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Criminal Justice and Violent Youth: Last Chance in Texas

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Last Chance in Texas takes us inside a treatment program for the most severely violent youth criminals in the state.

In Texas, intensive treatment programs offer violent youth a final chance to change their antisocial patterns of behavior. At the Giddings State School, a treatment facility for the most serious criminal youth offenders in Texas, author John Hubner follows one group of boys and one group of girls as they work their way through their final phase of rehabilitation: the Capital Offenders group treatment program. Before students at Giddings are eligible to participate in the Capital Offenders program, they must have had considerable practice identifying dysfunctional cognitive habits in themselves and other students. By the time these kids enter Capital Offenders, they have done extensive work on self-reflection, managing interpersonal conflicts through verbal communication rather than violent action, and tolerating feelings of frustration and resentment.

Group Treatment for Violent Criminal Youth

Treatment in the Capital Offenders program is the final chance for violent youth to avoid the Texas prison system.

The average sentence of a youth at Giddings is twenty-five years, but those who successfully complete treatment are almost always released early on parole, often after less than three years. Youth criminals who fail to complete the Capital and Serious Violent Offenders program at Giddings are transferred to the Texas state prison system, where they have very little chance of being granted parole. Most serve sentences of 25 to 40 years in adult prison.

In Capital Offenders group (as it is called throughout most of Hubner's book), each participant must share two stories: the "life story," which is an account of the youth's experiences of trauma and victimization, and the "crime story," in which the youth relates his or her criminal history. Events from both stories are dramatized through group roleplays, forcing the storyteller to re-experience the events in an emotionally authentic way.

Fellow participants and group leaders provide feedback and support throughout this challenging process. The students are evaluated not only by the way they tell their own stories, but also on the quality of the feedback they give to others in the group. The goal of the Capital Offenders treatment program is to bring violent criminal youth back in touch with feelings they have walled off from their conscious awareness.

Treatment Works

The rate of recidivism for violent youth who make it through Capital Offenders is only ten percent.*

*For violent crimes, after 36 months on parole.

Treatment doesn't work for all violent youth criminals.

Last Chance in Texas profiles a teen murderer who failed to complete the Capital Offenders group.

One of the young men Hubner includes in his profile of the Capital Offenders treatment program does not get his "last chance." Mark is eighteen now. At seventeen, he murdered his girlfriend. The treatment team observes that Mark has not developed a sense of self-awareness, empathy, or accountability. They believe he may be a psychopath. The team decides to report Mark as a treatment failure, knowing that as a direct result of their report he will face a long prison sentence. Ultimately, Mark is sentenced to forty years in prison without the possibility of parole. Since he is nearly an adult, he will serve most of that sentence in the notorious Texas prison system with adult offenders.

Should youth criminals who don't improve in a treatment program have to serve 25-40 years in the adult prison system?

Fetching blurbs now... please stand by

Yes. The punishment should fit the crime, no matter what the age of the criminal.

amber says:

yes they do deserve to sereve 25-40 years in the adult prisons. Why shouldn't they should be the question. If they are going to commite the criime and still get a chance to rehabilitate in these programs and dicide not to or don't care well then these juveniles deserve to do prison time. I mean there are people out there at these programs that are giving there time and effert to these delinquents to try and rehabilitate them so they can have a good chance at being a productive member of society and live a long healthy loving life, and if these juveniles are not going to give there efforts then yes send them to an adult prison.

Posted November 16, 2010

Shelley says:

Yes. A child knows right from wrong at an age MUCH less than 10 years old , so a teenager who commits a crime knows what he is doing wrong and is responsible for his actions, and he should be punished no differently than an adult who commits the same crime. A teenager should NOT be incarcerated WITH the adults, however.

Posted September 29, 2009

No. Even the most violent youth criminals are still kids, and they shouldn't be incarcerated with adults.

Leroy says:

in prison he would be dead in a week, I know

Posted May 04, 2011

Amanda says:

In cases such as this one, I believe that persons like Mark should be evaluated by a mental health facility, not the over populated prison system where he will, without question, only learn how to be a better criminal.

Posted December 13, 2009

BabyCakesx7 says:

The fact that children are sent to prison is an outrage. It truly disgusts me that our Government would allow this to happen. Yes they are still children and studies show that a brain is not fully developed until the age of 20+. These kids do not belong in prison with adults nor do the petty crimes need to be treated more severely than most serious crimes. It is pathetic!

