MAY 22, 2007

A Blueprint for Meeting the Needs of Girls in TYC Custody
REPORT AND RECOMMENDATIONS TO THE TEXAS YOUTH COMMISSION

INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY

Currently, there are nearly 800 girls under the supervision of the Texas
Youth Commission (TYC), half of whom are held in TYC residential facilities.1 The four TYC secure facilities holding girls, all of which also hold
boys, are: Marlin Orientation and Assessment Unit; Ron Jackson State
Juvenile Correctional Complex, Units I and II; Giddings State School; and
the Corsicana Residential Treatment Center, which holds children who
“evidence mental illness or serious emotional disturbance.”2 In addition,
girls are held in two contract facilities, Victoria County Juvenile Justice
Center and W.I.N.G.S. for Life, and in the Willoughby Halfway House.
At this writing, children are being moved among the facilities such that
Ron Jackson will become an all female facility and Giddings will become
all male. The Marlin facility is scheduled for closure; thereafter, assessment of girls is to take place at Ron Jackson and assessment of boys at
the McLennan County State Juvenile Correctional Facility.
The ACLU Women’s Rights Project and the ACLU of Texas conducted
intensive field research in the facilities during May 2007. We spent a total
of 10 full days observing daily life, conducting in-depth interviews with
dozens of girls,3 and meeting with administrators and staff.4 We here
present our findings within three sections embodying our overarching
findings. They are as follows:
I. Girls in TYC custody need, but are not receiving, the
individualized counseling necessary to cope with childhood
disadvantage, familial abuse, and psychological damage.
II. Major aspects of TYC, including its range of available
placements for girls, its institutional culture, and its rehabilitative programming, fall short of meeting the needs of
girls.
III. The ongoing disadvantage experienced by girls in TYC
custody calls for the immediate appointment of a girls’
advocate within the agency.
Each section is followed by detailed recommendations. Although the suggested actions require some degree of investment, whether in time, effort,
or resources, they would, if implemented, likely prove to be more efficient
and cost-effective than current policy by contributing to more effective rehabilitation of girls in TYC custody.

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This report does is not an exhaustive account of our research findings. In
fact, the omissions include whole categories of information—such as
special education, appropriate rule structure, physical health concerns,
and societal reintegration—as to which further research is needed before
even tentative conclusions are reached. Rather, we present here an overall analysis and a set of general and detailed recommendations which, if
successfully implemented, would address many observed inadequacies.
We hope that as to all areas affecting the interests of girls, TYC will conduct ongoing fact-finding, self-evaluation, and improvement. It is crucial
to note that the benefits of reforming juvenile justice practices to address
girls’ concerns are never limited to girls alone, but benefit boys as well,
and often extend even to facility employees who find themselves in a
more humane, less conflict-ridden work environment.
Finally, we wish to extend our heartfelt thanks to the facility administrators
and staff who work tirelessly every day with some of the most troubled girls
and boys in the State of Texas, and who extended to us their hospitality,
cooperation, and kindness.

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I. Girls in TYC Custody Need Individualized Attention from Caring Adults

Almost invariably, girls enter TYC custody with backgrounds of severe sexual and/or physical abuse inflicted by
family members, neighbors, and romantic partners.
Interviewed girls also displayed an intense need to reveal
their abuse histories to a caring adult and to express their
pain. Many girls, moreover, are acutely aware of the link
between their unresolved psychological trauma and their
delinquent behavior. Yet within the crowded daily schedule
currently followed in TYC facilities, no time is allotted for
girls to speak privately with a caring adult who is qualified
to appropriately interact with, nurture, and support girls.
The absence of means to address the central dilemma in
the lives of TYC’s girls represents an ongoing crisis. As
teenagers, many girls are still open to receiving help, giving
TYC a unique opportunity to disrupt what will otherwise
continue as an intergenerational cycle of familial turmoil,
abuse, and delinquency.

