Part Two: The Child Prisons of Texas

And now it's become completely atomized from its origins and probably makes no sense to people who are just like hopping into an episode, But that's how we introduce you sometimes. So hello, it's quite a joy, man. I'm not gonna lie. And we don't usually introduce ourselves, and sometimes we forget to introduce our guests. Yep, our guest who is of course Prop. I will not be saying your your your government name. Appreciate that. It's all yeah, yeah, um Prop.

How do you feel about Texas? How truthful do you want me to answer this? It's fine, it's fine. I can't stay in this place. Yeah, I couldn't, like you know, now, there's things about it that are nice. Yeah. Now, as a caveat, there are plenty of lovely people that I adore that live in Texas, one of which is my grandmother, you know, was from Sulfur Springs and moved to Dallas, and my father was born into big d you know what I'm saying, And like, so I got some I

got some some roots out there. That being said, I don't know nobody in my family that still lives there because pretty much strange from that side of the family. That being said, the ones that were from Texas that I do know, all came to California in the sixties. So in my mind that Californians. So I moved from Texas to California. It was one of the best decisions I ever made my family, just like my great grandma. Yeah,

let's see, there's a thing that you get. I mean, I say, it's about half of the people that I love in the world still live in Texas. There's wonderful things about it. There's still only Texas has but like there is a feeling a lot of people get living in Texas that more or less I would sum up as I gotta get the funk out of here, out of this place. One of my d j's from San Angelo that I worked with, the same thing. He was just like, I'm a Texan, but I cannot wait to leave. Yeah,

and it is indelibly printed on my soul. There's all sorts of things about me that are very deeply Texan. But like, well, I just at a point where I was like I'm going, yeah, I gotta get out of here. And yeah, David, Um, I like I like a lot of West Texas. Um, had some real good times in Hill Country. Um. There's kinds of freedom that you can have in Texas. If you're a white person, I should I should stay. Yeah. If you are a white person, yeah, um that you you don't often find other parts of

this country, even as a white person. There's like things that you can get up to in Texas that are absolutely nuts. Um. But it comes with a couple of caveats, one of them being the fact that Texas has probably the most nightmarish juvenile justice system in the entire United States, which, as we have discussed a number of times in this podcast, including earlier this week, has a pretty shitty history with

juvenile justice. Texas is unquestionably the worst. Like the state that is the has the worst history with juvenile justice, and that's Texas is winning in a contest that includes fucking Florida. It's crazy like, do you know how much Florida hates kids? Yes, Florida really really hates keys Texas. Oh boy, Yeah, that's what we're about to talk about today.

Um So, in our last episode, I opened by giving a history of the term super predator, and while that specific term was the creation of a single man, he was simply the latest in a line of men who have spent generations building and reinforcing an area if that some children are inherently dangerous and must be policed brutally for the safety of all. William S. Bush is a PhD u S History professor from the University of Texas at Austin. And he's a good guy. I introduced him

after you're talking about the super predator thing. No, he's he's he's a he knows his ship. He wrote a book that is one of the major sources for this episode, with one of the most chilling titles for a book I've ever heard. It's called Who Gets a Childhood? And

it is about the criminal justice system in Texas. Yeah. Yeah, it's It's interesting, dude, because it's like one of the things among like black activism is the idea that like black and brown children are forced to be adults in the eyes of the law, way before we're ready to be it. So, yeah, okay, this is crazy and bull boy he does focus a lot of it is about racism in the Texas criminal justice juvenile justice system. It's

a good book. I recommend it. It's very readable. It is kind of an academic text, but it's a very readable one. Um now, Bush and it, folks, this is a book about Texas specific. Bush notes that historians of childhood claim that the or tend to agree that the concept of of what they call protected childhood started in the United States around the eighteen twenties. Obviously, this is the thing happening in different parts of the world in

different ways. But like we now see childoo was like, you have to not just that, Like you have to protect children, which is the thing people have always done, but you have to protect children from certain things like understanding and interacting in the world the same way in adult That's right, kids don't work, they shouldn't. We most people agree on that now, like like kids should not

recent labor like adults labor. Kids should not be subject to some of the realities that adults are subject to. These are we can always debate some of this stuff, like particularly hiding certain realities of the world from kids, but these are things society broadly agrees upon. Now, this is what a protected childhood is, right, the idea that you protect kids from some of the things that adults

have to deal with. And no, the movement towards this concept for protected childhood in the United States, and again we're talking in the U s. Here, it happens other places different ways. There's a lot of academics here. Please, I'm not trying to this is this is a broad overview. This movement starts with the free school and Sunday school social movements, which again kind of the eighteen twenties come down. As we've talked about actually in a couple of recent episodes.

These all start in like the Northeast and kind of spread to the rest of the country. These ideas that like school should be free, every kid should get an education and it shouldn't cost them anything. And also the idea that like Sunday school is a is a thing, which is you know, tied to religion, but also also tied to this idea that like this very new idea that like education is a thing that every kid deserves.

So people died all the time back then for basically no reason, which also meant that like in this period, there's a ton of orphans, you know. Um, And so when people started this kind of long process of giving a ship about childhood's for children, um, it leads to a bunch of facilities getting opened, not just to deal with orphaned kids, but to deal with like kids were delinquent kids who have various kind of behavioral issues. They all kind of get shoved into the same place. These

these are generally called houses of refuge. And it's a mix because obviously they are saying like well, if you're homeless or or if you're a kid committing petty crimes, you belong in the same place, which is not great, um, but also it is it is good, and that it's kind of as a society people being like, well, even though they're not my kid, I as a member of society have some responsibility towards And that's just a fun

this facility, which is not a bad development. Again, it's problematic, but yeah, but it's a communal understanding that like the children are ours, yeah, not just yours, they're ours, and like we and if we want to like live in a community that we enjoy, Like I should invest in your the other things around me, you know what I'm saying. I think often when we talk about movements like this, it is easy to focus on like the horrible negatives

which we'll be talking about. Everything today we're gonna talking about comes from this. But it's not one thing or the other entirely it is. There's a lot that's sucked up about this. It also is coming from this place of like, oh, there's all these children on the streets and like maybe we have a responsibility to them some money here too. Wait, You'm I mad? Yeah, what what are you doing? People? What you're doing on the quarter

three years old? Yeah? Yeah, I would even say this man, Like even just going through as a parent, like I'm saying, as like a now a parent is like even when going through just the history of the decisions other parents or societies have made for their kids that obviously that weren't preposterous, but ones that are like the reality is like there's no this a whole last human and you're like, there's nothing more terrifying than the idea of like their life is in my hands and I don't know what

the funk I'm doing? Like that that existential dread. I feel like, if you're going to be a good parent, you have felt that fear where you're like, I don't know what I'm doing, YO saying, You're like, where do what do I I can't I don't know what I'm I don't know what I'm doing. I don't want to fund this kid up. You know what I'm saying. And you know, you're like, well, I'm fucked up, you know

what I'm saying, Like, I mean, I don't know. I just I think, like I think you're like, I don't know what I'm doing, but at least I know you should live on a damn streets man, Like there needs to be some sort of adult in your life, right, like you know, I mean, yeah, yeah, and that that that's kind of happening on a really broad scale here, and a lot of it's made possible because of industrialization.

