State lawmakers didn’t seem swayed by top officials with the Texas Juvenile Justice Department, who said on Monday that reports of rampant abuse within the agency’s facilities aren’t reflective of the department’s current climate.
The Gainesville State School in far North Texas is one of five Texas Juvenile Justice Department facilities where the U.S. Department of Justice said it had found widespread instances of physical and mental abuse.
Democrats on the committee acknowledged the agency contended with staffing shortages and battled through the COVID-19 pandemic like other state agencies. But they expressed alarm that the Justice Department report outlined inherent problems within the agency that have been at issue for decades instead of years.
“I think there are good people who work in these facilities. I've met them. We met them,” he said, referring to site visits some lawmakers have made. “The problem is not that. The problem is the model. The problem is putting kids in prisons. It's never going to work. It's kind of a deep moral intuition, I think, that we all have – that children don't belong in prisons.”
“If I hear you correctly, you're saying that staff was overworked, they got frustrated and they started spraying down kids,” Wu responded.“What does understaffing have to do with the prevalence of sexual assaults?” Wu asked.
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