Tarsha Jackson noticed her son's unusual behavior early on. "It wasn't just the terrible twos," she recalled. "He had big mood swings." Marquieth was prescribed Ritalin even before he entered school.

His behavior only worsened as he grew older. Marquieth faced his first assault charge in fourth grade. In October 2003, with no other place willing to accept him, he was sentenced to nine months in the Texas Youth Commission.

He was 12.

Marquieth's personality and mental health problems seemed incompatible with the strict Youth Commission program, though. One psychologist noted he went into a "regressive primitive state" when he felt threatened; staff members often restrained him.

By the middle of last year, according to Youth Commission documents, he had accumulated 664 behavioral violations. Because advancement at the Youth Commission is based largely on behavior, Marquieth's release date kept receding.

"As an adult, he would've served six months in jail," said William Connolly, a Houston attorney who's been trying to get Marquieth, now 16, out of the Youth Commission. "He's been there for more than three years now."

The question of what to do with such troubled juveniles highlights a growing dilemma at the Youth Commission, which increasingly is charged with caring for them. "The kids are hard to manage," said Gail Lutz, an attorney for the University of Houston-based Juvenile Advocacy Clinic. "But who would imagine that locking them up is the answer?"

In recent weeks, legislators and various investigations have spotlighted an agency in trouble. Youth Commission guards have been accused of sexually and physically assaulting juveniles in their care, while administrators have been accused of failing to act.

Yet as investigators are discovering that the Youth Commission problems run deeper than a handful of guards and administrators accused of wrongdoing. Violence at agency facilities has been escalating. Youths sentenced to stay only a few months end up incarcerated for years, sometimes for no clear reason.

Those in and outside of the Youth Commission say the problems are at least in part symptomatic of an agency struggling to adjust to a population that more and more looks like Marquieth Jackson.

Ten years ago, about one-quarter of the juveniles sent to the Youth Commission were identified as having some kind of mental illness. Today, the number is closer to half, and possibly higher.

Such youths present intense challenges for a juvenile lockup. Many are disruptive and prone to violence, mental health experts say, and they only get worse when physically confronted or confined. Others have such limited mental capabilities that they can't advance through the Youth Commission's strict "resocialization" program, which demands good behavior and educational achievement for an offender to be considered for release.

Judges insist they send such juveniles to the Youth Commission only after they have run out of other options. But critics contend that communities strapped for money or other treatment services are quick to use the agency to deal with youths who are more sick than criminal.

"Too many kids who don't belong there are going to TYC," said Isela Gutierrez, of the Texas Coalition Advocating Justice for Juveniles. "Many of these youth are not the high-risk murderers and rapists the public hears about."

New court to handle cases

"Over my years on the bench, there's been an increase in the number of kids who are angry, aggressive or with disorders with inability to concentrate," said Judge Jeanne Meurer, chairwoman of Travis County's Juvenile Board. "Whether it's social or neurological, I couldn't tell you." To better handle the demand, Travis County in May will create a court that will hear only cases of juveniles with mental illness.

Those who work in the field say a confluence of factors has contributed to the trend, starting with an increase in the number of youths being diagnosed with mental disorders. More and more, the judicial system is being used to handle juveniles with behavioral problems, particularly by schools, which rely on new laws permitting disruptive students to be moved more quickly from the classroom to the courtroom.

"We've had autistic kids who run out of the classroom and push the teacher, and so end up with an assault charge," said Diana Quintana, a psychologist who assesses youths entering the Harris County juvenile justice system in Houston. "Our peak intake time is during the school year."

Mental health experts say that many troubled youngsters could be kept out of courtrooms if there were more intensive local programs to help them. By using an array of community services, the Children's Partnership in Travis County and the state's Special Needs Diversionary Program say they reduce a juvenile's chances of being sentenced to the Youth Commission.

But such programs are small, with limited enrollment. Thanks in part to a series of budget cuts — an estimated $88 million between 2001 and 2005 from state and federal sources for juvenile programs — and a shift of available money away from juveniles toward adults, the Texas Juvenile Probation Commission estimates that about two-thirds of Texas youths who need mental health help don't get it.

A significant number end up at the Youth Commission, which a decade ago was officially given responsibility for treating juvenile offenders with mental illness (whom the agency had been accepting for many years anyway). Since then, the number of youths with mental illness diagnoses entering the agency has climbed dramatically, although it leveled off in recent years.

The Youth Commission says the severity of the offenders' problems has increased, too.

On paper, the agency boasts an enormous range of mental health resources. Every youth is sent to the assessment center in Marlin, where he or she spends as long as two months undergoing a battery of medical, psychological and educational tests.

Those with the worst symptoms — often defined as a threat to themselves or others, or in need of immediate and intensive help — are sent to the agency's Corsicana Residential Treatment Center. It boasts a 28-bed "stabilization unit" and 155 additional spaces for youths who need round-the-clock treatment. The Crockett State School reserves about half of its 265 beds for youths who need specialized mental health treatment.

