Youth prison continues to improve conditions for inmates

EDINBURG — Andrea Rogers barely recognized the sullen teen sitting across from her as her 17-year-old son Brandon.

With eyes swollen shut, teeth chipped and a constant migraine, the boy — an inmate at the Evins Regional Juvenile Facility in Edinburg — worried about his mother’s reaction to his altered appearance.

A September 2009 beating by fellow inmates left Brandon so doubtful of correctional officers’ ability to protect him that he voluntarily secluded himself in the facility’s isolated security ward. He has refused to rejoin the general population for more than seven months.

"He’s all broken out. He’s super-duper skinny. He looks unhealthy," said Rogers, his mother, after a recent visit with her son. "He begs me not to come see him. He doesn’t want me to see him like that."

While Evins has taken substantial steps toward improving its record of protecting inmates’ civil rights in the past four years, problems still persist at the facility, a recent federal audit shows.

Stories like Brandon’s, coupled with reports of inmate-on-inmate extortion, gaps in guard supervision and continued staff frustration with new policies and procedures prompted U.S. Justice Department auditors to urge continued court-ordered monitoring in a report released earlier this month.

"The state has made notable progress," they wrote. "But significant work remains."

HISTORY OF VIOLENCE

Investigators with the Texas Youth Commission — the agency charged with oversight of Evins and the state’s nine other juvenile lockups — eventually determined that guards failed to provide adequate supervision on the day Brandon was assaulted.

The correctional officer monitoring his dorm walked away for eight minutes, allowing a group of teens all the time they needed to enter his room unnoticed and beat him, according to a Feb. 2 letter sent to his mother outlining the incident.

This type of prompt investigation and action to address the situation would have been unusual four years ago, but the details of the attack track those of earlier incidents at Evins with a disturbing similarity.

In 2006, the youth prison came under scrutiny after a series of riots and reports of excessive force prompted Justice Department investigators to conclude conditions there violated inmates’ rights and failed to adequately protect them from harm.

Youth reported instances in which guards bound them, threw them face-down into flower gardens, used their bodies as battering rams to open doors and hit them against concrete poles.

The federal government sued the facility, the state and the TYC in 2008 and drafted a reform plan aimed at improving living conditions for inmates. State lawmakers, meanwhile, passed their own reform legislation in response to similar allegations at Texas’ other youth lockups.

SUBSTANTIAL IMPROVEMENTS

Evins has come a long way since then, and the facility is almost unrecognizable, said Superintendent Billy Hollis.

The old barracks-style housing, which monitors said contributed to the escalation of violence, has been entirely replaced by mostly single-cell pods.

A new incentive-based behavior management program offering television time, board games and sketch paper for good behavior has begun to catch on with most inmates.

Periodically shifting guards to different duty posts has largely eliminated the opportunity for specific staff members to develop unhealthy relationships with individual teens.

And for the first time since the Justice Department began its twice-yearly audits of the facility, reports of abuse and misconduct dropped during the first quarter of the 2010 fiscal year, which ended in November.

On a recent tour, Hollis pointed to one of the 900 surveillance cameras that have been installed across the facility as the primary factor in stopping the violence. With almost every minute of life recorded, administrators can better investigate incidents when they occur.

"Cameras are a part of everyday life here," Hollis said. "They’re everywhere. They see everything."

PROBLEMS PERSIST

But while federal monitors credited Evins for that progress in their latest status report, they pointed to a number of disturbing trends that continue.

Several staff members said extortion of food, personal items and clothing among inmates continues to be a problem at the facility.

"Some staff let them get away with it," one guard told auditors during the February tour. "(Their) mentality is they let them do it, so they don’t have any problems."

Others complained of the incentive-based behavior program that left them confused as to how to react when their wards misbehave.

"There are no consequences here for when the kids get out of hand," monitors reported guards saying in their report.

And despite the extensive security camera network, it still has its blind spots. Several youth reported that because individual dorm rooms are not monitored, fights can break out when guards are not paying attention.

Brandon got caught in one of those blind spots, his mother said.

‘100 PERCENT EFFORT’

During their visit, Justice Department monitors found Brandon and one other teen isolating themselves in the Evins security unit.

On any given day, the number of inmates doing the same has reached as high as eight — a problem inspectors described as indicative of a failure to protect the teens’ due process rights.

As long as inmates refuse to leave the unit, they cannot complete the facility’s program that allows them to work toward their release.

But teens like Brandon — who was ordered to Evins after conviction on a graffiti charge — feel day-to-day safety is a better option than the far-off goal of one day getting out. He now is hoping a juvenile judge will order his release at a hearing next week because he has turned 18.

"It’s not a safe environment for him — for any kid," said Rogers, his mother. "You can’t be a child in there."

But James Smith, TYC’s statewide youth services director, stood by the facility’s progress over the last several years.

"We’ve done a good job trying to keep kids safe," he said. "Are we going to be 100 percent successful? No, it’s still a correctional facility.

"But we are giving 100 percent effort."