Almost Every Girl in Custody Has Suffered Severe
Childhood Sexual and/or Physical Abuse.
The most striking feature of girls in custody is their shared
background of often horrific abuse and neglect. The abuse
typically starts young and in girls’ own homes and occurs
multiple times. The abusers are often fathers, brothers, a
mother’s romantic partners, or neighbors. Several girls
reported abuse to adult family members at the time it
occurred but were not believed, leaving their abusers
unpunished and undeterred.
Interviewed girls described feeling betrayal, pain, and
anger. Their trauma lies at the heart of their delinquency,
which typically takes a different form from that of TYC’s
boys. If one looks behind the labels applied to girls’ offenses, one finds that “assault” is often a fight with a mother,
sister, or grandmother; larceny or drug offenses are committed to survive after running away or under the influence
of an adult male; and “escape” is fleeing from a placement
where there was no adult in whom to confide.

Girls in Custody Have Virtually No Access to Counseling.
Interviewed girls reported that no adult in TYC had inquired
into the girls’ abuse histories or offered support in over-

coming them. Instead, overburdened caseworkers meet
with girls irregularly or for short periods of time and must
divide their time between arranging phone calls home,
monitoring girls’ progress through TYC’s “resocialization”
program, and other administrative tasks. Daily group sessions focus on girls’ crimes and their misbehavior during
confinement, and in any event are not an appropriate forum
for girls to air intensely personal and painful aspects of
their life histories. Girls taking psychiatric medication may
see a psychiatrist briefly every month or two. High child-tostaff ratios, a rigid rule structure, and the hectic pace of the
daily “sixteen hour schedule” cut off most opportunities for
informal guidance by direct care staff. Even potential peer
support is blocked by the isolation of girls in their cells
between activities as well as harsh rules preventing girls
from speaking to or even looking at one another for much
of the day. In short, one-to-one counseling is simply not a
feature of TYC facility schedules.
While relationships with certain family members have
damaged TYC’s girls, other family relationships may not be
unhealthful, and in any event may constitute girls’ only
source of emotional support. Many girls in TYC, moreover,
have children of their own with whom they are struggling to
maintain a bond. Yet even as TYC fails to offer girls the
opportunity to develop healthy relationships, it effectively
severs family relationships in a number of ways. TYC holds
girls in centralized facilities far from the metropolitan areas
most call home, and fails to provide bus service, transportation reimbursements, or any other aid to families
wishing to see their children or kinship foster relatives
wishing to bring incarcerated girls’ children to visit them.
Family visits are limited to two hours per weekend day. Only
one free call home is allowed per month. Weekly calls
home are allowed if parents purchase a telephone card that
some cannot afford. Weekly calls, moreover, are denied to
girls for sometimes minor misbehavior. Girls are therefore
left isolated while struggling with their past trauma, their
delinquent behavior, and the fact of their incarceration.
Although mental health services in TYC facilities must be
improved, it is also crucial to note that even non-clinical
intervention could help the majority of TYC’s girls. As is
often pointed out by the administrators and staff of
Missouri’s much-publicized youth facilities, any caring,
emotionally healthy adult, when properly trained, can help
children. Indeed, in Missouri’s facilities, it is not clinical spe-

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cialists but direct care staff who provide much of the nurturance needed to heal incarcerated children.

