Dallas County officials are sharing the blame for a juvenile justice system which a recent report says has led to more children locked up for longer periods of time and face harsher sentencing than other Texas counties.
One juvenile judge said there were shortcomings in the report, declining to fully support its findings.
During the first Dallas County Juvenile Board meeting following the report’s release, board members discussed plans for next steps to collaborate to improve the juvenile judicial process.
Judge Cheryl Shannon, who chairs the board, spoke publicly for the first time on the report, sharing her concerns over the report. She said that it was not as comprehensive as she would have liked and that it seemed to put more blame on the juvenile department rather than other criminal justice departments.
“I can say, and I will say, people have their own agenda, and I’m trying to go through this and figure out what everybody’s agenda is,” Shannon said at the board’s regularly scheduled meeting on Monday.
The report found that while national court associations recommend that 75% of children in detention centers have their case resolved within 30 days, only 1% of Dallas cases are resolved that quickly.
Regardless of the severity of the offense or risk of reoffending, the report concluded that minors arrested and locked up wait an average of 140 days in the Henry Wade Juvenile Justice Center, despite the fact that more than half eventually are granted probation.
Commissioner John Wiley Price serves as the vice chair of the county’s juvenile board. He said the glaring point from the report was Dallas County’s failure to communicate, leading to more locked up children.
Dallas County as of Monday had about 200 minors in detention while Travis County had 15 to 20, Price said.
“I’m so sick of our process,” he said. “This report is very clear about having a failure to communicate collaboratively in the best interest of our children, our young people.”
Studies show that the longer children are incarcerated, the higher the likelihood of negative future outcomes.
Dallas County District Attorney John Creuzot said he asked for an independent report last year after seeing disturbing trends in minors convicted of murder. Dallas County commissioners approved the $50,000 study by the social research nonprofit Evident Change. Researchers spent a year interviewing staff in juvenile justice departments across five counties in Texas.
The report found that Dallas’ juvenile justice system was an outlier compared to other Texas counties in many regards, including the duration of time children spent in detention centers, the number of minors who go through court proceedings, and the outcomes of their cases.
Dallas convicts more children of crimes, sending more to the state’s youth prisons than other counties. The state aggregate number of committed children is 2.1%, Dallas’ rate is 3.2%.
While most board members appeared to agree with Price’s and Creuzot’s take on the report, there was some pushback.
Judicial response
Shannon said in the meeting that she did not agree with “portions of the report.”
“I take issue with some of the things that are in the report,” she said at the meeting.
Shannon said she agreed with the need for collaboration across departments and said she was willing to take responsibility for the shortfalls of the juvenile court. Yet, she said the report put undue blame on the juvenile department.
“Unless everybody is on board with that collaboration that you’re talking about, we can’t lay everything at the doorsteps and at the feet of the juvenile department, and that seems to be ignored with respect to this report,” Shannon said.
She said the report compared counties with different processes and different court operations. Some courts, Shannon said, handle just juvenile cases while others also look at child welfare cases.
“At the very beginning of this, I cautioned that one of the things that needed to happen was to make sure that people were comparing apples to apples,” she said.
Shannon said the courts made changes before the report was released that were not included but she did not elaborate on the changes during the meeting.
“I don’t know if there was an unwillingness to report those or it was just, ‘We don’t want to do that report,’” she said at the meeting.
While Dallas County could do “something different” on how many children are sent to detention centers, Shannon said the report did not look at impacts on other counties where more children received probation instead of being sent to detention centers. She questioned if there were community safety issues in other counties.
Shannon did not respond to requests from The Dallas Morning News for further details.
Creuzot told The News that the report focused on process rather than outcomes. The focus of the report on the judicial process found his own office partially culpable.
DA and public defender
In Dallas County, prosecutors move almost all juvenile cases — 91% — through official court proceedings instead of probation or supervision.
While waiting for those court proceedings, many minors are stuck, locked up in the detention center for months. Creuzot accepted partial responsibility for those wait times.
“To the extent to whatever proportion of the blame is on us, I will take it. That’s why I wanted the study,” he said in an interview.
About 64% of the time, a judge will release minors back into the community after weeks — sometimes months — of waiting in the detention center for a decision that places them back in the community under supervision.
Creuzot said in an interview that the report enlightened staff to alternatives to sending a child through a formalized court process, known in the juvenile system as a petition.
The state requires a risk assessment that looks at a child’s risks and needs through social history, parent involvement, school issues and social circle to determine the child’s risk of committing a crime again.
Apart from Dallas, all counties surveyed in the report complete the risk assessment as soon as a probation officer is assigned. Probation officers in these counties use the assessment in decision making to look at all alternatives to detention earlier and then make recommendations to the DA’s office.
Creuzot previously told The News that these assessments were essentially “ignored” in Dallas.
Lynn Richardson, the head of the Dallas County Public Defender’s Office, said the report uncovered that these risk assessments were being completed, but not shared to the prosecutors or defense attorneys.
“I think all of us can take responsibility in this, but I think now we’re in this environment where everybody recognizes that we’ve got to correct these problems,” Richardson said at the meeting. “I think communication is key.”
Creuzot said he wants to change the existing process but change is not possible yet. His staff have been trained by county juvenile staff to administer a risk assessment. Creuzot said he hopes this encourages staff to implement the assessment in future decisions.
The District Attorney said he worries that Dallas’s existing system is not set up to help children accused of a crime without the formal court process triggering services.
“This juvenile department is not focused on intervening with this child if I don’t file a petition and go to court,” Creuzot said.
The board is planning to hold a retreat among criminal justice departments in coming weeks to further discuss potential reforms.
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