juvenile prisons might have been arbitrarily and unfairly extended by prison
authorities and thousands of youths could be freed in a matter of weeks as
part of a sweeping overhaul of the scandal-plagued system, officials say.
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Jay Kimbrough, a special master appointed by Texas Gov. Rick Perry to
investigate the system after allegations surfaced that some prison officials
were coercing imprisoned youths for sex, said he would assemble a committee to
review the sentence of every youth in the system.
The goal, Kimbrough said, is to release any youth whose sentence was
improperly extended without justification or in retaliation for filing
complaints. In his initial review of sentences, Kimbrough said, he had found
many questionable extensions, adding that some experts estimate that more than
60 percent of the state’s youthful inmates might be languishing under wrongful
detention.
Such a mass emptying of a state’s juvenile jails would be unprecedented,
experts said.
Among the leading candidates for early release is Shaquanda Cotton, a
black teenage girl from the small east Texas town of Paris, who was sent to
prison for up to 7 years for shoving a hall monitor at her high school while
other young white offenders convicted of more serious crimes received
probation in the town’s courts.
Shaquanda’s story was the subject of a March 12 Tribune article that
triggered hundreds of blog articles and thousands of message board postings
and led to a nationwide letter-writing campaign to the Texas governor decrying
perceived racial discrimination in her case.
Cotton, 15, has been incarcerated at a youth prison in Brownwood, Texas,
for the last year on a sentence that could run until her 21st birthday. But
like many of the other youths in the system, she is eligible to earn earlier
release if she achieves certain social, behavioral and educational milestones
while in prison.
But officials at the Ron Jackson State Juvenile Correctional Complex have
repeatedly extended Shaquanda’s sentence because she refuses to admit her
guilt and because she was found with contraband in her cell — an extra pair
of socks.
“I do have an interest in that case,” Kimbrough said. “Based on what I’ve
already seen and heard, that’s exactly the kind of thing I want to know more
about, if that typifies in some way why sentences are being extended.”
ACLU gets briefed
Will Harrell, executive director of the Texas chapter of the ACLU, attended
a meeting in Austin last Friday where Kimbrough outlined his sentence review
plan and invited civil rights groups to nominate members to the review panel.
“Everybody in the room thought we should take Shaquanda’s case first,”
Harrell said, because of its high profile.
But if the teenager is released, Kimbrough noted, the decision will have
nothing to do with whether she was the victim of racial discrimination in the
schools and courtrooms of Paris, as civil rights groups have alleged. Instead,
it will be based on whether she has been treated arbitrarily by prison
officials since she has been incarcerated.
Texas’ juvenile prison system, known as the Texas Youth Commission, was
first rocked by scandal last month after revelations surfaced that two
administrators at a youth prison in west Texas had allegedly coerced sex from
inmates for years and that prison officials and local prosecutors chose not to
pursue the cases.
Since then, the scandal has widened as reports surfaced of cover-ups and
alleged sex abuse by guards and administrators at other prisons. More than a
thousand investigations have now been opened. Meanwhile, Kimbrough discovered
that 111 employees of the youth agency had felony arrests or convictions and
an additional 437 had misdemeanor arrests or charges.
The top leadership of the youth commission was forced out, the board
overseeing the agency resigned and Perry essentially placed the commission
into receivership when he appointed Kimbrough to clean up the mess.
Texas state legislators are rushing to pass bills to overhaul the juvenile
prison agency.
Sentences a longtime concern
Civil rights advocates have long been concerned that Texas’ system of
indeterminate sentences for youths places too much discretion in the hands of
prison authorities, who retain the power to hold or release youths at will.
Now the sex scandal — and the concern that some victimized youths may have
been threatened with longer detentions to keep them quiet — has prompted
Kimbrough to examine the entire practice.
Nearly 90 percent of juveniles incarcerated inside Texas youth prisons were
sent there on indeterminate sentences that could run as long as their 21st
birthdays. But many of those inmates become eligible for release after serving
only 9 months, if prison authorities are satisfied that they have completed
all the steps, or “phases,” of an elaborate behavior modification program.
“The system is wide open for abuse and corruption,” said the ACLU’s
Harrell. “How difficult would it be for a 12-year-old kid to file a complaint
on an assistant superintendent of a facility when that assistant
superintendent is actually the one who is sexually abusing her and that same
person gets to decide when she gets out? Basically the official gets to say,
‘Comply and keep quiet or I’ll keep you here until you’re 21.’
“
Harrell, who will serve on Kimbrough’s sentence review panel, said the
members intend to be careful not to release truly violent youths who ought to
remain behind bars.
“If kids have behaved violently, then those are the ones that may very well
have a justification for their sentence extension,” Harrell said. “But most of
the cases I have heard about have to do with petty instances, like Shaquanda’s
contraband socks.”
The “phases” system also contains a built-in Catch-22 for youths, like
Shaquanda, whose appeals are still making their way through the courts.
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One of the first phases that must be satisfied is a requirement that youths
admit their guilt — an admission that would instantly compromise their
appeals.
For his part, Kimbrough says he feels a sense of urgency about his review.
“As fast as we can do this, that’s my goal,” said Kimbrough, a former
deputy attorney general. “Any time the government is holding somebody that
ought not be held, that’s urgent to me.”
———-
IN THE WEB EDITION: Read Howard Witt’s original article about alleged
discrimination in Paris, Texas, and read his Web-only tale of how the story
picked up momentum on the Internet at chicagotribune.com/paris