Advocates strongly oppose expansion of juvenile prison campus: say services should not be tied to incarceration – News

Travis County’s Juvenile Probation Department has a big ask: It wants the county to spend $250 million to $300 million in taxpayer money to expand its South Austin juvenile detention complex. But the plan’s prospects for approval look grim. A unanimous wall of social justice advocates has come out against it.

Juvenile Probation leaders presented their proposal, known as the Comprehensive Facilities Plan, at a June 27 Commissioners Court meeting. The plan calls for adding three new buildings to what is commonly called Gardner Betts — the county’s juvenile jail and justice campus near South Congress Avenue and Oltorf Street, where children accused of crimes are held before trial or after being found guilty.

Three new buildings would double the size of the campus. One would add 32 beds in so-called non-secure housing — dorm-style, unlocked rooms supervised by probation staff. Another would add 16 beds in transitional housing for kids who are ready to return to the community but don’t have a home to go to. A third building would house offices and conference rooms to provide treatment services, traditional and vocational classes and a snack bar. Probation leaders say the new facilities would help them expand restorative justice programs and divert kids accused of crimes away from the criminal justice system.

That’s not how advocates see the plan. At least 50 of them, representing a range of social justice groups, spoke after Juvenile Probation’s June 27 presentation. None supported the current plan.

Bill Wallace, who spent months at Gardner Betts in the late 1990s and now runs the youth mentoring group Tomorrow’s Promise, was one of several who called the new facilities “a prison.” “Nobody is going to look me in the eye and say you’re going to invest $300 million in a juvenile prison and then turn around and spend money and resources to keep kids out of that prison,” Wallace said. “You’re not going to let that nice building sit empty, and that’s just the truth. So either we invest in prisons and punishment, or we invest in resources.”

After Wallace’s comments, District Judge Andy Brown, who presides over the court, acknowledged the anxiety in the courtroom, especially because of rumors that commissioners would vote to approve the Comprehensive Facilities Plan at the end of the meeting. “We’re not taking any action on this today,” Brown assured defense attorneys. “We’ll vote on this another day. So I want you all to know that.”

“The incarceration of our youth causes physical trauma. It causes lifelong emotional damage, no matter how many layers of the word ‘progressive’ you weave into your argument.”
– Criminologist Jordan Martinez

Criminologist Jordan Martinez, who opposes the expansion, expanded on county data showing that two-thirds of children in Gardner Betts have experienced trauma, noting that keeping children in custody increases trauma and leads to higher recidivism rates. “The criminological evidence is pretty clear on this,” Martinez said. “Incarcerating our youth causes physical trauma. It causes lifelong emotional damage, no matter how many layers of ‘progressive’ you weave into your argument. … The reality is that our youth need services outside of the prison system to thrive.”

Advocates have repeatedly pointed out how many services — such as substance abuse treatment, anger management and family counseling — could be bought for $300 million. Many feared that if the county spent a lot of money on the Comprehensive Facilities Plan, there would be no money for such services or for satellite facilities closer to Pflugerville and Manor, where many troubled youth live. They noted that Juvenile Probation already has two large buildings with a combined capacity of 118 beds that have housed fewer than 40 children in recent years. They questioned why those spaces couldn’t be renovated to provide the facilities Juvenile Probation wants.

They complained that the Comprehensive Facilities Plan was released just three weeks ago, and the community had little advance notice of its arrival or scope. The director of the Juvenile Public Defender’s Office, Rubén Castañeda, said Juvenile Probation should have done more outreach to the community, including families of children in the system and members of the Commissioners Court, before releasing the plan. “Did Juvenile Probation go to these community leaders, sit down with them, and say, ‘What do you need? What can we do? What can we provide to help?’” Castañeda asked. “It could be something as simple as a survey.”

Adeola Ogunkeyede, head of the Public Defender’s Office and a staffer at Castañeda’s, compared the current controversy to the one in 2021 over a proposed women’s prison. That plan, which would have cost a third of the current proposal, died after an outcry from many of the same advocates who spoke June 27. “I think Travis County and this commission have already expressed those principles in previous votes on the women’s prison, saying that more buildings are not the way forward,” Ogunkeyede said. “So I ask that you recommit to those same principles here today.”

Indeed, it looks like things could play out the same way. At the end of the hearing, Commissioners Ann Howard, Jeff Travillion and Margaret Gómez — three of the five commissioners — called for more discussions with community members, county professionals and district judges before making a decision. “One of the things I really hope we do in the near future is have a meeting where we discuss the philosophy of juvenile court and detention and probation so we can better understand what our judges think is right,” Howard said. “I mean, it’s a lot of information, and I think we need to have a really good conversation.”