We need to lock up fewer kids for bad reasons.
Hundreds of juveniles are jailed in Harris County often for weeks at a time for infractions as minor as failing drugs tests, violating curfews, running away or failing to attend school classes or rehabilitative programs, according to county records.
The records show a “pattern and practice” of detaining juveniles for technical violations that should instead be handled through the probation system, according to attorneys and juvenile justice advocates.
“You’re not complying with the terms of probation, but you’re not actually a risk to public safety,” said Elizabeth Henneke, an attorney with the Lone Star Justice Alliance, which advocates against incarcerating juvenile offenders.
“You never want to have a technical violation, especially for a kid, result in detention, because we know the negative effects,” she said. “Even a short amount of time can be problematic for kids, but long, protracted, weeks out of school, weeks out of your home environment – that can have really big consequences for them.”
Of the 1,055 juveniles cited for a probation violation in 2016, nearly 73 percent were detained, a proportion Henneke said is alarming, particularly in a county where the 250-capacity juvenile justice center has faced recurrent overcrowding problems for several years.
It is the largest percentage of juveniles ordered detained on probation violations since at least 2003, when 69 percent of 1,502 juveniles were detained, according to data from the Harris County Juvenile Probation Department.
The most recent 2017 data, which goes through Oct. 15, shows that 73 percent of juveniles continued to be jailed for probation violations – an average of 55 kids each day.
The average length of time spent behind bars on the violations ranged from nine days for leaving the county without permission to 30 days for violating special probationary terms, which can include specific judge-ordered requirements such as routine drug assessments or compliance with taking medication.
The Trib then went and wrote an even longer story on the same topic.
“Harris County is bucking the trend,” said Michele Deitch, an attorney and senior lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin who specializes in Texas juvenile justice policy. “All around the country, and certainly all around the state, the numbers are down in detention.
“The need for the beds just isn’t there anymore,” Deitch said. “So the idea that this one county is experiencing an increase … that should raise a lot of questions.”
The overcrowding affects kids and families far beyond the Houston area: It is one reason lawmakers decided not to raise the age of adult criminal responsibility in Texas from 17 to 18 last year. Seventeen-year-olds accused of crimes in Texas are usually sent to an adult county jail; the “raise the age” bill would have made them part of the juvenile justice system instead.
Harris County’s juvenile probation chief, Tom Brooks, said the detention center’s overcrowding is mostly due to “a high number of egregious offenders” — kids accused of crimes like armed robbery and assault — who often stay in detention longer.
Brooks added that the county has worked hard to stop unnecessarily locking up kids. Last year, nearly 2,000 fewer kids were booked into detention compared to 2010, according to county data. The ones that are left “actually are here for a legitimate reason, and their due process takes longer,” Brooks said.
But data obtained by The Texas Tribune — along with interviews with experts, parents and advocates — suggest there’s more to the story. Local officials might blame the overcrowding on bad kids, but experts say it’s more about a bad system in Harris County, where local officials plan to build a new juvenile detention center at an estimated cost of $65-70 million.
The data from Harris County’s juvenile probation department shows:
- The average number of kids held in the detention center charged with minor offenses such as trespass, theft and violating probation — things that some experts say shouldn’t land kids behind bars at all — increased by 64 percent from 2010 to 2017. Meanwhile, the average number held for violent crimes like armed robbery and rape, called “felonies against persons,” increased by about 46 percent.
- Minor offenders were locked up in the detention center for an average of nearly three weeks in 2017, twice as long as in 2010.
- From 2010 to 2017, the average number of African-American youth held in the juvenile detention center more than doubled, and the number detained despite being labeled “low risk” has increased by 75 percent.
Experts say this is an unusual trend when it comes to juvenile justice. It’s becoming widely accepted that imprisoning kids — and even adults — for low-level crimes is probably doing more harm than good. Taking someone away from their home and school for a minor offense like shoplifting, and placing them alongside those accused of far more serious crimes, is bad for the child and for society, they say.
