The Sin of Incarceration: Texas Youth Council

About one and a half centuries ago, Lord Acton said that power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. In our society no power is more absolute than the power of the state over the incarcerated.

It should come as no surprise, then, when stories of corruption, like those now surfacing in the Texas Youth Council, abound in corrections systems.

The Texas Youth Council superivises the State "schools" in which youthful offenders (teenagers mainly) are locked up for education and rehabilitation -- the stated goals of the system.

However, I don't think the Lege intended that program to include the kinds of sex and drug education that those youthful offenders seem to be getting.

At one institution for boys, well-substantiated allegations claim that, over an extended period of time, staff members were having sexual relations with their charges. Although several staff members were fired or allowed to resign and at least one case was referred to the local District Attorney, no one has been charged or prosecuted.

At one of the State schools for girls, staff members were allegedly not only having sex with some of the girls, they were paying the girls with pills --"uppers and downers" according to the news reports. The irony of this report springs from the fact that a very large percentage of the crimes juveniles are charged with, and supposedly being rehabilitated from, are drug offenses.

The stench from these incidents has gotten so strong that it has reached the State capital, and all over Austin people are pointing fingers at each other, all claiming ignorance and all claiming that they did, too, tell the proper authorities about it. So far the governor has placed the TYC in receivership and several special investigations have started.

But let's remember Lord Acton. let us also remember the California situation in which guards were staging "gladiator" fights among inmates and organizing gambling pools on the outcome. Let us remember Abu Graib and Gitmo; And Sing Sing before its major riots; and the Texas prisons with their "trustees" wielding axe handles beforee the Federal courts took over. (And Colorado is thinking about reinstituting chain gangs, renting out convicts to do stoop labor on farms to replace migrant workers now barred by Homeland Insecurity.)

How does this corruption florish? Like many evil things, it grows in the dark. The best cure is light and air. These agencies must be made transparent. The media, and to the greatest erxtent possible, the public, should have complete and open access to the events in these places and to their records (yes, we can pixilate faces and black out names to protect the inmates). We all must know what happens behind those razor wire fences. Otherwise we are just like the "good Germans" who knew nothing about the death camps in their midst.

States and the Federal government also need public watchdogs over them. I would suggest an independently elected omsbudman agency with free access to all governmental actions with subpoena power and the ability to prosecute without reliance on local prosecutors.

It's our government, but how can we be responsible if we don't know what's going on?