Providing One-to-One Counseling Would Serve
Rehabilitation and Prevent Abuse.
In various ways, girls’ untreated trauma lies at the root of their
conflict with family and authority figures, their delinquent
offenses, their misbehavior while in TYC custody, and their
suicide attempts and self-mutilation. Several interviewed
girls specifically identified the link between intense, pent-up
emotions and destructive behavior. Providing an outlet for
girls’ pain and frustration is therefore the key both to genuine
rehabilitation and improved behavior while in TYC custody.
Allowing trusting relationships to grow between girls and
adults is also an essential tactic to combat child abuse
within TYC facilities. Without such relationships, girls will
continue to underreport abuse and perpetrators will continue acting with impunity. Moreover, because isolation and
feelings of worthlessness make girls vulnerable to predators, healthy relationships constitute emotional selfdefense for girls.
One consequence of girls’ emotional isolation while in TYC
facilities is particularly troubling: The majority of girls in
custody, a much greater proportion than the boys, are
being administered powerful psychotropic medications.
This disparity likely stems in part from girls’ higher mental
health profile upon entering TYC facilities and their greater
willingness to disclose to psychiatric staff feelings indicating psychiatric disorders. But at least in part, medication
appears to be over- and mis-prescribed, used in lieu of
counseling, and/or administered for its sedative effect. All
of these uses are illegitimate. They are also dangerous:
Many of TYC’s girls are being given drugs in a class known
as atypical antipsychotics, none of which is approved for
use by children, and all of which can cause serious injury
and even death.5 Interviewed girls reported consulting with
a psychiatrist for as little as twenty minutes before a diagnosis and prescription were made. Several girls were too
sedated to think or speak clearly or to participate in group
activities. Treating girls’ emotional problems first with
some form of “talk therapy” before resorting to powerful,
unproven medication is a necessary first step in addressing
this profoundly problematic state of affairs.

RECOMMENDATIONS:
As a stopgap measure, require caseworkers to provide a minimum of thirty minutes per week of one-toone counseling to each girl. To alleviate overburdening
of caseworkers, make senior JCOs responsible for
overseeing girls’ weekly telephone calls.
Solicit creative ideas from TYC employees at all levels as to how individualized attention can be provided
given limited agency resources. For example, other
states have leveraged the resources of mental health
agencies to provide improved mental health care.
Likewise in Texas, staff of the Department of Mental
Health and Mental Retardation could be posted permanently in TYC facilities. Lay assistance could come
from the universities located minutes from the Ron
Jackson and Corsicana facilities. With limited screening and training, the faculty, staff, and students of
those institutions could become involved in counseling
girls while a long term solution is being negotiated.
Empower JCOs to nurture girls. Many JCOs perceive
their responsibility to be maintaining discipline and
adhering to a strict sixteen hour schedule. TYC should
revise its performance measurements to require
some minimum quantum of nurturing interaction, and
make this new expectation known to JCOs. JCOs will
be aided in their new task by the provision of training in
girls’ needs and counseling techniques, a decreased
child-to-staff ratio, and skillful supervision.
Decrease child-to-staff ratios by decreasing the child
population, not by expanding TYC. Legislative action
to exclude misdemeanants from TYC custody should
help accomplish this. Minimizing children’s lengths of
stay by addressing their underlying emotional problems will also help. To the extent that any new TYC
workers are hired, they should be social workers and
mental health staff.
Ultimately, provide regular one-to-one counseling at
least 3 times a week, 30 minutes per session, with a
trained social worker, and additional counseling during crises. Hiring psychiatric social workers to augment the psychiatry staff and providing in-house train-

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ing to all staff are cost-effective ways of providing
needed care.
Offer biweekly family counseling, via telephone if
necessary, to each girl. Family problems lie at the root
of girls’ delinquency, and most girls will return to their
families upon release. Family counseling therefore
cannot be left to halfway house staff or parole officers,
but must constitute an integral part of TYC programming from the first day of confinement.
At least until adult support is available within TYC
facilities, allow girls to call home twice a week and
allow four rather than two hours of visitation on
weekends. A convenient time to schedule a second
call may be during the optional evening bible study.
Because most families cannot make visits to far flung
facilities, ample space for visitation is available.
Appoint a panel of not fewer than two highly competent psychiatrists with expertise in female adolescent
mental health to conduct an immediate, full review of
the mental health history and needs of each and
every girl in TYC custody. In the future, prescribe psychiatric medication only when determined to be necessary by a psychiatrist with in-depth knowledge of the
child and her mental health history.

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II. For Girls to Thrive, They Need an Array of Humane Local Placements

As is true across the country, girls in TYC facilities are an afterthought in a system designed in response to boys’ delinquency. Consequently, TYC facilities and programs are ill-suited to
girls’ needs, resulting in a variety of serious, concrete harms.

