Decisions to Refer Children to TYC Contribute to the Abuse of Children There - Research Paper Example

TYC Introduction The agency, the Texas Youth Commission (TYC) administers both directly and indirectly a number of custodial facilities, basically jails for those judged young offenders aged 10 to 21. Those not run directly by TYC are contracted out to firms such as GEO. However based on the Dallas Morning News series of articles both those run directly by the state agency and the contractors are operated very poorly. My research question is “how do decisions to refer children to TYC facilities and the state of their premises, staffing and operating practices contribute to the abuse of children there and consequently the failure to socialize and control these children in accordance with the norms of mainstream American society”. I will analyze the problem through the lens of sociological theories. While I believe Labeling Theory, Anomie-Strain Theory, Conflict Theory all help to explain contributing factors, I would argue that Social Learning Theory and Social Control Theory are the most salient in analyzing the failures of the TYC. I will argue that the TYC crises results from indiscriminate referral to the program and the corrupt and incompetent operation of it largely due to insufficient funding Theoretical Framework Most people would assume that one of the main purposes of a correction system is in fact to “correct” behavior so that it is brought in line with the accepted norms and laws of mainstream society by a process of social learning or socialization. I would argue that the TYC program does exactly the opposite. By allowing the children to be subject to unjustified physical, sexual and emotional abuse it is teaching them implicitly that the real world is a “jungle” and they must be the aggressor in order to avoid being the victim even if lip service is paid to tolerance and respect for others. Social control is maintained not by the sensible, impartial application of reasonable rules necessary to protect the rights of everyone and to permit the smooth operation of the facility, but by trusted staff offering treats, conveying threats or imposing arbitrary unjustified penalties to those selected in order to coerce compliance with their inappropriate demands such as sexual gratification. Analysis At least half of the 2700 youths sent to TYC facilities in 2006 had a background of nonviolent crimes mostly burglary, theft, drug offences and unlawful use of a motor vehicle ( Becka and Jones 2007) Even some of the violent ones were minor such as 11% fore simple assault. I would argue that whether for adults or children incarceration should be primarily for serious violent crimes to protect society at large. Of course to the extent possible re socialization of such offenders should be attempted although this is often not successful even in well run prisons. For nonviolent offences like burglary and theft, rather than incarceration I would argue a more effective program of re socialization would be to require the offender to the extent possible to reimburse the victim and/o perform community service work. This would I suggest do more to instill values of respect for others and their property than incarceration. Therefore such nonviolent offenders should not be in TYC facilities. With fewer inmates one would expect better re socialization results because there would be lower inmate/guard ratios and therefore more opportunity for monitoring and counseling. This article goes on to point out that although offenders are not given criminal sentences, they are required to stay in TYC facilities for specified minimum periods rather than have a designated incarceration time. This means that their stay is indefinite and under the Re Socialization Program they can be released only on successful completion of a succession of phases. While theoretically only disciplinary problems result in a loss of phases, some guards abuse their power by threatening to sabotage phases unless sexual or other favors are given by the inmate. This is an example of social control by corrupt manipulation. A second article, “Youth Jail Sex Inquiry Revived” (Swanson 2007) details the failure timely investigate the cover up of several inmate complaints of sex abuse at a TYC facility by 2 high ranking staff. The fact that their complaints were ignored for a year and blatantly committed by senior staff would naturally give them little faith in the grievance process and teach them that management regarded this behavior as acceptable. This was reinforced when at least some of the complainers were punished. This arbitrary attempt at self interested social control and bad examples set by authority figure can only cause inmates to learn such forceful behavior is OK when you have the opportunity to control people in a weaker dependent position. The children were also corruptly controlled by being lured into locked rooms for the sexual encounters with promises of special favors. It is especially important for people in authority charged with the duty of caring for defenseless vulnerable youngsters to set good examples so that the inmates can be socialized to learn to trust and to be treated evenhandedly free of capricious arbitrary self interested controls. A third article states that 65 employees had felony records. Of this at least 40 faced termination. (Hoppe 2007). This reveals inadequate background checks being carried out prior to hiring Such checks should be mandatory so that the TYC is made aware of any criminal records and issues with any previous employers. While there should be some flexibility, especially if any convictions are unrelated to the job being applied for. However any convictions and/or issues with violence and/ or sexual conduct should be red flags and for example prevent a guard from being hired who will be entrusted with the care if vulnerable children and who could