Both there's a lot more people from industrialization kind of all the sources and so like these facilities kind of grow in size and pop up, start popping up all over the United States throughout like kind of the mid to late eighteen hundreds. Now at the same time, all this is happening, and part of why it's happening is that the US is creating its middle class um and

in fact the very concept of a middle class. Parents start having fewer kids and devoting a lot more time and attention to the development of the kids that they do have, and the idea starts to spread as a result of all this that children not not don't don't just deserve maybe to be house but deserves to learn and play um and not to die in coal mines are like bang drums, Well, don't shoot rifles at each other, right at Like, maybe you shouldn't be doing some of

the things we're doing with kids. At some point you said to yourself, you know, my childhood was trash. You know, I didn't really get to that. Look, I wish I could have been able to you know what when I have it's I'm gonna let him play outside. You don't need to go to no coal mine and die. Yeah, yeah,

yeah yeah. And so that that's happening in this period and the kind of the people who these early advocates of the concept of a childhood, these early like people who are are supporting the idea that there should be restrictions on like what we can make kids do. UM. They're generally called child savers, and most of them are middle class moms. UM. And it's from them in this advocacy in kind of the late eighteen hundreds that we get stuff like age of consent laws, child labor bands,

and compulsory education. That's all good stuff broadly speaking. UM. But these positive moves occur along more muddled developments too, because these women are also responsible. These activists are also responsible for the concept of youth curfews, the idea that like, we shouldn't let kids out at night sometimes and they should be punished if they are out at night, um, and the juvenile justice system, which is a very mixed bag. William Bush writes. Many of these reforms were aimed at

extending the protections of childhood to working class and poor children. Moreover, they sought to broaden the years of protection and semi dependence on adults upward into the adolescent years, a reflection of the slowly spreading idea of adolescence itself at the turn of the twentieth century. One of its leading proponents, the Clark University psychiatrist and child study movement leader Grandville.

Stanley Hall described the life stage of adolescence famously as a time of storm and stress, a time of risk taking, rebellion, awkwardness, and self discovery. Adolescence he and other psychiatrists such as William Healy proposed uh needed to be treated individually, especially when they ran a foul of rules, as seemed almost inevitable. Early juvenile court judges such as Denver's Ben Lindsay helped popularize the idea of the tough but fatherly juvenile justice official,

for whom understanding his wayward charges was a specialty. Meanwhile, courts for delinquent girls, headed by matronly figures such as Mary in Barthelm of Chicago, preoccupied themselves with curbing the precocious sexuality of working class girls, whose families were often recent arrivals in American industrial cities. So again, a lot going on here, you know, still products of your your time, of its time. But yeah, this is this is kind

of how this starts to look. Um. Yeah, and it's it's important to note that, like, because we're talking about how bad the juvenile justice system, the idea that we should have one came from a really good place, which is that like kids as adults when they grownups. You

should be in prison with the grown ups. You shouldn't be judged by the same judges who judged grown ups, like we should have a separate thing for you, in part because kids are gonna funk around and like they're like the finding out part of that shouldn't be as brutal as it is for adults. Judge Lindsay even complained, quote this business of punishing infants as if they were adults, and of maiming young lives by trying to make the grizzle of their unformed characters carry the weight of our

iron laws and heavy penalties. Um, yes, yeah, yeah, there's there's some people who are saying really good shit now. In Texas, juvenile and adult offenders were first separated in eighteen eighties six after protests from the local women's Christian Temperance Union, which is right around the same time it starts happening in a bunch of other places. The next year, the legislature in Texas passed a bill approving a dedicated

house of correction for children. Gatesville opened in January of eighteen eighty nine, and it was one of the first dedicated juvenile attention facilities anywhere in the United States. It was followed later that year by facilities from in Virginia, Kentucky, and Alabama. Gatesville opened with eighty six inmates. It was immediately popular with the locals, who saw rightly that it

would bring a lot of jobs to their town. Local residents actually raised money so the state can't pay, like their budget runs short and they can't pay for all the land they need to buy this facility, and people who live in the town nearby raise the money to buy it for the state because they're like, well, this is going to provide us with jobs forever if we have a child prison in town. Oh my god, why

is that? Their first thought was like everybody's first thoughts, like spoilers, that's where this is going for the next century. That's why I went. What it's like. I thought they're gonna be like, oh that's cool man, you know, yeah, kids, I got it. You shouldn't have to go to jail. There's money in this ship. Wait, we can buy some money off you hit the lip bro like yeah, yeah, it's great. Um. So, the boys who were interned in

Gatesville were overwhelmingly city dwellers. And there's this idea at the time that Texas never gets past that kids who are juvenile delinquents, most of whom are urban kids, need to be put in prisons far away from their families, in isolated rural communities. Um basically, all of these kids were poor to One survey of early Gatesville inmates found that a hundred nineteen out of a hundred ninety five listed their mother's occupation as housekeeper, while the leading descriptions

of their fathers were unknown railroad men, laborers, and farmers. Unknown. Being up there is to tell you something about what's gone on. Two thirds of these boys had lost one of their parents, and slightly less than half of their parents had criminal records themselves. William Bush goes on to note that the racial disparity and who went to Gatesville was pretty blatant. African Americans comprised forty six of the first forty of the first sixty eight inmates, all of

whom were transferred from the adult prison system. Although Gatesville admitted inmates regardless of race or ethnicity, it's strictly segregated every aspect of daily lives, housing, schooling, dining, and religious services. As a result, by nineteen seventeen, about two hundred and fifty black inmates crowded into Harris Hall. The Jim Crow

Congregate Dormitory built a house about half that number. By contrast, when the state opened its first and only training school for girls before World War Two, it excluded black females altogether. Black girls charged with committing a crime in this period may have had their cases heard in local juvenile courts, but the available remedies were limited to the county jail or released back into the community. So nothing new. Yeah, yeah, I mean not exactly news that Texas in nineteen seventeen

was pretty fucking racist. Um, but it's good to have data. Yeah, Like, I'm still like trying to picture of Juvenile Hall in the eighteen hundreds. Oh god, right, and I'm just like spiral, Like it just got me spiraling and thinks, like, I just don't know how anyone survived the eighteen hundreds. Yeah. And one of the worst things to think about is the degree to which maybe it's it wasn't much worse than it is now, at least in a lot of these facilities in Texas. Um. But that's a that's something

we can talk about. So the fact that Texas would go on to lead the nation and juvenile incarceration had a lot to do with the fact that Texas was the only southern state to see a net gain in its black population during the first half of the twentieth century. Right, That's part of why they're building these facilities is they have this huge influx of black UM and Hispanic citizens

moving to the state. UM. And so you've got, well, the Hispanics were already there, but yeah, yeah, yeah, yes, but but yeah, you do have more like coming in from Mexico and stuff. And you also have, um, you have a huge number of poor, non white kids moving into Texas cities, UM, a lot of whom don't have parents,

UM for a variety of horrible reasons. UM. And this causes a backlash from white Jim Crow supporting citizens who don't like seeing all of these kids who are not white and what they think of as their cities up. Police do the thing that police do, which is responds to the demands of middle class white people, and they start sweeping juke joints, which is generally how the places they sweep to to arrest black kids are described I think it's like, you know, it's like a dance halls.