“Anytime you disrupt the kids’ routine, you take them out of the home, away from whatever stable influences they have … It’s not a good situation,” Deitch said. She added that the Harris County data suggests “there’s something very punitive going on.”
Michael Schneider, one of the judges who handles juvenile delinquency cases in Harris County, expressed concern after seeing the data. “Why is the increase in detention greater than the increase in violent crime?” he asked.
Paul Holland, an associate law professor at Seattle University who studies national juvenile justice policy, called what’s happening in Harris County “alarming.” He said the trend in detention there can’t just be blamed on an increase in violent crime; local decisions are probably having an impact, too.
“It really does seem like it’s a system thing and not a kid thing,” Holland said.
There’s a whole lot more, go read it. So just to review:
1) These kids were on probation, meaning they had committed lesser offenses to begin with.
2) They were put in jail for breaking a rule, not a law. Kids do break rules sometimes. It’s what kids do.
3) Putting kids in jail leads to all kinds of bad effects, from missed school to exposing them to real criminals to endangering their safety.
4) It costs money to detain and guard these kids, and detaining them does nothing to further the rehabilitative efforts that probation was supposed to foster.
5) Anyone want to bet that the kids who do get detained for probation violations will turn out to be disproportionately black and Latino?
Let’s do less of this, okay? And if you’re looking for a political solution, remember the names of Juvenile Court Judges Glenn Devlin and John Phillips, both Republicans and both on the ballot this year. Different judges will be our best shot at getting different results.
So what IS the solution for kids who violate the terms of their probation? If they weren’t scared straight by the initial arrest and court proceeding, what is the proposed way to treat probation violations?
In spring we let them commit murder.
^^^ and there we go, folks. Paul Kubosh’s comment above perfectly describes the bigotry and fear mongering that makes a few people a lot of money. The overwhelming majority of these folks in jail and unable to pay bail are there for non-violent crimes. Mr. Kubosh, you and your brother should be ashamed.
LittleBird,
You are just wrong. Just another poster hiding behind a fake name. I hear the word bigot and racist so much that it is starting to be meaningless to me. If you are white then you are racist. Plain and simple.
Paul, aren’t you and your brothers in the business of making more money if more folks are arrested and released on bond ? Your knee jerk response, claiming you’re being labeled a bigot or racist, to a valid point of view from LittleBird failed to deflect the point he was making….unless, of course, you have some statistical data to support the assertion that extremely low level juvenile criminals are out murdering folks en masse.
@C.L.:
Paul’s point IS extremely valid. “LittleBird” did in fact insinuate that Kubosh is a bigot engaged in fear mongering. Throwing insults is the preferred strategy of someone who can’t debate facts. Doing it anonymously is just icing on the cake.
We are talking about juveniles that have had their cases adjudicated (so yeah, they already paid a bond if applicable) and violated the terms of their probation. I think Paul is advocating that they get locked up for that, not be permitted to get out on bond, again. (Paul, correct me if I am wrong here.) No bond means no money for Paul.
That means Paul is advocating against his own self interest, and for the public good as a whole. I hate to bring up red light cameras yet again, but the Kubosh’s advocated and spent their own money on an issue they had nothing to financially gain from, again, for the public good.
‘Advocating for the public good’ is a catchphrase used by despots and dictators worldwide.
Bill,
Thank you for the good words. You are correct No bond means no money for Paul. For little bird and C.L. here are the people I was talking about when I made my racist statement about murderers….
https://www.click2houston.com/news/men-accused-of-execution-style-murders-of-spring-couple-denied-bond
ages 20, 21, 23.
Paul,
Were those three defendants serving a term of probation from prior convictions, and allowed to violate the terms of that probation without any repercussions? The linked article doesn’t have anything that obviously connects it to the topic of discussion here.
Thank you, Robbie. You beat me to the rebuttal.
Can I just say I am still waiting for someone, anyone, to tell us what the proper strategy is to deal with juveniles who violate the terms of their probation, if it isn’t jailing them?
