AUSTIN - Up to 80 percent of juvenile offenders sent to state lockups could instead be held in regional treatment programs under a bill filed Friday, a move that could significantly downsize the state’s long-troubled youth corrections system.
Officials and justice experts said the plan, if approved, would mark the most significant change in Texas’ juvenile justice system in years - a change recommended seven years ago, when the number of youths in state lockups was cut by more than half in favor of local treatment and rehabilitation programs.
Under Senate Bill 1630, youths serving time for so-called indeterminate sentences - most held for less-serious crimes and who remain in the program until they successfully complete it - would be sent to regional facilities, many of them operated by counties, instead of the state’s five high-security lockups that more resemble prisons than rehabilitation centers.
[For more of this story, written by Mike Ward, go to http://www.expressnews.com/new...stead-of-6134559.php]
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