Like that's just like the club was, like the time joint. Yeah yeah, great music came out of here. Yeah yeah. Um. Now, the nation's first juvenile court was was established in Chicago, and the focus of this court was, at least on papers, supposed to be rehabilitating the kids that got interned in the system. Texas though, and obviously Chicago like that system, you know a lot of flaws and a lot of things that they could be criticized. Could probably do an

episode about that. But it's worth noting that the first juvenile court in the nation is in Chicago and it's supposed to be focused on rehabilitation from the start, because Texas follows soon after. Their juvenile justice system from the start very openly is not about rehabilitation. They specifically say, that's not our goal here. We are here to punish kids. Gatesville became what one activist group described as an instrument

of torture. In nineteen twelve, a new superintendent for the facility ordered the banning of several forms of corporal punishment that had started in the late eighteen hundreds, and these sound somewhat tortury. I'm gonna read a quote from Who

Gets a Childhood if you want. This will give you some context on what it's like being in a juvenile prison in Texas in the late eighteen hundreds, and start with the nineteen hundreds, Adams outlawed pulling toes and which boys were forced to stand holding their toes with their hands indefinitely, and bustings, and which boys were made to stand with their arms held over their heads while a guard flogged them with a bat. I think that's flogging.

That's just that's not flogging, flogging something soft, right, it's pretty ugly too, but like, that's just hitting a kid with a bat. Flogging not flogging, that's just beating a child with a heavy stick. I was like, the images egregious and the sentence for which you used to explain the images egregious because that's not flogging. Now. So in nine twelve, this new superintendent orders these things banned, and

the guards revolt. Um. They initially express their displeasure by allowing more than two dozen kids to escape over a three day period. Right, so they just stopped doing their jobs kids, put them on the streets. You'll see you know, um and yeah, they eventually they walk off the job, just completely strike, which forces the superintendent to recruit local citizens, most of whom supported the guards, to serve in their place, and obviously very little gets actually changed because in this

will be a pattern. These trends will continue through the rest of the story. Oh my god, why someone in this case, the guy running it like recognizes a problem, tries to change it, and a mix of the guards working at the facility and the local citizens say absolutely not, you ain't improving shit, and nothing gets done. Can you imagine that you're unionizing and somebody's like, why you are using unionizing because they won't let us beat the kids

with bats. Yeah, imagine like a couple of like, well, we're unionizing because we're all going to die from the black log and we'd like our families to get slightly more money and maybe have weekends off. Oh, well, we're unionizing because people keep burning to death in garment fires. They won't let me hit kids with a bat anymore. Yeah, you're like, yo, your struggles are the same, solidarity forever.

Who's man is this? Like? Who invited these foods? Who's written I gotta go It's very funny that right around the same time, like miners are fighting with machine guns and rifles for the right to have a life outside of the job and not be beaten by mine by the boss's guards, the other guys are striking for the right to beat kids with bats. Listen. That is the point, essential, the absolute, the perfect example of yo, whose man's is this? Like? Yo, who who's man? Who? Who let them in? That's not

We're not the same fan. Yeah. Well, and probably a bleak story is how many of those other union men would see this as the same struggle because a lot of racism struggle. So, you know, not in favor of flogging children with baseball bats. Let me tell you who not products and services that support this podcast, unless it's the Washington State Highway Patrol. Oh no, yeah, the FBI, or I gotta tell you man that they look the island. Ain't no game. They're often called the Washington State Highway

Patrol of the food box industry. Listen, I am team, that's right. Oh we're back, um prop Yeah. Juvenile detention facilities spread across Texas throughout the first half of the twentieth century. They came to be known as reform schools or training schools, even though neither of those things was ever Yes, we will call it a school school. Hard knocks this school in the sys that we got some desks. Yeah, fucking dude walks in with a baseball bat, slams it

on the table. Who's ready to learn calculus? Car the one, Martinez. It's a kid with a bat, Like, you get this one wrong and I'm gonna bunt you. Yeah. Yeah. Gatesville remained the most brutal of the juvenile prisons in Texas. It was so bad that it had to build a cemetery on its grounds because so many boys were dying in custody. Yeah, yeah, when you cemetery, maybe maybe we got a problem guessing the kids who wind up there,

Like they don't have any parents left alive or something. Right, maybe they're kids that are total awards of the state or whatever, and so it doesn't matter what happens to them in the eyes of the state. You can just throw them in an unmarked grave. There's One of the worst cases of this occurred in nineteen one, when a guard strangled a fifteen year old named Dell Timm's to death in front of two other boys, so not good

places ninete. Eventually, all the stories of abuse led to enough outrage that in nineteen forty eight, the state legislature appointed a special commission to study these schools. So the State of Texas boy kids are twenty years later could get strangled to death, right, Like, Yeah, it takes a while, stuff builds, there's other deaths. There's a lot of a lot of complaints. But eventually the State of Texas is like, well, it's our duty. We gotta get in there and really

look at these these facilities. Um, one guy dies, you know, two guys dies. Hey, maybe they were together. Damn guys die. Maybe we said, cool, we'll have a guy look into it. Like ten kids getting beaten to death is like, that's the equivalent of like when you're washing machine floods the house for the third time and you're like, all right, I gotta call fucking dude. You probably call somebody, right, yeah.

Um So, The Washington Post reports quote when experts and reformers visited the facilities, they recommended placing them entirely with it within, with smaller facilities located near metropolitan areas. In addition to removing the stigma of prison. Such facilities would place youths closer to their families and enable the state to bring in professionals from the fields of childcare, education, and mental health, a community based division similar to today's

group homes and halfway houses. So that's not that's pretty good advice given the state of things. That seems like an improvement, But the legislature rejected this advice absolutely not. Yeah, what is the most sensible humane like kid should probably be near their parents and experts and stuff who can help. Maybe we should get somebody to understands kids around here that there was riots when they tried to stop the baseball bat beatings. Of course they're not putting these kids

in a different facility. It's perfect heating the demands of the politically well connected leaders of the states youth prisons, who used the specter of black and Mexican American criminality to insist that young people required imprisonment. Texas instead expanded its construction of ever more sprawling prison like facilities, sometimes

strategically located in the electoral districts of keyge legislators. Abuse scandals continued to surface, and television and newspaper reports in nineteen fifty two, a Houston lawyer filed an appeal on behalf of a sixteen year old girl who had spent nearly two hundred days in isolation in the Gainesville State School after being held down by mail guards and forcibly sedated with barbiturous Another girl who escaped the same facility told a reporter for the Austin and Statesman, I'll kill

myself before returning. I'll let you know how it's going in there. So we've had two attempts to reform things, first in nineteen twelve and in nineteen to big attempts, uh so far. They both met with massive protests from the people who lived in and around and also protests from lawmakers who know that if you put a child prison in a town where maybe you don't have a great electoral ledge, suddenly all the people who get jobs there, that's your voting base and you can like lock that

ship down. It's like, I can't believe what I'm saying this, but like, yeah, in Texas defense, they tried at some point to do some reasonable and it was like, well, Texas going Texas. There was Texas that stopped anything reasonable from happening. So I don't know about in the defense of the individuals who tried to reform fifty people that flew in. Yeah, those folks were at least on the

right track because oh well, never mind. Yeah. By Night Seen sixty four, things were bad enough that a mix of parents and former Gatesville employees wrote a letter to President Lyndon Baines Johnson and the Governor of Texas UM. They described the kind of abuse we've discussed already in this episode at length and compared the training school to quote, a concentration camp, um and man. Statistically, at least one or two of those people had to who have known

