Despite an eight-year overhaul of the Texas Juvenile Justice Department, reports of jailers abusing underage inmates at state-run facilities including a local center keep surfacing, giving insight to new challenges inside these facilities.
Jose Jimenez, 32, a correctional officer at Evins Regional Juvenile Center, was booked Friday at Hidalgo County Jail on charges of official oppression, a Class A misdemeanor. Jimenez is accused of punching two incarcerated youths who had stolen a remote control at the center, according to a KGBT-TV report.
Last month, the former director of security at the same facility, Pete Vega Martinez, pleaded no contest to charges of tampering with physical evidence after he allegedly deleted a video showing another jailer beating a juvenile inmate in April 2013. He was granted deferred adjudication and received two years probation for the third-degree felony.
Julian Rey Fuentes, the jailer caught on video assaulting the youth, received one year probation after he pleaded guilty to official oppression in November.
[For more of this story, written by Kristian Hernandez, go to http://www.themonitor.com/news...3a-6773e6be66b4.html]
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