Girls Suffer from a Lack of Appropriate
Placements within TYC.
At the point when a girl is remanded to TYC custody, she has
far fewer options than her male counterpart as to placements of all kinds, including contract care facilities, secure
placements, halfway houses, and independent living programs. As a consequence, a girl entering TYC for a given
crime is, on average, likely to spend longer in the assessment facility awaiting placement and is more likely to be
sent to a secure placement than a boy with the same crime.
Once there, she may be held longer than necessary while
waiting for an opening in a halfway house, and may stay
longer at the halfway house before being offered a space in
an independent living program.
The shortage of halfway house space for girls is a particularly acute problem and serves as an illustration of girls’
dilemma. TYC offers boys eight halfway houses with space
for 201 children. In contrast, Willoughby House is the only
halfway house for girls and accommodates only eighteen.
As a consequence, girls’ placements in secure facilities are
effectively extended for no reason other than the scarcity of
halfway house space.
Although the proportion of girls’ halfway house beds is
roughly equivalent to the proportion of girls among the
overall TYC population (about 10%), girls are disadvantaged
as compared to boys in several ways. First, when a child’s
home is disapproved by a parole officer, whether because
of parental drug abuse, a pending child abuse investigation,
or another reason, placement in a halfway house becomes
that child’s only alternative upon release from a secure
facility. Girls’ homes are more often disapproved than boys’
homes because of the familial chaos and abuse underlying
girls’ delinquency in the first place, making girls more
dependent on the availability of halfway house space. The
shortage of halfway house space for girls is compounded
by the lack of independent living programs for them.
Because girls in Willoughby House stay longer while waiting for an independent living opportunity, the backlog of

girls in secure facilities waiting to enter Willoughby is further exacerbated.
Like boys, girls in TYC hail from communities throughout the
state. Unlike boys, girls have only one halfway house available to them, in Fort Worth. Halfway houses are intended as
a step toward reentry into the community, yet the many girls
from Houston, San Antonio, and other areas of the state,
most of whom will ultimately return to their home towns, are
denied this graduated reintegration. In sum, failing to provide
an appropriate array of placements subjects girls to concrete
harms compromising their prospects for successful social
reintegration.

Modeling TYC after Adult Corrections Harms Girls.
Adult prisons exist to punish, but juvenile facilities exist to
rehabilitate delinquent children.6 To an alarming extent, the
attitudes, procedures, and physical environment within TYC
facilities ignore this fundamental distinction. Consequently,
children held in TYC facilities receive less preparation for
productive life in free society than they do for a future as
adult prisoners.
TYC’s girls, who typically have been abused by domineering
males all their lives, are harmed in particular ways by institutions characterized by punishment and absolute control. For
example, girls are routinely sanctioned for self-injurious
behavior including self cutting and suicide attempts. Although
such behavior is not violent toward others but is instead
indicative of untreated emotional disturbance, girls are
administered punishments, typically “category one” disciplinary citations and isolated confinement, exacerbating their
condition and potentially delaying their release.
TYC facilities are governed by a maze of minute rules dictating exactly when and how children must sit, stand, walk,
speak, dress, and every other aspect of their lives. This
hurts girls by generating needless conflicts with staff, facilitating the arbitrary or even vindictive imposition of discipline, and subjecting girls whose self-esteem is already
compromised to gratuitous humiliation. For example, girls
are punished for possessing “contraband,” but the vast
majority of the “contraband” consists not of weapons or
drugs but of letters, pens, adhesive tape, and the like. When
girls are admitted to the Corsicana facility, their hair is cut

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to shoulder length. Several girls mourned the loss of their
hair, and one girl was subjected to isolated confinement for
an altercation arising when she refused to allow her hair to
be cut. Yet another interviewed girl was punished for plucking her eyebrows because this act was categorized as
“self-injury.”