what a concentration right. Some of them were World War two vets or something like we're talking about. Yeah, Yeah, there was somebody in there who was like, I've seen a fucking concentration camp on. This place doesn't look good. I was there, bro, I was there. So this leads

to the biggest flurry of investigations yet. The FBI and the Texas Rangers both launched investigations into these facilities, Gatesville in particular, but also the juvenile justice system in like the juvenile um incarceration system in Texas UM, and also both Houses of the Texas legislature lawns investigations. You've got

like four big investigations going on, right, one of them federal. Um. And when the FBI starts investigating stuff like this, for all of the good triaks we have them, they always find ship. Right. Yeah, you're gonna the most, the most detailed documentation of a number of different law enforcement agencies crimes comes from FBI investigations. Now here's another fun question. Doesn't ever lead to anything? No, no, no, no. I was like, no, they find a guy, nothing happens, but

they find him. Um. Like in in Oregon right now, the Portland Police are currently in contempt of the Justice Department for repeatedly refusing to reform their use of force policies and being unconscionably so brutal that these federal criminal justice system says, you guys can't do this, and currently they've just said, yes, we can, and we'll see if anything happens. Yeah it's fine, Yeah, absolutely fine. And of

course in this case, nothing happens. All of these investigations start um and there's like there's again sweeping reports of abuses, horrible details about all the bad ship that's happening. The FBI is like, yeah, bad shit's happening. Texas Rangers are like, yeah, bad ship's happening. Both Houses of Legislature and Tech they are like, yeah, bad ships happening. Um, No, very little

reforms happen. Attempts to make serious reforms are shut down at every past by again local and state elected leaders who had training schools in their districts and didn't want to lose money. By nineteen seventy four, the reform movement was desperate enough that a bunch of former inmates, parents and activists launched a class action lawsuit in federal court. This case, Morales v. Termine, brought another wave of psychologists, social workers, and prison consultants to not just Gatesville, but

other juvenile detention facilities. Now, the guy who winds up in charge of this big investigation is a dude with the incredible name Judge William Wayne Justice. Dest have boys name Judge Justice. That's right, yeah, Judge William Wayne Justice, incredible Texas judge name. Yeah, he only had one choice for his career. That's that. You will never convince me that's not the name of the judge in the best little horehouse in Texas. Yeah, that's what you call all

that guy like retroactively put a judge in there. Make that his name, William Wayne Justice. What an incredible name for a judge to Um. Yeah, it's everything everything is in that name. Um. So he takes this very seriously.

He tours the Mountaineer School for Boys and he finds as he does a surprise inspection of this facility that the children there were like this judge is walking around, he sees children caked in old blood, like, oh my god, like just left on their bodies, covered in bruises, and like whenever he tries to talk to them, they like skirt. They're terrified just of his presence, like they've been trained to just react with like unthinking terror to the presence

of an adult. M. Howard Omart was also there. He was an expert. He was from the LBJ administration. He was an expert LBJ sent along Uh to like look at things while Judge Justice was there. Um and Howard Omart later said, quote, we have never seen anything quite as depressing, so deliberately designed to humiliate, to degrade into debase. It is surely oppression, and its simplest and most direct form that is the worst man. Yeah. Yeah, designed to humiliate, degrade,

and debase. That's that's lbj's man. And Judge Justice comes to the same conclusions. Yeah, And I mean it's not like LBJ is like the greatest dude, but for him to be like, yo, this is wild. Yeah. I showed my dick to a secret service agent this morning. But even I think this is beyond this, totally made on my own body. Yeah, you have any idea how many people I've killed? Yeah, I ordered the firebombing of a country. Yeah, but this isn't right. Yeah, but that's wild dog. Yeah.

So the extensive investigation sports spurred by the Morale v term In case revealed regular use of isolation in Texas juvenile criminal justice facilities, um forced psychotropic drugs on children, and also rare forms of torture. Among other things, investigators found that children were being punished physically for speaking Spanish. So called punk dorms had been created for juveniles the

guards decided, we're homosexual. By this point, a state had overcome its squeamishness and incarcerating women, and in one facility, guards were found to have forced abortions on pregnant inmates. Uh yeah, Oh my god. A boy at Gatesville told a judge about a hazing ritual. Told the judge Judge Justice about a hazing ritual he'd been forced to undergo, where a group of boys beat him unconscious while guards watched.

To his credit, Judge Justice, I don't know about the rest of his career judge in Texas in the seventies, maybe he got up to some fucked up shit. But in this case he is as good as his name, and he issues a sweeping ruling that outlaws all of the fund up ship found at the facilities and requires medical, psychological, and educational services to be made available for any children in a Texas juvenile justice facility or juvenile detention facility.

The entire leadership of the state agent see that oversaw these facilities was forced to resign. Texas put money into probation and other preventative measures, and the juvenile inmate population declined rapidly. So this is this is the first time to like real ship does have the right thing. This is a this makes the situation better. Judge Justice gets credit in this. He's a big part of like why

less kids are in this system. However, as the Washington Post reports quote the impact of Morales and other important federal court rulings was blunted by the persistence of structural racial disparities and renewed fears of violent juvenile crime. And while the Federal Juvenile Justice and Delinquent Delinquency Prevention Act of nineteen seventy four provided even more funding for state and local reforms these kind of like prevention measures and whatnot.

Historian Elizabeth Hinton has noted that it also labeled quote economically vulnerable youths, most of whom were black or Latino, as potentially criminal. That's the term used, potentially criminal. Um. Yeah, while removing white middle class offenders from the formal justice system. And that's why the juvenile inmate system to clients, right,

it's because they put less white kids there. Like that's the big which is good, right, It's like, no kid deserves to be in a lot of it's lesser been there. But it doesn't fix anything, you know, No, you don't want nobody in that system, like nobody should be displayed. The numbers and that is that is the main thing, is that the criminalization of white and mainly white middle class because I think some white poor kids still white up in these places. Yeah. Um, but the criminalization of

like white middle class kids stops to a large degree. Um, they're good. Yeah yeah, there's boys being boys. It's like a racist firefighter who only rescues the white kids. And it's like, well, it's good that less kids died in the fire, but you shouldn't be a firefighter, like you pat you on the back for that. I mean, I guess that kid's happy. Yeah, Like I still feel like you shouldn't be doing this job. Yeah. Yeah. So in the late seventies and early eighties, things where though trending

in a better direction. Um. And again the decline in the prison because it is I should be fair. There is a reduction in the number of of of black Gaspanic kids who are sent to these facility that does go down, Like it's not complete, but it is largely the number of the kids who don't who stopped going these facilities are largely white, right, it is largely based on race. Not to because again I don't want to. I also don't want to be like completely shipping on

the people who achieved this because it's good. Um yeah. And the idea that like you can't beat me with a bat. No, more like the fact that a judge was like, well drop, a judge did say that it does not stop, but just say like let me at least give him that. You. Yeah, know that they do not get they put less kids in these facilities. No, they keep beating, they keep right the hell. It was like, no,

we're worried about volume, like quality was different. We want like a more boutique experience where we really give each kid the beating they deserve. You know, our guards were just hitting too many kids. They were losing their passion for it. You do you did you watch uh, did you watch the Dave Chappelle Show when it was all oh, yeah, absolutely, okay. Do you remember the the Gay Clansman. Yes? Yeah, it was just like words like the clan We're just a