therefore repeat similar offences. Also, even without previous negative records those newly hired should be closely monitored in a probationary period for any signs of inappropriate conduct. One of the problems for the TYC is that with low pay rates they have difficulty attracting good candidates. I would suggest the problem could be solved by better pay and training, improved screening at hiring and the reduction of inmate/guard ratios with lower inmate populations including only those showing some aggressive violent tendencies. Of course the new database showing those criminally charged anywhere in the US will help. Improved hiring procedures should bring in better staff socialized to respect the rights of those in their charge and thereby able to build trusting relationships without resorting to manipulative, corrupt control practices. This should help the children become socialized to mainstream societal norms and develop some degree of self control by internalizing these norms and thereby advancing the interest of social control. For example, although American parents try to ban all sexual contact of their teenage offspring , American teenage unwed girls have a higher pregnancy rate than their Dutch counterparts because the latter better understand the importance of safe sex practices such as condom use. A 4th Dallas Morning News article discusses poor management at TYC (Simmons and McGingle 2007) .When Executive Director Dwight Harris was asked by a state senator he downplayed the issues of high staff turnover, dangerously inadequate facilities and climbing abuse allegations against staff by claiming “we don’t really have a big problem”. However, he was then forced to retire along with the remaining senior managers of TYC and the board. In farness to Mr. Harris he was hampered by insufficient funding especially for private contractors such as Southwest Key. Prior to 2003 they had included mental health services with some success in rehabilitating the children, but then under Governor George Bush and later Rick Perry they were no longer able to do so because of state budget cuts. . Not only ere medical services reduced because of these cuts, but the state policy of indiscriminate incarceration in the name fighting crime drove the TYC to warehouse increasing numbers of inmates in large cheap dilapidated buildings in remote areas far removed from the children’s family and friends. This lead to multiple incidents of “young inmates beating each other up while complicit guards looked the other way, witnesses who do not complain for fear of retaliation, not enough guards watching too many inmates, inattentive and poor medical care and sexual predators operating with abandon” hardly a good environment for the children to learn social norms acceptable to mainstream society or to develop practices of self control which foster the cause of social control in general. Finally a 5th article “Texas youth jail operators have troubled histories” (Becka and Lafleur 2007) describes problems incurred where TYC allows private firms to operate facilities allegedly to save money and because they offer some specialized services such as care for pregnant inmates. This article details the suicide of an inmate of a contracted out facility to illustrate that many tend to be even worse run than those operated directly by the TYC. To me this is not surprising because they have contradictory goals. On the one hand they are supposed to provide good care for troubled youth yet at the same time they are businesses for profit so even if needed they are unlikely to spend more on health and counseling services unless they have to under their contract. Furthermore the vetting process for new bidders is flawed as Texas does not require major incident reports or disclosure of lawsuits against bidders nor does it do any independent research. The TYC does monitor contractor performance to some extent but rarely terminates a contract for poor performance. The TYC allows contractors to largely police themselves which I think is a bad policy as some have hired convicted sex offenders. With the arm’s length relationship with contractors, mismanagement and abuse is often even worse than at directly run TYC facilities and this of course further limits the potential of inmates for good social learning and freedom from arbitrary manipulated control. I would suggest that even if cheaper, they are incompatible with good inmate care and socialization and should only be used very sparingly where they provide a specialized service not available at TYC facilities. The extra cost per inmate for TYC run facilities I suggest would be offset by lower caseloads if only the more violent offenders are institutionalized. Conclusion As a candidate for governor George Bush stated “So long as we’ve got an epidemic of crime I think we ought to forget about rehabilitation and worry about incarceration”. In my view this logic and a similar one shown by his hands (to the TYC) successor, Rick Perry, lies at the heart of the issue. There is an implicit assumption that the only way to fight crime is to jail everyone convicted no matter what the offence. The US and Texas in particular incarcerate a greater percentage of their citizens than almost everywhere else. But, for example the UK and Canada with lower incarceration rates, also have lower crime rates especially for violent crime such as murder. For example, Toronto at nearly 3 million in population is North America’s 4th largest city currently has an average annual homicide rate of about 60. I don’t know the population of Houston, Texas but it is less than Toronto and in 2011 it had 198 murders (Violence-Murder slides) The implicit assumption behind the philosophies of Bush and Perry is “to lock up the criminals and throw away the key” because they are incorrigible and won’t respond to rehabilitation efforts. I am not saying nonviolent crime should be without consequences