Senator Eliot Shapleigh - El Paso, Texas

With legislative leaders pushing for more community-based programs, Texas Youth Commission officials are considering opening a string of new lockups and halfway houses across the state.

But the new report on ongoing reforms made public Tuesday drew fire from Senate Criminal Justice Committee Chairman John Whitmire, who questioned why the troubled agency has proposed to build more facilities while its juvenile offender population is shrinking.

Under one plan, two state-run lockups and eight halfway houses could be added.

In the report requested by the Legislature, outgoing Conservator Richard Nedelkoff says the Youth Commission has identified a potential site where a secure lockup to house 150 youths could be built for as much as $25 million in the Houston area, which is home to almost a quarter of the agency's inmates.

The agency also is exploring the possibility of leasing vacant 48-bed lockups outside Kerrville and Lubbock and is looking for possible sites in El Paso and the Midland/Odessa area.

"This is the way we're moving," said agency spokesman Jim Hurley. He said the report is the product of months of study and research by agency officials. The Legislature "called for regionalization, and this is the way Richard (Nedelkoff) wants to go," he said.

The plan drew immediate criticism from Whitmire, who characterized it as "the latest mess from this broken agency."

"Twenty-two percent of their beds are vacant right now, and they're proposing to build a bunch of new units run by the state? That's crazy," said Whitmire, D-Houston, chairman of a committee overseeing reforms at the Youth Commission in the aftermath of a sex-abuse scandal in 2007 that triggered a housecleaning of top management.

The agency has been in conservatorship — for state government, the equivalent of a business receivership — ever since.

Nedelkoff "needs to go back to the drawing board" he said, "I'm fed up. More than a year later, this is still a broken agency that's still headed in the wrong direction."

Whitmire said he was surprised Nedelkoff did not recommend closing any of the state lockups in "remote, rundown rural areas." And, he said, the plan does not include plans to embrace "community-based treatment programs ... instead of the same old thing, where the state runs it."

"We need a new model," Whitmire said. "I don't think they can give it to us."

Hurley said Nedelkoff's plan would be a big step toward incarcerating youth offenders closer to home where they can stay connected with their families, a stated goal of lawmakers.

He said Nedelkoff proposed several options for new facilities to give lawmakers a choice on how to spend $25 million in bonds that lawmakers authorized in 2007 for a new "facility in an urban setting."

House Corrections Committee Chairman Jerry Madden, R-Richardson, co-chairman of the special Youth Commission oversight panel with Whitmire, said he had not read Nedelkoff's report and had no comment.

In the past, he has said reforms were not being made quickly enough or with enough depth to correct long-standing flaws in Texas' juvenile justice system.

Whitmire has proposed doing away with the troubled agency and distributing its programs among state agencies or perhaps creating a new one with a limited mission: to ensure community-based rehabilitation and treatment programs.

Nedelkoff cites similar goals in summarizing his plans. "We must build capacity in facilities as well as services provided in order to most efficiently and effectively ... serve (offender) needs while simultaneously protecting the public," the report says.

"A significant number of youth and their families live in or near large urban areas. However, TYC facilities are rarely located within reasonable traveling distance from those urban areas.

"Not only is this a hardship on family resources, but the agency has difficulty staffing and providing specialized services in the more remote, rural areas of the state."