little nicer. Yeah, so we'll just we'll just ask you

to leave, probably back to Africa, like got it. Yeah, that's kind of what we've done here, um now in the late yeah, so again, the things are getting a little bit better in the late seventies and early nineteen eighties, like there are improvements, but then, like we talked about in our first episode, that's when crime really starts to rock it upwards right and all crime, but that it does include juvenile crime, and the panic over super predators

hits the media. Between nineteen ninety and nineteen ninety six, forty states expanded the number of juvenile cases that could be tried an adult court and given adult punishments, and no state went harder than Texas. When he ran for governor in nineteen ninety four, George W. Bush campaigned with a promise to lock up more children. In nineteen after he won, the state legislature passed an omnibus Juvenile Justice Reform Bill, which brought even tougher sentencing for kids accused

of crimes. The state budgeted another two hundred million dollars for facilities, which was enough to triple their capacity to incarceraate children. So like Texas is like, we gotta have at least three times as many kids locked up in this fucking state. Yeah, that opening my job. It is worth noting. We forget sometimes because the crimes against humanity he committed as president were so extreme. He did some

of that while he was governor. To his mix tastes were pretty crazy, Like y'are only looking at his major albums oh, his mix tastes were pretty crazy. It's also remember like how odd this is tied to like crack. Oh yes, and that's that's too much to tell them. Yes, that is a and I'm like, let's not let's not forget how we got crack. So let's just put that on the side. So like, yeah, it's funny how crime went up? Well you I mean, well there's well, there's yes.

We like with every evil thing in American history, the CIA is involved, just not directly in this part of it though. Yeah. Yeah, and that that is a big part of like why there's all of this, like terror over juvenile offenders and a big thing that like Bush and the Republicans campaign on absolutely. Um So we'll do we'll talk, We'll do a Crack episode at some point. We really got to get it with me too. It's yeah, yeah, it's there's we need to do a whole thing. I

ran conscious scandal like crack in his three Nicaragua everything. Anyway, that's all the other things I'm saying it right now. Yes, we'll get a couple of parts in there. Um So this period um the nineties, kind of the the mid nineties when Bush gets elected and you've got like this omnibus Juvenile Justice Reform bill. It's noteworthy in Texas because

it's when they really everyone stops. It has kind of been trending this way, but they this is when people really stop calling these places training schools and reform schools, those terms die. The idea of like trying to hide what these places are dies because the people who want more of them just call them youth prisons, and they're

proud of that. They love the idea that they're making youth prisons like they don't want to hide that ship because like you get elected for being like, oh, hell yeah, we're gonna throw a bunch of fucking kids and lock them up. You think we got youth prisons. Now, when I'm governor, way more youth prisons. I'm gonna put all your kids, Wayne, I'm gonna put all eight kids. And while they tripled their capacity to lock kids up, Texas

also doubled the number of kids they were executing. Now in the United States, prop from n to two thousand five, twenty three children were executed. Thirteen of those were in Texas. Are you serious? Yeah, Texas fucking loves executing children. Oh yeah, we are Look, the United States has an executing children problem, but it's also largely a Texas problem. You know that is that's a lot. There's a bunch of other states. I don't know if you're aware there's like forty nine

of them. Yeah, I did not know that. In Shock and Awe, Yeah, we are huge fans of executing children. Um. Yeah,

I can't get enough of it really now. This all continued swimmingly until February six, two thousand seven, when The Texas Observer published an article about a horrific sex abuse scandal and a juvenile correction facility near Odessa in West Texas, and I'm gonna quote again from Who Gets a Childhood News reports revealed that the school's assistant superintendent Ray Brookins and its principal John Paul Hernandez had coerced sexual favors from several juvenile inmates over a period of at least

two years. Compounding the alleged crime was an inexplicably slow response from authorities between December two thousand three. In February two thousand five, staff complaints about Brookens and Hernandez a suspicious behavior had fallen on deaf ears in the Upper echelons of the Texas Youth Commission t y C, the

agency charged with administering the state's juvenile facilities. Finally, in February of two thousand five, Mark Slattery, volunteer math tutor from nearby Midland, was approached by two students who wanted to confess something ikey. As Slattery later told a reporter, I knew it must have been something bad if they

had no word for it. Slattery Is soon discovered that boys were being led into the administration building each night for forced encounters with Brookens, who had used his power to unilaterally lengthen or shortened youth sentences to exact sex from inmates. He can make you stay longer if you don't fuck him, and that's what he does. Oh this just yeah, oh my god. Yeah yeah, it's bad as bad as it gets right there. Oh man, yeah. Um

shout out though to Mark Slattery. Uh, it is important to note that like, this guy clearly cares about these kids. Is volunteering to teach like not getting paid, volunteering to teach math to incarcerated kids because it's important for them to learn and they clearly it says a lot about him that these kids know we can trust mrs. We can tell him this and he'll he'll do something about it. By god, he does. Yum, so fucking give this guy something.

The house whatever is a mixed bag this episode where it's like some dudes are dope, some dudes are like actual bastard. Yeah, you do have to like this is an overwhelmingly bleak story. But whenever you get those those little heroes, you've gotta like acknowledge that ship because most people clearly didn't do what Mark did. Um. So, uh, it's pretty bad. It's pretty bad. And again the Texas Rangers get involved, and this time they were a little

more effective than they had been last time. Brookens and Hernandez are charged with a bunch of crimes. Both men are forced to resign, but the criminal cases against them grind to a halt in the local county prosecutor's office and the U. S. Attorney's office in San Antonio refuses to get involved. What is like again, why do you like this? Is? This is bad for business. It's bad for everybody if this becomes a bigger thing that it needs to be. And this is thankfully where journalists come in,

so obviously this gets out. This is a fun as everyone's reactions, this is a fucked up story. The Dallas Morning News is is like, all right, well, let's do a journalism here, because if if this is happening, there's probably some other ship that's going on. If there's one,

there's four. Yeah. Yeah. So they carry out a huge investigation which concludes that the Texas juvenile justice system had created quote a culture in which prison officials were free to abuse their power and punish children who tried to complain about them. So this story goes viral. National news starts to get on the trail left the Dallas Morning News covers gets pretty big paper. Um, the big guys,

the really big guys, start to get in there. Follow Up investigations would eventually find more than two thousand confirmed allegations of staff on inmate violence between two thousand three and two thousand six, including more more than sixty cases of kids with suspicious broken bones. To try and quiet up outrage, Texas launched an abuse hotline for their child prisons, which racked up eleven complaints in its first month. So you know, it gets big. It reveals a bound. The

tip of the iceberg is revealed. Obviously, I'm gonna guess more than two thousand times staff beat kids in a three year period in all the Texas prisons, probably a couple of times. I'm gonna guess more than sixty kids had broken bones, more than sixty, because you know these are also kids, their teens. There's a lot of oppositional definance.

