Press Contact: For all media inquiries, please contact Torrie Bethany, Communications Manager for the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition, at tbethany@texascjc.org or (512) 441-8123, Ext. 108.
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?
Read the rest of this article The Texas Tribune.
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.
AUSTIN — 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.
Do 17-year-old offenders belong in adult prison? Would there be benefits to raising the age of responsibility to 18 instead?
Read the rest of this blog post at the Goolsby Law Firm's blog.
The Texas Criminal Justice Coalition wants lawmakers to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 17 to 18 in the 2019 legislative session.
A group of juvenile justice reform advocates hosted a press conference at the Texas Capitol today as part of Youth Justice Action Month calling for a new commitment to juvenile justice reform in Texas.
NJJN’s Texas members, the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition (TCJC), Texas Appleseed and Texans Care for Children were successful in their collaborative efforts to pass legislation focused on dual-status youth, confidentiality of juvenile records, 10 and 11 year olds in the juvenile justice system and the suspension and expulsion of kids in early grades.
Read the rest of this post at the National Juvenile Justice Network.
During the past 10 years, Texas has made incredible progress both in reducing the number of individuals incarcerated and in creating alternative programs for low-risk offenders. This progress, including mandatory sex offender rehabilitation and supervision programs, have contributed to decreased recidivism rates in Texas.
Read the rest of this op-ed at the San Antonio Express-News.
Christopher L. was 16. Had the Chicago media deemed his alleged crime salacious enough, they would have printed his full name. They revealed the full names of other kids at the jail where I worked as a guard in the late 1990s.
Once again, the Texas House of Representatives has passed a thoughtful proposal to raise the age of criminal responsibility to 18 from 17.
State Rep. Harold Dutton Jr., D-Houston, has set his crosshairs on Senate bills Wednesday after learning that a major criminal justice reform bill that he authored was not only languishing in the upper chamber but appeared to be left for dead.
A 17-year-old reportedly committed suicide in January while in custody at the Fort Bend County Jail. Jail staff found the teen - charged with aggravated robbery involving a pellet gun and evading arrest - hanging in his cell, as reported by KPRC-TV.
Most 17-year-olds are in high school. Their parents still ground them, and they have to ask to borrow the car. Besides being able to get into R-rated movies, they possess the same adolescent freedom as 16-year-olds. Yet, in Texas, 17-year-olds are prosecuted as adults and housed in adult correctional facilities.
Texas is one of six states that tries 17-year-olds as adults. But a new bill wants Texas to follow the national trend of raising the age of criminal responsibility from 17 to 18.
Listen to an interview with Rep. Gene Wu at KUT 90.5 (Austin's NPR Station).
Texas is one of only a handful of states that still sends all 17-year-olds to adult courts, no matter how minor their offense. Legislation that would raise the age of juvenile court jurisdiction in Texas was passed by the state House of Representatives last week and is now awaiting action in the Texas Senate.
The cutoff for criminal responsibility in Texas was increased to age 17 in the year 1918. Before that, 9-year-olds could be prosecuted as adults.
It has long been an article of faith in Texas politics that no one ever lost an election for being too tough on lawbreakers. The inverse of that, of course, is that locking up more people for longer periods tends to pay dividends at the ballot box. But that principle was turned on its ear in the Texas House last week when legislation to raise the age of criminal responsibility from 17 years old to 18 cruised to passage by a vote of 92-52.
Read the rest of this article at the Corpus Christi Caller-Times.
It has been nearly 100 years since Texas raised the age of criminal responsibility from eight years old to 17, and today, Texas is only one of six states that still considers 17-year-olds as adults in the criminal justice system. On Thursday, though, the Legislature got a step closer to passing legislation that would raise the age to 18 after the House passed House Bill 122 with an 82-62 vote, sending the bill over to the Senate.
A bill that would bump up the age of adult criminal responsibility from 17 to 18 is scheduled for a vote in the Texas House today. Advocates say this gives a second chance to 17-year-olds who are still treated like minors in other aspects of society.
Texas is one of seven states that automatically classify 17-year-olds as adults in the criminal justice system. That’s important because once a 17-year-old enters the courtroom as an adult, they are cut off from the stated rehabilitative goals and resources of the juvenile justice system.
Read the rest of this article at The Chronicle of Social Change.