BY ELIZABETH PIERSON The Brownsville Herald
March 19, 2006 - AUSTIN - If records show that young people in juvenile prisons are taking punches, guards say they, too, are getting pummeled.
Juvenile inmates are becoming more aggressive and injuring guards with greater frequency, Texas Youth Commission employees and union representatives say.
Employees with TYC filed 773 worker's compensation claims for aggression-related injuries last year, compared with 454 in 2000. Most of those claims involved inmates hurting officers.
Physical abuse of children and young adults in the system has in-creased steadily for seven years. By 2005, three of every 100 inmates were abused, records show.
One officer at Marlin Orientation and Assessment Unit, who asked that she not be identified for fear of retribution, said she is "scared" to come to work each day because youth are becoming more aggressive.
She is hesitant to defend herself against them for fear of being sub-jected to a lengthy internal investigation that she said ignores facts and favors children over the employees.
She has seen inmates injure people she considers "good officers" in a struggle. Those officers then face discipline or lose their jobs, she said.
"I don't know if I'm going to come out of there dead or alive," she said. "And if I come out of there alive, I don't know if I've got a job the next day."
From 1999 to 2005, the agency confirmed nearly 400 cases of youth abuse. In most cases, officers initiated the physical contact.
Dwight Harris, executive director of TYC, said he agrees that youths are becoming more aggressive, in part, because more children are sent to juvenile prisons with mental illnesses.
But, he and other executives deny allegations that the investigation process unfairly favors the inmates at the employees' expense.
Investigators gather witness statements, medical records, photo-graphs and video footage, when available, and carefully preserve and analyze the material before deciding whether to confirm the abuse.
"This characterization of the investigation process is not correct," the agency replied in a written response to the allegation. "The inves-tigative process exists to protect both staff and youth ? the staff from wrongful accusations and the youth from abuse and neglect."
Mike Gross, vice president of the Texas State Employees Union, sees the TYC of today as a very different agency than the TYC he worked for in the 1970s and 1980s. Back then, children left the agency before they turned 18, and he remembers just one convicted killer in the system, he said.
"Now, you have kids who are much tougher and much more hard-ened, and they are keeping them in TYC much longer," Gross said. "I mean, calling them ?kids' is crazy. The kids are tougher than even they were a few years ago."
At the end of February, 29 convicted killers lived in TYC. The "kids" can stay until they are 21, and many have their original com-mitment lengths, or sentences, extended by TYC officials because they are not progressing in the socialization, academic or behavior programs.
Average length of stay increased steadily from 1995 to 2002, peak-ing at 23 months. It decreased the next two years, and the average stay in 2004 was 21 months.
A group of officers in San Saba recently submitted a petition to TYC asking them to reconsider rules governing when guards can use force. In February, 40 employees from the Evins unit in Edinburg met with state Rep. Aaron Peña, D-Edinburg, saying they were concerned for their safety at the facility.
TYC officials said their use-of-force policies are consistent with those used at juvenile detention centers in other states and should not change. Officers are allowed to restrain youth only when someone is physically threatened. Even then, they must use as little force as possible.
Harris hopes the fledgling Professional Development Academy will help clarify the policies and encourage officers to diffuse situations before physical conflicts arise. The Legislature in 2005 approved $993,000 over the next two years to improve training among officers.
"Most of our abuse cases, physical abuse cases, occur within a re-straint context, so if we can avoid restraints and reduce that number, that should reduce the physical abuse cases," Harris said.
Marlin Superintendent Jerome Parsee said he accepts full respon-sibility for not detecting the youth abuse at his facility, where rates were higher in 2005 than at any of the other 13 high-security institu-tions, but he does not accept employees' allegations that TYC policies prevent them from controlling youth effectively.
"Our staff are complaining, and they say they have nothing, but they aren't using all their tools," said Parsee, who is also a dog trainer. "I can beat my dogs, and they'll go in the corner, but that's not what we want. We want free-thinking beings.
"As a facility and as an agency, I think we lost focus of what we're doing."
