Young County lacks beds for juvenile offenders
Young County Commissioners approved funding to purchase a detention bed for one year at a juvenile detention facility in Granbury after the county juvenile probation director said all nearby detention facilities for children under 17 are full or too understaffed to take more detainees. The commissioners appropriated an additional $23,300 out of their contingency fund to pay Young County’s share of the bed at Lake Granbury Youth Services, operated by Rite of Passage. The county will share the $80,000-plus cost of the bed with Stephens County.
Buying the bed guarantees that law enforcement has somewhere to detain juvenile arrestees, Jay Faulk of the Young and Stephens County Juvenile Probation Department told the commissioners at their Oct. 11 meeting. Mr. Faulk described a shell game the juvenile probation department is playing to find detention beds, saying he contacted 15 facilities in the area but could not find a detention bed. While he was on hold with a facility that had a free bed, the cost went up and the bed went to a higher bidder, he said. Teen offenders are quickly learning that the court system has no way to detain them, and are slipping out of court-ordered ankle monitors the only way to keep track of them after they are returned to their homes - to commit more serious crimes, he said. “Most everybody knows that in the past couple of months we have had a rash of vehicle burglaries,” Mr. Faulk said. “We got some of the juveniles in custody that we could not detain. They graduated from breaking into cars to stealing cars. When we still couldn’t find any beds, they started cutting their ankle monitors off. They started figuring it out … that we couldn’t find any beds.”
Earlier this month, three youths ages 16, 13, and 12, stole a car in Graham and took deputies and police officers from Olney and Archer City on a 50-mile car chase at speeds of over 100 mph before they were stopped by a spike strip.
They were arrested and charged with multiple felonies, the sheriff ’s department said.
Mr. Faulk told the commissioners that it was not clear where they would be detained.
Adding to the problem, the state has taken $30 million out of juvenile detention budgets and used it to fund border security, he said.
“Let’s get our bed,” Precinct 2 Commissioner Matt Pruitt said after Mr. Faulk’s presentation. “We’re going to need it.”
Precinct 3 Commissioner Stacey Rogers noted that some legislators are considering raising the age of juvenile offenders to 18. “That will just keep them in the system at county expense,” he said. “At 17, if they commit a crime they are considered an adult now and they go to prison.” Precinct 4 Commissioner Jimmy Wiley said funds from the state’s $27-billion surplus sales tax revenue should go toward raising wages for juvenile detention workers, and parents should foot some of the bill. “All these problems start at the house,” he said. “If there is no honor, no respect, and no discipline, and they don’t respect authority … it needs to be costing the parents some money, in my opinion.”