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.
Gov. Greg Abbott is in the process of replacing two top officials at the scandal-plagued juvenile justice agency that is still adjusting to a new executive director who took the helm last month.
Gov. Greg Abbott is set to make his latest move in shaking up leadership at the scandal-plagued Texas Juvenile Justice Department, multiple reform advocates said Tuesday.
With no experience working directly with incarcerated kids, Camille Cain is an unconventional choice to be the new director of the Texas Juvenile Justice Department. But experts hope she'll be well-suited to handle problems like staffing shortages and a sexual abuse scandal.
Staff at the Texas Juvenile Justice Department have been asked to review a few dozen problem inmates for possible transfer to adult prisons, a move that has sparked concern among activists and advocates.
Texas is unlikely to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 17 to 18 next year, a top state official has predicted, to the dismay of juvenile justice advocates.
This week on "Texas Matters," we look at a major flaw in the way maternal mortality rates in Texas are tracked (00:25). Also, why are more women running for office in the state (7:53)? And, finally, we examine what's behind a new sex abuse scandal in the Texas juvenile justice system (17:39).
Read the rest of this article and listen to the radio interview on Texas Public Radio.
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.
Amid calls by children's advocacy groups for the state to close its six remaining juvenile lockups, and ongoing investigations into a chronic pattern of sexual assaults at those centers, a legislative committee on Tuesday is expected to open an inquiry into how to divert more teenage offenders into community-based programs rather than state custody.