medical visit, when finishing a work shift, and after family visitation, yet neither girls nor staff recounted instances in
which weapons or illegal drugs were discovered. Because of
the psychological toll they take on girls whose sense of bodily integrity is already compromised, strip searches should
be used only to the extent that they are absolutely necessary.8

The methods used to punish children for rule violations
also harm girls in particular ways. Girls are regularly subjected to physical restraints by staff, in which staff seize a
girl from behind and force her against a wall or face down
on the floor. This sometimes occurs out of necessity, and
sometimes in response to mere disobedience and before
all other means of seeking compliance have been exhausted.7 Because a high proportion of incarcerated girls have
experienced past physical and sexual abuse, they are especially susceptible to additional trauma when subjected to
aggressive handling by an adult. By replicating past trauma, restraints may also provoke exaggerated resistance by
girls, escalating the conflict further and exposing girls to
greater physical harm.

Rather than being necessary to the mission of TYC, overly
harsh rules, harshly enforced, actually interfere with girls’
rehabilitation. For example, girls are allowed limited time
for journal writing and other forms of expression, are rarely
exposed to art or music, and are not allowed to sing, activities that for many represent important strategies for coping with pain and anger. Severe limits on girls’ social interaction, such as being prohibited from speaking to or even
looking at one another during the fifteen minutes they are
allotted for meals, blocks the development of necessary
social skills. Girls’ ability to care for their hygiene, a basic
ingredient of improved self-esteem, is frustrated by the
three-minute time limit on showers imposed at some facilities. The right to shower is sometimes even denied altogether as a form of punishment.

Each secure TYC facility has an administrative segregation
unit known as “security.” In security units, children are held in
isolation in bare cells. Cells are typically cold, sometimes
dirty, and in the Corsicana facility extremely brightly lit. Meals
are delivered to each child’s cell, and schooling takes place in
a separate area of the security unit. TYC uses these units as a
catchall, not just for emergency crisis management but variously as a form of punishment, for suicidal children, for children in transit from one facility to another, and to house children who feel emotionally overwhelmed among their unit
staff and peers and who “self-refer” to security. Girls on “suicide alert” were observed curled on the floors of extremely
cold cells wearing only the “drape” issued to them. If placed
there for repeated misbehavior, children may spend as much
as ninety days at a stretch in security. Such conditions are a
recipe for mental deterioration, especially for those children,
including the majority of girls, with existing mental illness.
Moreover, girls held in security are particularly vulnerable to
abuse by staff members because of their isolation from other
staff and girls.
Finally, strip searches, used routinely in TYC facilities, expose
girls with a history of sexual abuse to the likelihood of
retraumatization. Children are strip searched at a variety of
points in time, including when returning from an off-site

TYC’s Educational Programs Fail to Equip Girls for
Survival in Society.
Some scholarly work suggests that educational failure is a
greater predictor of delinquency in girls than boys, and that
conversely, success in school can help girls overcome the
emotional effects of abuse and trauma. No doubt because
of the Herculean efforts of TYC’s teachers and educational
administrators, many interviewed girls named school as
the best part of their TYC experience. Nevertheless, TYC’s
educational system is deficient in some ways that particularly disadvantage girls.
First, children in TYC custody are not receiving sufficient
individualized educational attention or classroom instruction. Schools within juvenile facilities everywhere must
serve a small, transient student population, a high proportion of whom are learning disabled, mentally ill, or exhibit
behavioral problems disruptive to learning. This means
that to be effective, such schools must achieve a much
lower student-to-teacher ratio than ordinary schools. To
the contrary, TYC schools have suffered from a ballooning
population over the last decade, coinciding with statewide

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educational budget cuts. As a result classroom and vocational teaching staff levels are low, and the quality of education suffers. Another measure to improve educational
effectiveness is grouping children in classrooms by age and
academic ability. Because of their small numbers, however, as well as the practice of grouping children by housing
unit in some facilities and the sex segregation of classes
even in co-gender facilities, TYC’s girls are assigned to
classes with students of widely varying educational levels
and are asked to navigate “self-paced” programs with
insufficient adult guidance.

placed in Willoughby House upon release from a secure
facility, girls in TYC custody receive no pregnancy or parenting education, and no life-skills training whatever. The lifeskills curriculum employed at Willoughby, moreover, consists largely of photocopied handouts of outdated information collected from scattered sources. This state of affairs
makes it unlikely that the children of TYC’s girls will grow
up in an environment much better than their own.

