09/22/2026
Texas cannot treat harm inside its juvenile facilities as inevitable.
New reporting raises serious questions about self-harm, delayed intervention, missed safety checks, and use of force during TJJD's statewide lockdown. Children should not bear the consequences of staffing shortages or system failures.
Texas already has a bipartisan path forward: stronger county systems, regionalization, and community-based services that keep more young people safely closer to home.
Read the KERA Story: https://www.keranews.org/criminal-justice/2026-09-22/texas-juvenile-justice-department-youth-prison-lockdown-records-self-harm-delayed-care-use-of-force
Read LSJA's full statement below. ⬇️
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Texas Cannot Treat Harm Inside TJJD Facilities as Inevitable
LSJA calls for accountability, enforceable safety standards, and immediate investment in the bipartisan regionalization strategy Texas has already adopted.
AUSTIN, Texas - Internal records obtained by KERA and The Texas Newsroom document the consequences of last month's statewide lockdown of Texas Juvenile Justice Department facilities: children tying ligatures while employees waited for backup, required safety checks being missed, youth waiting hours for restroom access, and repeated uses of pepper spray, including incidents that TJJD's Office of Inspector General determined did not meet agency criteria.
TJJD has responded that youth in its facilities have greater mental-health needs and that self-harm and violent behavior occur whether facilities are locked down or not. That explanation cannot substitute for accountability. Children may enter state custody with serious behavioral and mental-health needs, but those needs make trained intervention, timely treatment, structured programming, and appropriate supervision more necessary, not less.
Nor should this be reduced to a failure by the officers working inside the facilities. The assault that prompted the lockdown seriously injured a Gainesville officer and required a serious response. But the records also show employees waiting for additional personnel before entering cells or escorting youth, including during incidents involving self-harm. Both employees and children were placed in dangerous circumstances when backup was not promptly available.
“Texas must reject the idea that self-harm, deprivation, and escalating force are inevitable when children have serious needs,” said Elizabeth Henneke, CEO of Lone Star Justice Alliance. “TJJD leadership cannot punish children for the agency’s staffing shortages or use isolation to manage conditions it has failed to fix. Texas must catch up to nationally recognized best practices and help counties keep more young people safely closer to home, strengthen treatment and community infrastructure, and create smaller, safer populations in secure facilities.”
Texas already has a bipartisan framework for moving in that direction. Regionalization can help appropriate youth remain closer to their families and communities, reserve state confinement for those who require it, and reduce pressure on state-operated facilities. Stronger county systems and greater access to treatment, crisis response, diversion, family support, and reentry services can advance rehabilitation while supporting safer and more manageable environments for youth and staff.
Lone Star Justice Alliance calls on the Governor, Legislature, TJJD Board, and Sunset Commission to take immediate action:
1) Require accountability. Conduct an independent public review of the lockdown, including documented incidents of self-harm, missed safety checks, delayed responses, unmet basic needs, and uses of force.
2) Establish an enforceable safety floor. Staffing shortages must not result in prolonged isolation, unmet basic needs, or collective restrictions. When a facility cannot safely operate a dorm, the state should provide adequate staffing, adjust operations, or lean into regional capacity to reduce the population.
3) Accelerate regionalization. Provide counties with sustained resources for treatment, crisis response, diversion, family support, and reentry so more youth can be served safely closer to home.
4) Increase transparency. Regularly publish facility-level data on staffing, lockdowns, shutdowns, safety checks, and uses of force.
These reforms are consistent with public safety. Smaller, adequately staffed, treatment-focused facilities can better protect employees, reduce instability, and prepare young people to return to their communities. Regionalization has historically drawn bipartisan support because public safety is not a partisan issue. The current crisis requires that same shared commitment.
In 2024, the U.S. Department of Justice concluded that TJJD violated the constitutional and federal statutory rights of children in its five secure facilities. The federal investigation identified excessive physical and chemical force, prolonged isolation, inadequate mental-health care, and a deficient behavior-management system. The latest reporting renews a central question: What has changed, and what will Texas do differently now?
Kids threatened su***de, urinated on themselves and were pepper sprayed in the early days of a statewide lockdown of Texas' five youth prisons. The first-of-its-kind move has youth advocates, experts and former staff wondering if the restrictive protocol is doing more harm than good.
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