I'm sure there's some kids who get bones broken and don't want to tell anyone because like I don't want you to know you, I don't want you to know you hurt me, you know, or I don't want anyone like you know. And obviously ship gets covered up, it gets hidden. Um, I'm sure it's a lot higher the

actual umber. They started releasing child prisoners. Tech this did, and in March of two thousand seven, a Department of Justice investigation concluded and found that conditions in the Evans E. V I. N S. Regional Juvenile Center in Edinburgh, Texas were bad enough that they had violated the constitutional rights of imprisoned youth to be protected from harm while in state custody. Evans had an assault rate five times the

national average. Once this news broke, there were more stories about the horrific conditions in the facility, William Bush writes. One of the most watched cases was that of Chakwanda Cotton, a fifteen year old African American girl from the East Texas town of Paris, who received an indeterminate terminate sentence an indeterminate sentence up to age twenty one for shoving a hall monitor in school. Portrayed in the net. Yeah, she shoves a hall monitor and she gets an open

ended sentence. We can keep you up until you're twenty one if we want to end sentence. Yeah, this happens a lot. So because of the way the Texas juvenile justice system gets a lot of these are for like up to five years. Again, that's why those that's what we talked about, Like those people, those are the superintendence of those facilities, of that facility being like, hey, if you don't fuck mail, keep you here longer. That's why

they can keep them here longer. They have they get to decide how long the sentences up to this long in prison. That's the difference. Okay, now I'm seeing like difference between California and because I'm like eighteen, you like it gets your record sealed, like when you're a juvenile. Yeah, it's I mean it's it's fucked up. Um. I mean you could get transferred to the like the adult prison, but like dang for them to be like, no, I'll keep you to one because hey crazy, So Chakonda Cotton,

this story goes really viral. People are horrified, The national press covers it. Um. It gets looked at as a victim as like racially motivated um, and she gets a release in March two thousand seven. She becomes kind of a cause celeb for how like racist the Texas juvenile justice system is. Um. She subsequently described conditions at the Ron Jack's and State Juvenile Correction Complex in Brownwood, UH, during an interview in seventeen magazine. Quote. Seeing the barbed

wire fences and guards terrified me. I was given an orange jumpsuit and socks and taken to my quarters, a tiny room that had only a bed, a bookshelf, and a desk. Some of the other inmates had committed serious crimes like murder. This was wait, you said seventeen magazine. Yeah, she does an interview for seven seventeen. That's kind of wow, But yeah, good for seventeen. Yeah, I don't know seventeen was left some teen Vogue ship right there. Yeah, or

guess Team Vogue is doing some seventeen ship. I don't know that's really because I'm like seventeen pre dates them. I remember. I remember seventeen magazine running around the hood and it was just the stuff that like for the for the little girls, and like, dang, I didn't know they was about it like that. What year was this? Um god, this is like two. It's a little more

recent than Yeah, yeah, the internet kind of. I mean, they're still body shame and girls, but at least they doing these articles about girls and HSIT did this so people start to care again about abuses in Texas state facilities, whistle blowers come forward. Randall Chance, a former inspector for the state's juvenile correction facilities, says in an interview that quote and this is him, Randall Chance, like works for the state Juvenile Correction agency and he's in he inspects facilities.

He gives an interview where he says, staff are being paid your tax money to rape your children. Oh my god. Oh not very scary, straight shot, no chaser, homie, he cut it very clean for you. That's what's happening. He describes t y C, the agency he works for, as a dynasty of corruption that condone condones the mistreatment of youth and its care. So again, reforms are demanded. The t y C governing board is overhauled. They throw out

the old guys running it, bringing new ones. A state investigation is ordered, and as you'd expect, it found a lot of evidence of individual wrongdoing. The blame was placed on the culture of the agency, which was described as having somehow become uniquely toxic. Little discussion focused around the fact that Texas had been this bad for two thirds

of a century. So again, this keeps. This is what happens every time when they're when something gets done, it's we're gonna arrest and charge these individual guys who committed crimes um and we've got to you know, there's a problem with the culture. We have to fire these dudes at the top, and we have to reform the agency to fix the culture because it's a culture problem. And I think at this point in the story it should be clear it's not a culture problem. It's a child

prison problem. This is what happens when you have them. They keep trying to reform the culture, and the exact same thing happens over and over again. Reforms are fought by the people who live there because there's money in there, and by local politicians because that's where they get voters

and and fucking campaign donations from UM. And the abuse continues because the kind of people who are going to work, the kind of jobs that are available at these facilities in the middle of o or which don't pay well. Are people who get UM are willing to take a pay cut to get to hit kids or molest them. Like, it's not a culture problem. It's a child prison problem with the god thing staff. Yeah, it's that the culture of this toxic planet. Yeah, it's the fact that you're

on a toxic planet. It's a culture in that. Like if you design a gun that can only shoot seven year olds and the people who buy them, Yeah, there's a culture problem among the people who buy the guns that can only shoot seven year olds, Like, but I guess, yeah, they're probably all very unpleasant people. But that's not really the problem, is it. It's that we built a gun to shoot seven year olds. Yes, the issue is is is not the people buying these are bad, like they are, sure,

but that's really not where the problems started. As both in situation here, guys, do we need these things? Yeah, it's not either or I feel like it's a both end Yeah. Um, but you know who doesn't shoot seven year olds? Prop unless it's the Washington State would patrol again, in which case they do. Um, but probably not unless it's also unless it's then potentially yes, uh we're back.

So if you were an optimistic type, you could be forgiven for looking at the fallout from the two thousand seven revelations of horrific abuse in Texas facilities and thinking, like ship things are headed in the right direction again, like this might, we might, we might fix a lot of stuff, and a lot of good stuff does happen. I should say that Texas closes more than half of

their youth prisons. They gut the juvenile justice system. They dramatically reduced the number of incarcerated kids, and resources are diverted from incarcerating kids to programs to try and prevent youth crime. This is great, Like again, this is a big deal. But it's a big deal because it removes kids from the system. Um. Journalists and politicians who demanded change and brought out this information improve material conditions for the kids who get released and the kids who don't

go to juvenile prison because that becomes less common. That is undeniable. But it is not a reform of these facilities, because if it was a reform, it would mean that the facilities themselves are getting better, and that's not what happens. The facilities continue to be a fucking nightmare. There's less

kids in them. Again, that's huge, really big deal, but for those inside, it's a lot of basically might I don't have a way of claiming this in any objective sense because again, our data is always imperfect here, but like the same problems continue to persist. Yeah, so it's like the statistics go down because there's just less humans. Yeah, the reform is we've got to take kids out of this thing, which might suggest that, like, if we really wanted to reform it, we would not let any kids

be in these places. Yeah, we can close it forever, I mean, then would be no kids in it. That might work, That would be my argument um. And again, obviously the people who succeed in this, it's not abolition, but it's a lot less kids in prison. That's great. But again the facilities stay exactly the same as they've

been for a century. So fast forward ten years, two thousand seventeen, the Dallas Morning News publishes a blockbuster investigation into abuses at the Gainesville State School, which, despite its name, is a child prison. It just happens to have some desks. Here's how that article opened. Proper. Youths at the Gainesville State School say staff paid them with drugs and cash to assault one another. A psychologist at the campus gave pornography to a boy there to encourage the young man

to masterbait. In front of him, youth attacked a guard and stole his radio so he couldn't call for help. By the time he had the help arrived, the officer had a broken nose and needed four stitches over his eye. So, wow, West and there, Yeah, it's the wild West in there, and like the same abuses are happening, And like that staff paying kids with drugs and cash to assault each other, that's bounties. It's like there's this whole system where the

guards when kids will like funk with them. Sometimes it's cases like this where they beat up a guard, but oftentimes it's just a kid they find annoying. They will pay other kids with drugs, but like give kids cocaine and heroin to beat the ship out of kids who annoy them. That's an endemic problem in this facility. That's unfortunately, well yeah, rant not not common normal, Yeah yeah, yeah, it's everywhere. Um, but it's usually not kids. It's usually

not children, is yeah to um. But again Texas doesn't really see the need to treat them as children. Uh. Now that article had a lot of really good stuff in it, very important piece of journalism, um, but it still contains some of the same problems we've seen over and over again. Here's one line I found particularly frustrating. It's a bad culture, said Debbie Unrah, an independent watchdog charged with ensuring the safety of youths in the Texas