Vocational training calculated to give girls economic selfsufficiency is an essential component of a rehabilitative program. The vocational options provided by TYC, however, are
few and are tailored to boys. For example, Unit I of the Ron
Jackson facility currently offers keyboarding, commercial
food preparation, and woodworking classes. This appears to
be the extent of available options. While girls should be
offered a diverse vocational curriculum, including skills relevan to traditionally male occupations, such offerings are
absent. Moreover, it appears that as Ron Jackson is converted to an all-girl facility, traditionally male classes, such
as welding, are in danger of being eliminated.
Girls in TYC custody are at high risk of contracting sexually
transmitted infections and having pregnancies before
reaching a level of stability necessary for successful motherhood.9 The vast majority have never witnessed nurturing
or skilled parenting, and have never occupied a competently managed household. They lack basic skills such as shopping and cooking for themselves, budgeting for expenses,
handling a bank account, and finding and renting an apartment. Many of the same girls are the mothers of young
children and will resume care of their children in one form
or another when they are released.
Given this reality, girls should be offered, as a matter of
course, extensive sexual and reproductive health education, parenting courses, and independent living courses
including training in how to navigate the government
bureaucracy through which they will later seek Medicaid
coverage and other benefits for themselves and their families. In fact, TYC offers this information late, haphazardly,
or not at all. For example, interviewed girls reported that
TYC does not routinely provide sexual health education,
except in certain curricula such as the specialized chemical dependency program. Aside from the few girls who are

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RECOMMENDATIONS:

Cease punishing self-injury. Provide intensive counseling
instead.

Open halfway houses for girls in Houston and San
Antonio, and in other locations as necessary. The
halfway houses should look and feel like homes in
every way possible.

Use confinement only when strictly necessary, and
never as a punishment or a response to self-harm.

Ensure that sufficient independent living opportunities
are available to accommodate all girls requiring such
assistance.

Maintain and examine records of whether strip
searches result in the discovery of dangerous contraband. If, as is likely, weapons and illegal drugs are
rarely found, policies governing the use of strip searches should be reexamined.

Design and begin implementation of a plan to move all
girls from large institutional placements to small,
localized environments conforming to the “Missouri
Model.” Because of their smaller numbers and particular needs, girls should be offered a variety of very
small, dispersed placements if they are to receive
appropriate and individualized care on par with that
given to boys. An incremental path toward this goal
could consist of first opening a number of halfway
houses, then converting some of these to locked facilities while maintaining their small size and homelike
environment.

Assign all children to classes based on their age and
academic abilities and educational needs.
Provide girls with a wide variety of both traditionally
male and female vocational opportunities.
Routinely provide sexual health, pregnancy, parenting, and life skills education to all children.

Teach independent living skills in all facilities. Ensure
that the curriculum is complete, practical, and up to date.
Take all necessary measures to achieve a culture
shift from punishment to rehabilitation. This will
require a major, ongoing campaign and could consist
of measures such as: public expressions by TYC leadership of commitment to rehabilitative principles;
active recruiting of staff from the social work, educational, and child care fields rather than from adult corrections; retraining of staff and administrators in such
subjects as adolescent psychology and the domestic
and international norms differentiating juvenile systems from adult penal systems; staff evaluation based
on their nurturance of children; elimination of all
restrictive rules not strictly necessary for the orderly
operation of TYC facilities; abandonment of correctional nomenclature such as the title “Juvenile
Correctional Officers;” and allowing staff and children
to wear ordinary clothing.

