkoff said he was still deciding whom to appoint to the permanent post and wasn’t yet sure if Pope would remain at TYC in another capacity.
Pope’s candor appeared to stun Nedelkoff, who had repeatedly deflected questions about whether he would pass over Pope in favor of someone else.
“Is Ms. Pope going to be the executive director of TYC?” demanded the chairman of the appropriations subcommittee, Rep. Sylvester Turner, D-Houston, as Pope sat almost directly in front of him.
“No decision has been made,” Nedelkoff replied.
Then, Nedelkoff got a dose of questions over his ties to consultants evaluating the TYC:
TYC Scandal: Conservator Wants Out
October 16, 2007 by Vince Leibowitz · Leave a Comment
It should come as no surprise that Texas Youth Commission Conservator Ed Owens is ready to jump off the sinking ship he boarded some months ago, after his abysmal failure to fully right the agency:
Conservator Ed Owens, whom Perry appointed June 1, said in a Monday interview that he’s ready to be replaced.
“I’m a short-timer, a real short-timer,” he said. “I’m asking to be relieved as conservator. Sooner rather than later.”
By the end of the month? “I think sooner.”
By the end of the week? “That’s about right.”
It’s quite interesting that Owens announces he wants to abandon ship in advance of the publication of a 25-page report he’s authored, which is expected to be made public today–and before a House Corrections Committee meeting on Wednesday.
TYC Scandal: More Deplorable Conditions
October 3, 2007 by Vince Leibowitz · Leave a Comment
One would think, after all of the brouhaha surrounding the conditions at the Texas Youth Commission earlier this year, that TYC would have done more to get its act together.
The Texas Youth Commission is investigating why juvenile inmates endured squalor and deprivation at a privately run West Texas prison that was repeatedly praised by TYC’s own quality-assurance monitors.
The agency began busing the 197 male inmates from the Coke County Juvenile Justice Center before dawn Tuesday. Officials also canceled an $8 million annual contract with operators of the state’s largest private juvenile prison, citing “deplorable conditions.”
The problems found at the prison in Bronte, operated by the GEO Group Inc. of Florida, were described in a report by TYC Ombudsman Will Harrell.
“There is a greater sense of fear and intimidation in this facility than perhaps any other I have been to,” Mr. Harrell wrote. He also noted that:
• Some young inmates were kept in “malodorous and dark” security cells for five weeks. They were allowed to leave, in shackles, only once a day for a shower.
• There was an “overreliance” on the use of pepper spray.
• Inmates “complain regularly of discovering insects in their food.”
TYC announced Tuesday that its inspector general’s office, as well as Department of Public Safety troopers, were investigating. TYC spokesman Jim Hurley said other agencies, including the state auditor’s office and the attorney general’s office, could join the investigation.
It took this long for this to come to the surface? No TYC employee has ever visited this facility? What has agency’s conservator been doing for the last four or five months?
Check this:
This is only the latest problem to beset TYC, which was placed in state conservatorship this year after a sex abuse scandal and subsequent cover-up were exposed by The Dallas Morning News and the Web site of The Texas Observer.
The Dallas Morning News, in fact, revealed problems with this facility back in July, although it evidently took TYC’s people until yesterday to actually take any action.
It’s clear that the conservator Governor Perry appointed over the TYC needs to be replaced. It’s clear he’s not doing his job because he evidently hasn’t made all of the top-down changes he needed to to make the agency function properly:
The agency employs four full-time quality-assurance monitors at the Coke County prison. They work in a portable building just outside the facility’s secure perimeter.
Their jobs were to ensure that GEO was meeting the terms of its contract, the first priority being inmates’ health and safety, Mr. Hurley said.
“What were they doing? That’s what we’re asking,” Mr. Hurley said of the monitors. “I do imagine that we will be seeing personnel actions taken as a result of this.”
Indeed, what the hell were they doing? What is anyone doing at TYC, and why do we continue to have these problems?
Special TYC Committee Back In Business
August 30, 2007 by Vince Leibowitz · Leave a Comment
The joint select committee investigating the Texas Youth Commission is back to work now, and, once again, TYC staff are wrangling with members of the Committee. Via the DMN:
And while TYC staffers continuously asserted that inmates are far better off than they were when news of widespread physical and sexual abuse in the juvenile justice system first broke earlier this year, lawmakers at times appeared dubious during the joint hearing of the House/Senate TYC oversight committee.
TYC Scandal: Justice Department Knew About Juvenile Prison Abuses For Years, Did Nothing
August 6, 2007 by Vince Leibowitz · Leave a Comment
In some truly Pulitzer-worthy coverage, the Dallas Morning News ran a piece Sunday which exposed the depth of the U.S. Department of Justice’s knowledge–and subsequent lack of action–with regard to the Texas Youth Commission sex scandal:
TYC’s Secret Privatization Plans For 10 To 13 Year Olds
July 16, 2007 by Vince Leibowitz · Leave a Comment
Grits for Breakfast (hat tip to Kuff for bringing the Grits post to our attention) has discovered some alarming information about privatization of Texas Youth Commission incarceration for 10-13 year old juvenile offenders, which they happened to discover via a Texas Register item:
