HOUSTON – The Justice Department announced Thursday of its findings that the Texas Juvenile Justice Department (TJJD) has violated the U.S. Constitution, as well as the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act (IDEA) and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA).
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“Children are committed to TJJD facilities to receive treatment and rehabilitation so that they may return to their communities as law-abiding, productive citizens,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “Our investigation showed that, far from achieving those objectives, TJJD engaged in a pattern of abuse, deprivation of essential services and disability-related discrimination that seriously harms children and undermines their rehabilitation. State officials have an obligation to keep these children safe, to teach them, to provide them necessary health services and to treat them fairly, without discrimination. The Justice Department is committed to protecting the rights of vulnerable children in juvenile facilities. We look forward to working with state officials to remedy these violations, institute needed reform and improve outcomes for Texas children.”
The department’s report details findings from a comprehensive investigation of five TJJD youth facilities:
- Evins Regional Juvenile Center
- Gainesville State School
- Giddings State School
- McClennan County State Juvenile Correctional Facility
- Ron Jackson State Juvenile Correctional Complex
The report concludes the following:
- TJJD routinely violates the constitutional rights of children in all five facilities by:
- Exposing them to excessive force and prolonged isolation
- Failing to protect children from sexual abuse
- Failing to provide adequate mental health services
- TJJD violates the IDEA by failing to provide special education and related services to children with disabilities.
- TJJD discriminates against children with disabilities in violation of the ADA by:
- Not providing reasonable modifications necessary to permit their participation in programming required for release and
- Denying them an equal opportunity to benefit from education.
These violations of the Constitution and federal law place children at substantial risk of serious physical and psychological harm and impede successful outcomes for children.
“The conditions in the facilities are unacceptable,” said U.S. Attorney Alamdar S. Hamdani for the Southern District of Texas. “Our investigation found that children in these facilities face sexual abuse by staff and other children. Tragically, this is not the first investigation into allegations of sexual abuse at TJJD facilities. Since the early 2000s, other investigations by Texas state agencies and the Texas Rangers substantiated sexual abuse allegations of the children at TJJD facilities, yet this horrifying problem persists. Working with Texas’s other U.S. Attorneys’ Offices, the Civil Rights Division and the State of Texas, my office hopes to provide protections to the vulnerable and help right wrongs that have existed for far too long.”
The Justice Department launched its investigation of TJJD’s juvenile justice facilities in October 2021, under the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act and the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, which authorize the department to address a pattern or practice of deprivation of constitutional and federal rights of children confined to state or local government-run correctional facilities.
The Civil Rights Division’s Special Litigation Section and the U.S. Attorneys’ Offices in Texas investigated the case.