Posted April 05, 2009

Stazjia says:

There are very few middle class young people in the prison system which indicates it's upbringing, poverty, poor schooling, abuse, and lack of life chances that leads kids to commit serious offences. Writing a young man off at the age of 18 is just compounding this. Also I shudder to think what will happen to a teenage boy in the general prison population. On a practical level, that boy has no hope and will be a constant expense to the state. I believe that prison should be a redemptive and educative process so that most, non-sociopathic, prisoners should have the hope of parole. Prisons shouldn't just be warehouses for storing people we want to punish.

Posted April 04, 2009

cjsysreform says:

Studies have suggested that teenage brains are quite different from those of adults, and that the brain does not reach developmental maturity until the mid-twenties. Sentencing teenagers as if they were adults fails to account for this.

Posted April 03, 2009

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The Path to Rehabilitation: Empathy and Accountability

In treatment, violent youth criminals learn to experience empathy.

It's important for violent juvenile offenders to learn to feel things like fear, sadness, guilt, and empathy. As criminals, these youth substituted anger and aggression for vulnerability. They perceived that it was necessary for their own survival to cover up all signs of weakness with a tough exterior shell. Anger made them feel powerful, whereas true emotional pain was a potential threat to their sense of personal agency.

It's very common for violent youth to believe they are at fault for the abuse and neglect they suffered in the past. Because they cannot stand to experience the intense shame that went along with this belief, they shut off every tender emotion inside them, including empathy and affection.

The constriction of tender feelings has made these kids quick to get angry in response to any challenge to their sense of personal dignity, and quick to respond in violent ways to eliminate such threats. Their inability to feel empathy for the targets of their rage makes it possible for them to do things that are inconceivable to most of us.

Last Chance in Texas: The Redemption of Criminal Youth

by: John Hubner

Amazon Price: $9.11 (as of 02/14/2012)

Kids who commit extreme acts of violence are often called "superpredators," and many people consider them to be untreatable. But John Hubner shows us that in the Capital Offenders group treatment program at Giddings, violent juvenile offenders can and do develop empathy. They form close connections with each other through caring words and affectionate physical contact.

Share your thoughts on justice and rehabilitation for violent youth criminals.

Whether you've read Last Chance in Texas or not, you are welcome to comment here.

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cjsysreform May 13, 2009 @ 7:02 am | in reply to Ramkitten | delete

Thanks, I hope you manage to get a copy. And, of course, once you've read it you must come back here and tell me what you thought. :)

Reply

Ramkitten May 12, 2009 @ 9:36 am | delete

Wow, what a well-written review (and then some). I'm going to see if this book is at our library here or can be borrowed from interlibrary loan. It sounds fascinating.

Reply

cjsysreform Apr 24, 2009 @ 12:34 am | in reply to Treasures-By-Brenda | delete

Thank you, Brenda. You're a peach.

Reply

Treasures-By-Brenda Apr 14, 2009 @ 7:26 pm | delete

Another nicely done page.

Brenda

Reply

cjsysreform Apr 9, 2009 @ 12:05 pm | in reply to Amitabh1702 | delete

Right, way to promote your group without talking about Last Chance in Texas or juvenile justice issues at all...

Nah, I'm not serious really. Thanks for the rating.
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Juvenile Justice and Violent Youth Criminals: Texas Today

Recent news on criminal youth in the Texas juvenile justice system.

Hubner wrote Last Chance in Texas in 2006. Since then, we have learned of serious problems at some of the state treatment facilities funded by the Texas Youth Commission (but not at the Giddings State School, so far as I know). Staff members at several TYC facilities have been found guilty of abusing youth in their care. Here, view the latest news headlines and commentary on violent youth offenders and the juvenile justice system in Texas.

Despite Reform, Violence Rises Among Youths at Juvenile Lockups: one boy shouted across the yard at the hulking figure of James Smith, a former college basketball player who is now the operations director for the Texas Juvenile Justice Department, as he strolled by. This day, the Giddings facility, one of six secure ...
More Young Inmates Attack One Another: one boy shouted across the yard at the hulking figure of James Smith, a former college basketball player who is now the operations director for the Texas Juvenile Justice Department, as he strolled by. This day, the Giddings facility, one of six secure ...
Alyssa Bustamante and children that kill: When violence is a lullaby: Anger is a motivating factor in juvenile violence and when a powerless child sees those as having power over the musing violence, they assimilate. In cases of long-term abuse, anger can build inside a child until an explosion occurs.
Teen killers get inconsistent sentences: Juveniles whose crimes approach the cruelty of the teen whose case triggered the passage of the 1996 law, Edward O'Brien, have escaped the severe sentence, while spontaneous acts of violence by teenagers with little prior record are punished with life ...

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