as violent crime is. I am saying that the consequences should be tailored to the particular nature of the crime committed. For violent crimes offenders should be locked up for the protection o0f society and of course for their punishment and deterrent effect. I would also not object as a last resort to the incarceration of repeat nonviolent offenders who fail to respond to judicial demands for victim reimbursement and/ or community service to the best of their ability. However, experience has shown that the vast majority of nonviolent offenders gladly do what they can to comply with these kinds of court orders in order to avoid being sent to prison. I would argue that this would apply whether the offenders are adults or children. I therefore recommend the Texas Youth Commission institutionalize in its facilities only those who show some violent tendencies which I suggest would be about half of the current population based on the Dallas Morning News breakdown of the backgrounds of the TYC inmates. Of course as children if they are charged with say burglary or theft they probably don’t have the financial resources to compensate their victims However they could be required to directly apologize and do chores for them such as mowing their lawn, etc. Exactly how they compensate their victims is not important. What is important in my view is that they are socialized to learn that if they wrong someone they must do whatever they can “to make things right”. Some of the savings resulting from not incarcerating nonviolent offenders should be used to improve the pay, number and quality of the custodial staff and management, medical services especially mental health, education of the inmates and the physical facilities to provide a minimum level of comfort. I suspect that Bush and Perry are pandering to an electorate many of whom have been victims of crime or who know someone who has and are therefore demanding incarceration as the means to solve the entire crime problem . They are probably unaware of other approaches or if they are, they are dubious about their efficacy. One determinant fueling violent crime in the US is the gun culture arising from the right to bear arms zealously endorsed by the National Rifle Association and others . While in frontier times this may have been required by settlers to protect themselves I would argue that it is long outdated as the US has the highest gun murder rate of all developed countries (Violence-Murder slides). Other advanced countries Canada and the UK who do not have a similar gun culture have much lower rates of violent crime such as homicide. While this may not directly impact the youth inmates of TYC it does indicate that at least to some extent there is an implicit acceptance of violence in American culture. At the same time there is still a puritanical attitude about sex so it is not surprising to me that sexual gratification is often pursued violently. It is interesting to note that Texas has a higher rate of child abuse than the national aver, 10.6 per 1000k compared to 10.3 in 2008 (Child Abuse slides). Therefore it is not surprising that many of the children are rebelling in various ways and coming under the jurisdiction of the TYC where the abuse is iften perpetuated or possibly even increased. The pattern is usually repeated from generation to generation and can be explained by the social learning theory along with other theories such as structural strain, conflict, feminist, power and psychological. “Deviance is not a property inherent in certain forms of behavior. It is a property conferred upon these forms by the audiences which directly or indirectly witness them.” (Erickson) Thus when Bush and Perry and others label youth who disobey certain laws as criminals they do so from the perspective of comfortable middle and upper class folks who make and enforce the laws. On the other hand, many of the so called deviant children come from challenging backgrounds of poverty, dysfunctional families, absent parent(s), prejudice, lack of access to legal counsel, etc. To many of them it is the so called mainstream people who are deviant because in their eyes they often harass and victimize them fo no justifiable reasons. To them people like Bush and Perry seem more interested in locking them up out of sight to protect their own property and interests rather than help them acquire the tools so that they can share in the American Dream in ways acceptable to mainstream US society. In a nutshell I would suggest the following steps to improve the socialization process in TYC facilities 1) institutionalize only youth with a propensity for violence,, about half of the current population, 2) improve pay and training of custodial staff and lower inmate/guard ratios, 3) improve hiring practices with thorough background checks especially screening out applicants with violent/sexual convictions and similar complaints in previous employment and/or elsewhere, 4) eliminate the use of contractors to run TYC facilities except where required to provide a service TYC cannot and 5) re house inmates from large remote buildings to smaller urban ones which are Spartan but clean and secure and possibly closer to family and friends. Works Cited 1) Becka, Holly “Length of Stay Fluid for Many TYC Inmates” The Dallas Morning News March 24, 2007. 2) Becka, Holly and Lafleur, Jennifer Texas Youth Jail Operators have Troubled History” The Dallas Morning News July 30, 2007. 3) Hoppe, Christie “65 TYC Employees Found to have Felony Records” The Dallas Morning News April 13, 2007. 4) Swanson, Doug “Youth Jail Sex Enquiry Revived” The Dallas Morning News February 20, 2007. 5) Swanson, Doug and McGingle, Steve “Mistakes, Mismanagement Wrecked TYC” The Dallas Morning News May 13, 2007. 6) Child Abuse Slides. 7) Violence-Murder Slides 8 Erickson, Ken T. University of Pittsburgh “Notes on the Sociology of Deviance” Social Problems p. 307-314. Read More