Juvenile Justice Department's custody. It's a dangerous culture. And again that's true. It's a add culture. The culture of like guys who were guards and child prisons is bad. Um, But that's not the central problem. Um. The claim that, like, it's a problem with the culture at this prison might hold water if we didn't have a century of documentation that this happens in every one of these facilities the

state of Texas operates. It's constant, and it's for generations. Um. The article quoted juvenile justice advocates who once again complained that part of the problem was locking kids in remote rural facilities far from home. UM. Which is absolutely absolutely true. Right, if you are looking at ways to minimize harm, don't put him so far away where there's no services. Yeah. And like the um frequency of your family visiting, Yeah,

it's going to be yeah. Yeah. Now that article also contains more detail about the staff psychologist who gave a child pornography so that he could watch that child masturbate. Um. And I'm gonna read a quote about that now. Vincent Rager, now third one, began working at Gainesville in two thousand fifteen. His online resume indicates he provided individual psychotherapy to boys

at the school. Rager resigned during the investigation. Officials said records show he resigned in lieu of vault of involuntary separation, so he resigns in order to avoid being fired. Reached my phone earlier this week, Ranger said he resigned because he wanted to move to California. Ranger now works as a clinical psychologist treating male prisoners at current Valley State Prison in Bakersfield, California. Now they're adults. Well they're grown up,

so that's better. Oh my, I might say you should never get to work as a clinical psychologist, like like that might that might disqualify you for doing that. Ever, you should you should not have a license to do any of this. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, so again we should consider perhaps the possibility that like this is not just a problem with like Texas, it is also an American problem. Right, he goes right away and gets a job, and fucking California. You like, are we that hard pressed for people to Yeah,

like we're that hard pressed for like employment. Yeah, these facilities are in the middle of nowhere. They pay for ship. Um, it's not enjoyable work. It's not very well respected, respected work. So like there, I know there are good people doing that job in in the system, but like a lot of bad people get that because it's like you're not getting the very best generally. Yeah, you have to be mission driven, Yeah, if you're going to stay in the

that work because the work is trash. Yeah, it's it's like you obviously you get great teachers in these juvenile facilities sometimes like the guy we already taught, Marked Slattery, the guy we talked to. I'm saying, like, that's where I started teaching. I started teaching in juvenile facilities. I was like, but also, you're gonna get a bunch of basket cases who this is the gig they could get

because they did something. Yeah, and it's not if it's easy to not like you're as this whole episode is. It's easy to not care and still get away with it because you're just from a teacher perspective, It's just a couple of packets. It's like continuation school. If anybody ever been to that, It's like it's packets. You just felt the packets. And I just make sure you guys don't hurt each other. And the way that I'm sitting right now, y'all can't see this listeners, but like my

feet are like leaned up against the wall. I'm leaning back with the mic and I don't have to care about I can sit like this for the thirty minutes of class and just make sure you don't stab each other. And if you do, all I gotta do is call the p O and he comes in. Yeah, and then you'll have then you'll go, you know, to a worse place potentially. Yeah, basically like don't have to, so you have to you have to care if you're gonna be in it. Yeah, and you get in these places special

that isn't all that different. You get this mix of like the most dedicated, wonderful, caring people, imaginable and every like people who are either just waiting out a clock, and then a tiny number of people who are sucking monsters and know that that's where the least lies are eyes are on them, you know, um, and perhaps more could be done to make more caring and wonderful people able to do that job. And few were at least

few were monsters. I'm not gonna say like, look, you're always gonna have some people waiting out the clock, but you don't have to have the monsters exactly. We can avoid having we can avoid like, let's set hire few monsters and as much as you can. Yeah, you know, because some people get through the cracks, Like, yeah, I go a lot. I know personal information about that, but

like people get through the cracks. Sure, you know, some lies obviously a monster maybe like that's maybe don't hire Yeah, maybe maybe I don't hire monsters speaking of monsters that somebody hired Governor Greg Abbott. Um, there's all these well this is I mean, he's not the bad guy or the good guy here. He does the thing that everyone

else does every time something like this happens. There's this big investigation and all of this press about how bad Texas juvenile justice system is and he fires the person in charge. Right, how many times does that happen? This fucking story. Yeah, there's a bunch of talk of reform and YadA YadA YadA. Uh that nothing significant changes, um, or at least the changes do not fix all the problems that we have been talking about all episode. Um.

Here's the New York Times reporting in two thousand nineteen. Quote. In October twenty nineteen, a prison officer who worked at a juvenile detention facility in central Texas was charged with sexual assault and accused of forcing a boy in custody to perform oral sex on him in his cell. The incident came to light the day after the alleged crime

when the boy tried to kill himself. Two months before that, at another detention facility in Texas, a corrections officer was fired after a teenage girl said she was pregnant with his child. He was later charged in connection with that case, and in May of last year, another prison worker was arrested on charges that he had carried on a relationship with the teenager who was on parole. At five state juvenile detention centers, the day to day conditions are relentlessly

violent and oppressive, with guards often resorting to force. According to a complaint filed to the Justice Department in two thousand nineteen, prison staff used force on incarcerated children almost seven thousand times, equivalent to six times per child who was confined there. Oh my god. Yeah uh, this it just feels so personal, like, oh my god, dude. Yeah yeah. So these findings came courtesy if yet another Justice Department investigation.

How many of those? Have we seen? This episode? Right? The DJ investigated who hooray and like like we here in the date, like this is two thousand nineteen. Yeah, I know, with COVID and make it that feels like eight you know, because of COVID. But that's three years ago, guys,

yeah yeah yeah. Um. Now that Justice An investigation had started in two eighteen, when two Texas advocacy groups begged the federal government to intervene, arguing that Governor Abbott's promised to personally monitor the juvenile justice system would not be sufficient. It wasn't, which is why everything I read you you know, was found UM. And obviously it's good that the Justice Department documented this UM. But at the same time, I think this is kind of a perfect example of the

actual logic behind a CAB. I think that slogans a lot less useful politically than it than it ever has been, but the sentiment behind it applies because these investigators, these Justice Department people, document this. This is important work. It's important to document this. It's critical, UM. And I think these I'm sure these people care. I'm sure they see

horrific abuse, they want to stop it. They documented, and I'm sure they go to bed each night exhausted and sad, but certain that they're doing work that needs to be done. But as we've seen over and over again in this story, all of these investigations are part of how the system perpetuates itself. Guards rape and beat children, whistleblowers and watchdogs complain, government investigation leads to reform, and then guards keep raping