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III. Girls in TYC Urgently Need an Advocate

Because girls in TYC custody constitute an often overlooked
minority, they need a consistent, influential advocate. To
effectively counteract an entrenched institutional disposition
to neglect girls’ interests, the advocate should be a high
ranking administrator solely concerned with the protection
of girls’ rights and welfare. TYC should therefore create the
position of Assistant Deputy Executive Director for Girls’
Issues to serve as girls’ voice within the institution, to provide a focal point for research and decision-making about
girls, and to bear ultimate responsibility for girls’ wellbeing.

Other instances of discriminatory treatment include the
provision of less, and less varied, physical activity than boys.
Girls reported being allowed to swim less often than boys
and having fewer organized sports tournaments than boys.
Boys held in the Marlin facility alternate between outdoor
recreation and exercise in a gymnasium. Girls are never
provided outdoor recreation.

Girls in TYC Custody Experience Mistreatment and
Unfairness.

In the wake of recent revelations, a number of law enforcement agencies have become involved in the investigation of
alleged abuse in TYC facilities, including the Texas
Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ), the Texas Rangers,
the State Auditor’s Office, the Travis County District
Attorney’s Office, and the Office of the Attorney General.
This intense scrutiny has exposed a number of abuses.

Girls in custody describe a variety of abusive and neglectful
conditions of confinement. Some conditions, such as the
use of prolonged isolated confinement, are official TYC policies. Others, such as the delay and denial of medical care,
arise at least in part from resource shortages. Yet other
problems, such as unnecessary and poorly executed physical restraints and staff refusal to intervene in fights between
girls, are attributable to deficiencies in training and the bad
acts of individual TYC workers. As a result of heightened
public and official attention to abuse within TYC and the
establishment of an abuse hotline, many of the severest
instances of abuse have come to light, but others persist.
Girls also experience discrimination in TYC facilities. For
example, conditions in the girls’ security unit of the
Corsicana Residential Treatment Center (CRTC) are inferior to those in the boys’ unit. Boys are allowed periodic outdoor exercise in an attached recreation area, but the girls’
unit has no such area. As a result, girls in security are never
allowed outdoor recreation, even though they may be confined to security for up to ninety days. Moreover, because
the building currently used as the girls’ security unit was
not intended for this use, its metal, rather than concrete,
bed platforms allow self-destructive girls to self-mutilate
and to squeeze themselves under the beds. Exposed ceiling sprinkler heads can also be used by girls for cutting or
hanging themselves. Rooms in the girls’ security unit also
lack in-room toilets, subjecting girls to long waits to an
external bathroom when, as is often the case, staff are
attending to a girl in crisis.

Existing Mechanisms Are Insufficient to Protect
Girls in Custody.

Nevertheless, devoting law enforcement resources to allegations of abuse is insufficient to protect girls for a number
of reasons. First, investigation and punishment are reactive
measures. They occur after the fact and only to the extent
that victims and witnesses report abuse. They can only be
said to prevent abuse to the limited extent that the prospect
of exposure and punishment deters potential perpetrators.
In reality, no matter how many investigative resources are
devoted to detecting it, abuse is a near inevitability in closed,
authoritarian environments. Moreover, confined girls and
boys alike will inevitably underreport abuses because of fear
of retaliation, shame at having been victimized, identification
with the perpetrator, and myriad other reasons.
In addition, criminal investigators’ capacity to protect incarcerated girls is limited by their institutional mandates and
their professional training. Criminal investigators are concerned with establishing individual criminal culpability in
instances of overt wrongdoing. They also tend to be familiar with the adult criminal justice system but uninformed
about the vastly different mandate of juvenile facilities and
the special rights of children. Those, such as investigators
provided by TDCJ, are accustomed to adult prisons and are
likely to be attuned to the most extreme instances of sexual and physical abuse, overlooking abuses that are less
shocking but nevertheless illegal.
Criminal investigators are also unsophisticated as to sys-

