At the Capitol Wednesday lawmakers held a meeting with the officials of the Texas Youth Commission, to hear how they’re coming with the sweeping reforms outlined in last session. I’m in such a pissy funk it’s taking 2 days and hard liquor to absorb the testimony.
The only M.D. who spoke said what they need to do is take behavioral control of the population, and that he would diagnose “100 percent of the inmates with Oppositional Defiant Disorder.” He then praised the cutting edge research of Harvard’s bi-polar child mafia, citing Biederman by name, as mark of credibility. There was no criticism or suggestion of internal controversy, and there won’t be, ever. A specialized medical practice is by definition out of reach from general discourse, the specialist alone speaks in the legitimizing language and name of psychiatry. Speaks to a gullible and appreciative audience that bows like sheep to terminology they don’t understand because they don’t understand it, yes and it’s settled, let the experts handle it.
But the big news is this: TYC is moving the use of pepper spray from the fourth to third step in what’s called the de-escalation process when dealing with belligerent kids. The rationale given — do you see this coming? Dear Christ on a muffin top. See, it’s all about choices. We expand the use of pepper spray on 10 year olds in order to reduce the number of broken bones that occur when said 10 year olds are subjected to physical restraints. Blinding children for a couple minutes is seen as a better option to cracking open their skulls, of course it will be frequent, casual and tempting, much easier to objectify a child (“inferior” “criminal” “oppositional defiant disordered”) you’re trying to control by pointing and spraying a can of toxic chemicals in their face, as opposed to the messy engagement of mind and emotion that comes with the heave and sweat of one body physically taking down another. But this new policy will result in fewer worker compensation claims for the state to pay, and what’s not to love about that?
In Texas this is how we do human rights reform. The people who might arguably be talking against this practice are not. Who are those people anymore? I’m trying to follow their reasoning. The sad thing is I think I get it. Please. If I ever speak about becoming an advocate again do the world a favor and blow my reformist brains out.
Well honey, that ain’t gonna happen, but I hear the sentiment. Holy fuck this is awful. For damn sure, I can’t bring myself to cognitively connect the concepts of “pepper spray” and “de-escalation.” But what do I know? I’m in the ‘mentally interesting’ category, myself.
Next round’s on me, ‘k?
What a coincidence, Victoria, I’m reading your blog right now, clicking yr comment links. But this pepper spray deal is so surreal it’s become a metaphor and that means it’s time to write a post about the concrete facts or I’ll split off.
The harsh reality is that spraying pepper is better than kicking a child in the face. No argument there. Chalk up another forward step in system reform.
Seriously, chops to the advocates who can stand to make negotiations within the madness of the system. We need them. Just as we need people outside, throwing rocks at the paucity of their progress.
hmmm…pepper spray and de-escalation…the connection…I’m thinking the staff doesn’t gear up for physical violence and calms down much more quickly when it only takes one spray to the face to leave the belligerent child writhing in pain on the floor. This about de-escalating staff, so they don’t get to the point where they’re breaking bones to achieve a desired response. I think it would be much more effective to wire staff and give them aversive shock therapy when they start to escalate.
Hell, I don’t drink, but I’m starting to consider it.
Spot on, TMA, as usual. It’s all about projection and problematizing the Other, who is “belligerent”, while MY behavior is necessary in seizing “behavioral control,” which is a perfectly rational objective because I am the king and no one fucks with my authority.
Texas is worse than Virginia. Now I don’t need a drink. Thank you.
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100% have the same diagnosis, that’s interesting, what does a diagnosis mean if that’s the case?
You need Amnesty International and the ACLU on this. No one individual is going to be able to stop them. Although there may actually be laws that prohibit what they are planning to do and a decent lawyer or law student or self taught advocate could find out. If they take federal dollars at all, they are under federal regulations for their policies. Call the DOJ Special Investigations Dept. of the Civil Rights Division and get an opinion. Or if your Protection and Advoacy isn’t entirely useless, any of these kids with a disability can be represented by them to protest the policy change. It’s part of their mandate to represent people with disabilities in the correctional system. Or get someone else to do all the things I’m suggesting–that’s actually my favorite idea.
Any Legal Aid friendly types around?
Hymes, the ombudsman is the former executive director of the ACLU, Will Harrell, and discussed in the second link I posted at Grits For Breakfast. He’s the guy I wrote a worshipful post about as my official crush last session. Him, yeah. He was the big player in the abuse investigation and the crafting of SB 103 that outlined the reforms, and was appointed to ombudsman in May. His testimony Wednesday is what we Texans are struggling with actually.
