It's been a rough month for the state's scandal-plagued juvenile lock-ups. The string of shake-ups at the top. The flurry of concern over moving kids to adult prison. The cloud of concern from the sex abuse scandal.
Across Texas, kids are getting into less trouble with the law even though the state population is exploding. So why is Harris County's juvenile detention center bursting at the seams?
The network backed by the billionaire industrialist brothers Charles and David Koch is investing millions to research how to help former prisoners successfully re-enter society in Texas and three other states.
A former Texas Ranger is set to take over as independent watchdog for Texas juvenile prisons, a shift the governor announced Wednesday amid an agency shake-up on the heels of a sex abuse scandal.
Death row inmates in Texas are given at least an hour a week outdoors. Hardened criminals inside California's famous San Quentin prison get 10 hours. Yet kids at a Dallas County correctional center for boys went months, sometimes more than a year, without going outdoors more than a few times.
Outraged by reports of abuses in Texas’ secure facilities for young offenders, lawmakers in a Senate finance committee called for top-to-bottom reform, and they’re not the only ones.
Texas correctional officials this month quietly eliminated the use of solitary confinement as a punishment for jailhouse rule-breakers, positioning the state at the forefront of a nationwide push to end the practice.
On September 23, 2016, hundreds of protesters marching through the streets of Uptown Charlotte stopped outside of the Mecklenburg County Jail on East 4th Street to show solidarity.
Read the rest of this article at Creative Loafing Charlotte.
Anthony Graves emerged from solitary confinement over six years ago to become a national crusader for justice reform, but it took a recent report by researchers at the University of Texas at Austin to add new urgency to his campaign to reform the practice in his own state.
Read the rest of this article at The Crime Report.
Solitary confinement, administrative segregation, seclusion, disciplinary separation and lockdown are a few of the names for isolating a prisoner in a separate cell. Officials say administrative segregation or "ad seg," is necessary for offenders who require maximum security to ensure the safety of staff, other offenders and the security of the institution.
