Finish the 5: Close Dangerous and Inhumane Youth Prisons in Texas

Finish the 5: Close Dangerous and Inhumane Youth Prisons in Texas

Started
October 23, 2022
Signatures: 206Next Goal: 500
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Why this petition matters

In August 2022, an investigation by the Texas Tribune revealed that about 600 children in Texas’s five state secure youth detention facilities have been living in dangerous, unsanitary, and inhumane conditions. Incident reports revealed that kids in understaffed facilities were stuck in their cells for up to 23 hours a day and were unable to access bathrooms. Nearly half of these incarcerated children were on suicide watch, and “some told inspectors they hurt themselves as a means to get relief from their isolation.”

The Texas Juvenile Justice Department (TJJD) was already under investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice. That investigation, launched in October 2021, is examining “whether Texas provides children confined in the facilities reasonable protection from physical and sexual abuse by staff and other residents, excessive use of chemical restraints and excessive use of isolation.” The investigation is also examining “whether Texas provides adequate mental health care.”

The treatment of children in these youth prisons is inhumane and unacceptable. It represents a critical failure by state leadership and by an agency that claims to prioritize rehabilitation. Although leaders have excused these pervasive, decades-long issues by blaming current low staffing levels at TJJD, we recognize that this is an inherent problem with a culture where our most vulnerable children are incarcerated instead of supported.

We demand that leaders:

  • Shut down TJJD’s five state secure institutions by 2030 through a thoughtful, staggered closure plan.
  • Invest in building communities’ infrastructure to appropriately address the needs of children who would have been sent to TJJD, and allow recapture from closed facilities to reimburse the costs for community-based resources.
  • Enact policy reforms that decriminalize youth, diverting youth from the punishment system altogether.

These changes are possible. After similar stories came out about Texas’s youth corrections system (then the Texas Youth Commission) in 2006 and 2007, the state closed youth prisons and eventually restructured the agency. Texas leaders can and must take similarly decisive actions now to address this drastic and dangerous situation.

Children who have caused harm should be held accountable in developmentally appropriate ways – not through the dehumanizing experience of incarceration that will only cause further harm. The money that has been put into incarcerating children should be spent on proven strategies that prevent violence in the first place: public health, food resources, education, and other community-based supports.

We ask Texas leaders to protect these children – to treat them with human decency – by shutting down all five of TJJD’s youth prisons and instead investing in true public safety.

[Please note: After you sign, you may be asked to make a donation. This donation goes to Change.org to share the petition. If you'd prefer to donate to support our campaign, you can do so at www.TexasCJE.org

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Signatures: 206Next Goal: 500
Support now
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