Wednesday he described an incident of pepper spray on a 14 year old he saw the tail-end of while visiting a TYC facility this month. He described the circumstances as two kids sitting at a table “bickering”. Senator Whitmire challenged the term “bickering” and said he was probably minimizing what actually happened. The upshot of Harrell’s testimony was not the denunciation we all expected, though he said in the press last week that he was “gravely concerned” about the policy change.
If you read the thread at Grits thread you’ll see the WTF reaction and speculation about Harrell’s strategy, which may be more nuanced than mere mortals can figure. He is the most advanced, visible and powerful human rights advocate we have in Texas, an archetypal hero, and he wears a pony tail, he knows how to play the game. Nothing to do but pour another shot, wait and see what’s up his sleeve.
Hymes, all major players are at the table, and several testified about their “misgivings”, including Advocacy Inc., which handles protection and advocacy for the S and P mentally ill.
I’m going to keep at this til I’m done. To recap, TYC is under conservatorship due to abuses that came out last session. The agency is being overhauled under the eyes of lawmakers who crafted SB 103 mandating reforms from the ground up. Wednesday’s was the first hundred day report and there will be hearings every month while TYC is being rebuilt. The abuse of restraints was one of countless systemic injustices that came to light last session and lo and behold — pepper spray is what the agency heads came up with as the fix, to cut down on knee-jerk use of physical restraints.
Of course pepper spray violates the research on juvie best practices, of course there are other alternatives between pepper spray and takedowns, and that no one can come up with anything therapeutic in an agency that swears allegiance to “resocialization” may seem beyond belief but this is Texas where laughter is a coping mechanism.
The contradiction between rhetoric and policy have to be seen as contradictory. As one witness put it, TYC is evidently unclear on its mission. TYC can be an institution of punishment or it can be about rehabilitation, but it can’t do both. Texas is about punishment. That’s the elephant in the room.
Now we’re supposed to take pepper spray as a serious reform. Except it’s more in line with punishment than rehabilitation, meanwhile the same bigwheels spout all this Mother Teresa talk about supporting these doomed kids upon their re-entry into society, but pay no mind to the pepper spray, which is a GOOD, NICE and HEARTFELT reform, compared to tearing the little bastards limb from limb.
Jeff just called and told me he’s been pepper sprayed over 20 times and found it preferable to getting his skull cracked open. So there ya go. Every time! What it boils down to is reform as a joke and pepper spray the punchline. The advocates and at least one senator know this, but what can you do? Wait for the blackout.
I’m feeling stupid, I plead kidney brain, where is Grits for Breakfast? How do I find it?
So your P and A has “misgivings”. We don’t do this even in Virginia, I am actually shocked for once. There is a guy here who has worked hard on children and teen advocacy and is a national figure, maybe he can be of some help? Write me offlist if you want his contact info. He has really had some success in Virginia with teens in the correctional system.
Someone else mentioned they can’t see the links in the posts in this theme. In my opening post, the word “not” is underlined with a broken green hyperlink, that will take you to the Grits conversation. I recommend reading that for sure.
I just listened to the testimony again. The mental illness policy will be distinct from the general policy, but I may have confused the issue since I make no distinction between the two populations.
But as an agency Advocacy Inc will not permit the use of pepper spray on mentally ill youth, there has already been one incident where a person with mental illness was peppered for refusing to spit caulk out of his mouth and had a seizure, and the Advocacy Inc witness testified that they are investigating pepper spray use in two facilities that house offenders with mental illness.
But also at issue here is the use of pepper spray on the general population; and where the “misgivings” come from and for whom the pepper spray policy has not been finalized yet.
Since we’re talking about mental illness now, I’ll say that’s eating me too. I don’t think it’s right to exclude a population from the use of pepper spray because they have a psych diagnosis. I believe it’s a false dichotomy, and that any kid pepper sprayed enough will spend time on the mental illness side of the line. Where greater protections are in place. But as for what put him there? Crickets chirp. What put all these kids in the juvenile justice system? It’s all abuse at the roots, labeled mentally ill or not, so we play at keystone kop reforms instead of going at the roots. It’s a deliberate dodge, because roots are for radicals and liberals can barely hold their own in this state.