A 16-year-old former juvenile detainee is accused of stabbing a high school teacher to death with a butcher knife. Another teen was convicted of killing a roofer during a 30-minute robbery spree.
Both were released by the Texas Youth Commission because the agency was not equipped to treat their mental illnesses and had to let them go under state law.
The cases highlight what some juvenile justice experts say is a loophole in the way Texas treats underage offenders with severe psychiatric problems. Data obtained by The Associated Press reveal that the commission has released more than 200 offenders because of mental health problems in the last five years, and more than one-fifth went on to commit new crimes, some violent.
“All these cases are failures where we should have done something different,” said Richard Lavallo, legal director of Advocacy, an Austin, Texas, organization that helps children with disabilities.
In most states, youthful offenders are not discharged from custody because of mental illness unless the release is for commitment to a hospital.
In Texas, however, under a 1997 law meant to keep mentally ill juveniles from being held in detention centers where proper treatment is unavailable, Texas youths serving indeterminate sentences are released to their parents or guardians once they have completed their minimum required time in custody.
While some experts said Texas should be commended for not warehousing such offenders where they cannot get treatment, they questioned the logic of releasing them without ensuring they receive supervision.
“Without some requirement for supervision, it doesn’t seem like a sound policy to me,” said Gail Wasserman, a professor of clinical psychology at Columbia University and the director of its Center for the Promotion of Mental Health in Juvenile Justice.
The matter gained notoriety in September with the fatal stabbing of a 50-year-old special education teacher at John Tyler High School in Tyler, Texas. The teacher, Todd Henry, was sitting at his desk in his classroom when he was attacked.
The Texas Youth Commission discharged the boy accused of killing Henry in July because he had been diagnosed with multiple mental health problems, including schizophrenia, his attorney Jim Hugglers said.
The teen, whose name the AP will not print because he is a juvenile and has not been charged as an adult, had been committed in 2007 for aggravated assault.
Huggler said he had seen nothing to indicate the boy’s family, which had relocated to Tyler from New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina, had received a plan from state or local officials showing how to deal with his mental problems.
“This case is sad on so many levels,” the lawyer said.
The commission makes sure offenders discharged because of mental illness receive referrals to their local mental health-mental retardation centers. But there is nothing that requires the youths or their families to avail themselves of the services.
Cherie Townsend, the commission’s executive director, would not comment about specific cases. She acknowledged it may be time to limit some of the discharges for public safety reasons or require that some be tied to conditions.
“We’ve got to find a middle ground where we assure public safety and accountability for actions that have taken place and at the same time find better ways to provide treatment for these youth,” she said.
Any changes would have to be approved by the state legislature, which does not meet again until 2011.
Lawmakers approved a measure last spring that allows youths released from custody because of mental illness to receive case management services like those available to parolees.
The author of the legislation, Democratic Representative Jim McReynolds, said the Tyler case has convinced him that the measure does not go far enough.
“This has to be looked at much more globally than a little quick fix,” he said.
The youth commission says 206 juvenile offenders have been released in the past five years because of mental illness. Of those, 43 have been re-incarcerated. Most were returned to custody for burglary or robbery, but some were convicted of more serious offenses, including two for arson and two for sex crimes involving children.
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