The remainder of offenders with mental illness are sent to the Youth Commission's 11 other residential facilities, where they are absorbed into the general population. Each facility has a psychologist and a psychiatrist. Administrators say a social worker is assigned to every youth, and each offender has group counseling sessions daily and individual counseling once a month.

To critics, such measures fall short. Quintana recently visited the Marlin Unit. "I was just shocked," she said. "They had so many kids and so few psychiatric services."

Texans Care for Children, an Austin-based nonprofit advocacy group, claims that the Youth Commission's own data show that only about one in seven juveniles who needed mental health treatment actually got it.

Youth Commission spokesman Jim Hurley disputes that, saying that 95 percent of the offenders with a formal diagnosis of mental illness are getting some treatment. Still, even agency administrators concede they could use more money and staff.

The caseload ratio for mental health counselors at the Youth Commission is about 1 to 19 — considerably higher than the 1-to-8 ratio most residential mental health facilities recommend.

As with Youth Commission guards, the treatment staff has a high turnover rate, about 30 percent last year.

The Youth Commission's own research shows only marginal success with offenders with mental illness, who are nearly as likely to re-offend if they complete the special treatment program as they are if they don't. Rearrest rates for youths with mental illness are among the highest in the agency, about 70 percent within three years of their release. Advocates say juveniles with mental illness stay longer at the Youth Commission than do other offenders.

"If they were easily treatable, they wouldn't be in TYC in the first place," Hurley said. "TYC is not getting the easy cases."

'He just got worse'

Anecdotal evidence suggests that the condition of some juveniles with mental illness actually worsens under the Youth Commission's watch.

Amy Mayer's 11-year-old son entered the Youth Commission in April 2002 after a history of severe behavioral problems. Once there, his problems deepened — exacerbated, Mayer says, by beatings from other juveniles and a sexual assault. "He just got worse and worse."

Originally sent to the Youth Commission for a year, Mayer's son was released two years later, after he'd begun eating his own feces. Confronted by Mayer and her lawyer, the agency concluded the boy — now living out of state with his grandparents— was incapable of getting through its program.

He's not alone. The same state law that gives the Youth Commission the authority to treat juveniles with mental illness also requires that those who are incapable of benefiting from its program be released after serving their minimum sentence. In recent years, the number of such youths has soared. In 2000, there were 14. By last year, the number had more than tripled.

But those familiar with the process say the agency is slow to initiate such proceedings. "If you don't have a parent who complains, these kids may be sitting there for quite a while," said Richard LaVallo, an attorney with Austin-based Advocacy Inc., an organization that represents people with disabilities.

Lutz says that Mayer's son probably wouldn't have been released if she hadn't pushed. "I would hope and pray that the shape he was in would alarm someone at some time," she said. "But they did not initiate it."

Ricardo Luna of Austin fought with the agency for more than a year trying to convince the Youth Commission that his son's IQ was too low for him to participate in its programs. His son was released in 2005 after a state psychologist determined the boy's IQ was too low, but not before he had spent four years at the Youth Commission.

Tarsha Jackson, too, has become an old hand at arguing with the Youth Commission. Marquieth was kicked out of several schools, spent three months in a residential psychiatric facility and was sent to the Harris County Psychiatric Center twice before being sentenced to the Youth Commission in October 2003.

"Although we truly hate to send someone this young there, the county is out of options," the prosecutor said, according to a transcript of the hearing. "It will be up to the Texas Youth Commission as to how long you're there," the judge told Marquieth. "If you do well, then you will probably only stay in custody for a minimum length of stay."

After his intake assessment, Marquieth was sent to the mental health unit at Corsicana. But the psychiatrist there concluded he had no significant mental illnesses, only severe behavioral problems, and Marquieth was assigned to a general population facility.

More than three years later, it would be difficult to conclude that Marquieth's treatment at the Youth Commission has been successful. Although he has been prescribed numerous medications, he generally refused to take them. He cuts himself and repeatedly threatens suicide.

He regularly spends time in isolation. According to a July 2006 report, Marquieth had been involved in 128 assaults. A year ago, the Youth Commission officially labeled him a violent offender and added another year to his stay.

Still, the agency maintains he could complete the program if he tried harder and accepted its treatment. "Since Marquieth is not considered to have a significant mental illness . . . he does not qualify for discharge," the July report concluded.

Last year, a private psychologist disagreed, diagnosing Marquieth with schizo-affective disorder and depression, among other serious conditions. Since then, Jackson has been trying unsuccessfully to get the Youth Commission o admit that her son is too impaired to benefit from the agency's treatment — even though one of the agency's own psychologists expressed concern about his case.

"Jackson's case has the potential to draw high-level and possible public scrutiny, given the elements of young age, extremely violent behavior, mental illness and possible placement into a program that includes seclusion," Kathyrn Hallmark, a psychologist at the McLennan Unit in Mart, wrote in an evaluation lreferenced in legal documents.

To mental health advocates, cases such as Marquieth's are a crime.

"TYC is a prison for kids," said Monica Thyssen, a policy specialist for Advocacy Inc. "If it were an adult with mental illness, we wouldn't say, 'You have to go to prison to get treatment.' Yet we do it with kids."

edexheimer@statesman.com; 445-1774