I think we all agree that it is our best interests to turn these kids around before they become career criminals, so, what’s the best way to do that if they have messed up once, then messed up again after going through the justice system by violating probation?
I’d be OK with a military style boot camp, but would you folks see that as incarceration, separating kids from their families and schools?
Whatever the solution is, it needs to protect me and my loved ones from those kids.
My point is you have to be tough on juveniles. If you go easy they become like these guys.
It’s a little disingenuous to suggest that “we let them commit murder” is the prevailing response to probation violations if your example isn’t actually of a probation violator. I mean, at least Willy Horton was actually furloughed when he committed his additional violent crimes.
Bill, what sort of violations? Probation terms typically include all sorts of restrictions, from the relatively petty to the extremely serious, and probation (and federal supervised release) violators get all sorts of responses ranging form “a talking to by their officer” through court appearances, drug treatment, and additional probation terms, to new sentences of imprisonment, depending on the severity of the violation, the input of the supervising probation officer and the judgment of the presiding judge. To the extent that we’re going to believe that our criminal justice system seeks some sort of rehabilitation of offenders, it’s got to accommodate the fact that human beings sometimes backslide even if they’re mostly improving or being good, and the intent of the leeway judges have in addressing probation violations is to address that.
If we’re going to conclude that anyone convicted of a felony is essentially a rabid animal that will always be violent at the slighted provocation, then we might as well just shoot people who are convicted.
Robbie:
Let’s just go with the violations listed in the article:
“Hundreds of juveniles are jailed in Harris County often for weeks at a time for infractions as minor as failing drugs tests, violating curfews, running away or failing to attend school classes or rehabilitative programs, according to county records.”
The only issue I could see showing some leniency on is the curfew violation, and I’d need an affirmative defense to overlook that……flat tire, held over late at work, stopping an armed robbery, etc. All the others are pretty brazen, a **** you to the judge who believed in that youth enough to give them probation in the first place. Getting a lecture from the judge the first time didn’t seem to work, so what now?
I’m with Bill on this one, the name calling about as juvenile as the whining about anonymous posting (our forefathers routinely wrote op-ed’s in newspapers or communications using aliases so if it’s good enough for them, it should be good enough for us). I spent some time looking at solutions by self appointed experts or those recognized as experts by one group or another and other than throw huge amounts of money at every problem or bemoan the inequities of “the system”, they always come up sort. That doesn’t mean tossing all juveniles in jail is the answer but considering the arguments made by the lawyers some of these youthful offenders make how “the drugs made him do it, he fell into a bad crowd, he was only the getaway driver, his parents don’t enforce a curfew, and everything under the sun EXCEPT the little jerk was a cold blooded piece of…, I’m inclined to want a lot of them locked up myself.
After all, if drugs were the stated reason for the first dozen crime sprees a juvenile offered up, how is his failing a drug test supposed to endear the world to his cause? If skipping school is where he started breaking into homes, exactly why is his skipping school on probation all of a sudden a minor issue? And like Bill, if they are out late and it’s not for a valid reason as listed, just why should we consider that a minor issue when we all have a pretty good idea what he’s doing or what he’s up to?
And while not truly tied to the specific conversation at hand, if 23-year-old Khari Kendrick had been kept in prison instead of serving less than 3 years of his original sentence for the dozens of burglaries he committed, one of the nicest couples in Spring would still be alive, the Lams. (he was released on probation by the way, just not a juvenile) So while I’m calling BS on the comment that people in Spring “let them commit murder”, no one in that community approving of the 20-something year old losers doing any such thing and none of them were on probation for a minor offense at the time of the crime, there are many others that do commit crimes, hence the conditions to stay in school, be at home during a curfew, pass drug testing, and so forth.
So like Bill, I’d like to hear of a better solution than keeping these predators locked up that doesn’t demand more money than anyone sensible is going to agree to spend. Just saying X isn’t the answer doesn’t help further the discussion a whole lot, much like the name calling or demands for identity.
Steven in absentia,
It is sarcasm. LOL
PK, have a great day tomorrow. Signed, Switzerland lol