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temic, as opposed to individual, failures. By targeting individual perpetrators only, they may fail to assign responsibility to
supervisors and administrators whose failures allowed
abuse to persist, and whose continued failures set the stage
for future abuse. Investigators also compare individual workers’ behavior against existing rules and policies, and tend not
to question whether the rules themselves are harmful.
Criminal investigators can also be expected to have little or
no familiarity with gender issues, including those surrounding girls subjected to sexual abuse. Consequently,
they may fail to follow procedures that would facilitate
reporting and protect victims’ rights. They may, for example, fail to interview girls in a closed setting with one investigator per interview; ask bluntly about sexual abuse before
establishing rapport with the victim; or require the victim to
retell, and thereby relive, her experience multiple times
unnecessarily. They may also fail to inform the victim about
the progress of the investigation, leaving her in the dark
about the whereabouts of her victimizer and without any
sense of justice having been done.
Finally, although public attention has recently focused on
TYC because it has occupied newspaper headlines, that
attention will eventually fade. Girls need an advocate with
influence within TYC who will continue to advocate for their
interests over the long term.

RECOMMENDATIONS:
Create the post of Assistant Deputy Executive
Director for Girls’ Issues. The position should be created and filled immediately to ensure that girls’ welfare
is considered during the current crucial period of profound change.
Position the Assistant Deputy Executive Director for
Girls’ Issues to report directly to the Deputy Executive
Director. A high-ranking post is necessary because the
factors affecting girls’ experiences in TYC are numerous
and cross-cutting, involving areas as diverse as education, treatment and case management, contract facility
management, staff recruitment and training, and the
processing of children’s grievances.
Appoint to this post a qualified individual with a
demonstrated commitment to girls’ welfare. A wellqualified candidate should have extensive knowledge of
juvenile justice or a related field such as child welfare or
adolescent mental health.
Empower the Assistant Deputy Executive Director for
Girls’ Issues to advocate effectively for girls’ rights
and interests. Necessary powers include authority to
identify girls’ needs through unfettered data gathering
of various kinds including regular direct contact with
girls themselves; participation in all aspects of agency
decision-making to ensure that such needs are considered; authority to encourage cooperation among
disparate arms of TYC and the broader justice system
to better serve girls; and the ability to act as a highprofile spokesperson for confined girls.
Send a clear directive to all TYC administrators and
staff that the interests of girls are to be taken into
account in every instance of decision-making. To be
effective, the Assistant Deputy Executive Director for
Girls’ Issues must have the support of TYC’s leadership
and the cooperation of all its branches.

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Notes

1

As of May 7, 2007, there were 395 girls in TYC residential facilities, 17 in the girls’ halfway house, 41
in contract care, and 330 in TYC aftercare programs, giving a total of 783 girls under TYC supervision.
2

http://www.tyc.state.tx.us/programs/corsicana/index.html (accessed 5/19/2007).

3

Because research is ongoing as of this writing, the exact number of interviewed girls is not yet available.

4

The Giddings facility was omitted from this research because all girls held there were in the process
of being removed from the facility, and because of considerations of time. A visit to the Victoria program is scheduled for May 23, 2007.
5

The drugs are: Clozaril, Risperdal, Zyprexa, Seroquel, Abilify and Geodon. Atypical antipsychotics
also cause weight gain, which can in turn cause other physical problems and low self-esteem, especially in girls.
6

TYC’s statutory mission is “to provide a program of constructive training aimed at rehabilitation and
re-establishment in society” for the youths committed to its facilities. Although the purpose clause of
the Texas juvenile system incorporates the additional element of public safety, it, too, recognizes the
need “to provide for the care, the protection, and the wholesome moral, mental, and physical development of children coming within [the family law’s] provisions.” Texas Family Code §51.01 (2006).

7

The use of physical force against children in custody is permissible only when a child poses an imminent threat to herself or others and when all other interventions have been exhausted.
8

Such a search may be necessary when, for example, an officer has articulable probable cause or reasonable suspicion that the girl is concealing contraband.
9

In fact, in 2002, Texas had a higher rate of teen births than any other state. Office of Juvenile Justice
and Delinquency Prevention, Juvenile Offenders and Victims: 2006 National Report, 13.

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