and beating children. These investigations and the media cycle that follows them are a necessary part of the cathartic loop that Texas has been stuck in for more than a hundred years. This is a part of the loop. This is how people how it gets perpetuated again and again, not that like they're they're bad people for investigating this ship, but it also is like that when I say, like, you know, all whatever whatever are bastards or whatnot in

the system. That's what we mean the system. The system eliminates the possibility of being good because the system cannot be reformed. So even if you're working for something that looks like reform in the system, a lot of what you're going to be doing is keeping the loop going. And it's not that simple because obviously some of these investigations are part of why there's a massive reduction in the number of kids who are in car Sward and

that's huge. Um So it's not I don't want to be painting it is that simple, but like it does, it's just doesn't get better. The actual prisons themselves don't get better. That there are less kids in them, and that's good, but the things keep happening because we just can't have these places and those things not happen. Yeah, that's the like the argument about like abolition, it's just like we just have to start over, like because reforms, you're just it's just duct tape, and it's not and

it's not stopping, it's not fixing the problem. You'll just keep adding duct tape and it's and sometimes the duct tape muffles the sound from inside. Yeah, you know, makes people think that we've fixed it. Yes, and pretty poetic there, Robert, every now and then. Yeah, Yeah, there's a part of me that questions the value of continuing to loop through all of these stories, all of these details of abuse, all of these statistics, over and over again, every cycle

that this happens. And um, because again, I think the only real thing to do is empty these facilities out, burn them down, and throw any person who suggests rebuilding them into the Gulf of Mexico. But that said, I also don't want to ignore the work that these these journalists in these Department of Justice people do and in documenting this because the stories of these victims, these victims are important. And so to close us out, I'm going to read one more quote from that article that I

decided from about Christie Dennis. Her son was fifteen when he was sent to the McLennan County State Juvenile Correction Facility and marked Texas quote. Miss Dennis was horrified when she called one day in two thousand nineteen and learned that her son had been beaten and taunted as guards apparently stood by. Her son was sent to the jail's doctors on one occasion, she said, and she was later told that many guards did not intervene because they were

afraid of the youth themselves. Miss Dennis said her son ended up at the center after taking her car without permission several times and money from her purse. After talking to the authorities, she was advised that if she wanted to teach her son a lesson, he needed to go to a juvenile facility. A decision, Miss Dennis said, a decisiency ended up regretting. The attacks against her son escalated to the point where he begged guards to keep him

in solitary confinement. Released in July, months before his seventeenth birthday, he now works at a fast food restaurant and his earning his g e D with plans to pursue welding. But he is not the same as he was before his detention. She said. He has PTSD, he hears a noise,

and he panics. And that's another important when we talk about the complicity in the system and the degree to which maybe some of these people documenting these abuses or even complicit, another person or group of people who are complicit are parents in these communities, parents who turn in their kids, parents who support these laws, parents who who

support funding these places. UM. I think it's probably fair to say that of the adults I knew as a child, UM were to that degree complicit in this system because they supported keep opening more places. The politicians who supported these places, and they were convinced that it was the right thing to do. And the result of a lot of people being convinced that this is the right thing to do. It's not just the rapists and the murderers and the pedophiles, UM, or the venal politicians who make

this possible. It's the people who think they're doing the best thing for society. And the result of everything of both the actions of these horrible rapists and whatnot in pedophiles and the actions of what I'm sure loving parents and dedicated employees and the justice part whatnot the result of all of that is a system that rapes, beats,

and murders children on an industrial scale. That's why I opened this episode with, like, I am a parent, and the part of me that understands at least can empathize what it what it feels like to have a child that you don't know what to do with, Like I deeply understand that, you know, um, and the part of you that like the reality that you're still unpacking your own trauma, Like just from just the time of age of civilization we're in, it was like, like you said,

we were odd enough to where we could get spanked at school, Like that's that Like we're like, it's not that long ago that we actually realized that that was barbaric,

you know what I'm saying. So so you're you're you're processing your own upbringing realizing, and then the parts of you that feels like like even with me, where I'm like, well, there's a been times that I've been like, well, I kind of earned that spanking, you know what I'm saying, Like I probably should have got spank for that, you

know what I'm saying That now I can't. I look at both my children and I'm like, ain't in a damn world I would put my hands on my kids, you know what I'm saying, Like it just seems so like unthinkable like that, I don't. I just don't think I could. I could never do it, you know what I'm saying. But when I got married again I'm black, like black people spank their kids. When I got married Southern people, they spanked their kids, is so normal. And then so I'm like that no doubt in my mind,

and my parents loved me like I'm not. I would never take that for my parents loved me. I have great relationship with my with my mom at least, you know what I'm saying, but like you know, uh, you know, and and a better one with my father now. But like, um, that being said, I'm like the part of me that understands that you're just like I don't. And I'm from the city, so I'm just sometimes we'd be like nah, and how we need to go to jail, you know

what I'm saying. And then but then you get there, which is why I feel like sometimes for me and my wife, like us who've been advocates who have like you know, been to the Congress, like stood to our our front of our our councilmen and been like, you know, our our senators and been like, this ship got to stop, you know what I'm saying. They have like done the work,

done the therapy for ourselves. We've made enough money to be able to do therapy for ourselves, to be able to be like to come to the conclusions that we're at now, to be like, this ship isn't working, you know what I'm saying, And having the experience of like having friends that have been through the system, you know, ourselves somehow, you know, have in our own interactions with the system to be able to look at our own children and everybody else's children and be like, listen, this

is not the answer. You know what I'm saying. And it's not it's it's not doing what you think it's doing. Sometimes I feel like that's a privilege of mine, even coming from poverty, coming from the hood, is having a privilege of understanding that, like, yo, the system you think is gonna rehabilitate your children have has no that was never in their purview. Joe saying that was never that was never on the table was rehabilitating them. You know

what I'm saying. Um, so I raised my children in a different like even tho it's looking at like my own like like friends being like, yeah, we don't spank our kids and being like friends being like what like yo, I was like no, like we've you know, saying we

it's a we're in a it's all that say. I'm stuttering now because I feel so passionate about this to where it's like the complicity because you talked about the complicency and that's the complicency that like sits as a parent to where you're like, but I'm also terrified for my child and I don't want them to make bad decisions, and I feel like they're not listening to me. And I know what scared me straight was being scared. So I'm like, well, maybe that's gonna But then you realize

it's like, no, you're creating a criminal. You're traumatizing your child and not understanding how you're traumatizing your child because you think they know you love them. But like all of that put together and then and then like you said, like coming out of the other end and being like I'm trying to do my best I'm I'm, I'm I'm. I'm saying a lot here because like, again, it's so important to me. I just like I just went through

a situation on another on a nonprofit. I'm on the board of that, Like you know, we had to go through a moment to where it was like when you sit that, I've never been in a situation where I'm actually at the part of the table where I have the range, like I can actually make change here, you know what I'm saying, where I'm like, I'm actually the one in power now, like I'm usually one outside of

the door. Now I'm actually in it. But then once you're sitting at that and you're like, oh man, there's like there's really a lot at steak here when I if I make this decision that seems so easy when I was outside, you know what I'm saying, But now that I'm in and you're like, that's like you like how you keep trying to like balance your understanding of like these journalists and these like justice workers that were like, yo, like we're doing what is obviously the right thing, you

know what I'm saying, But like at the end of the day, you're still laying your head like, but we ship, dude, Like, I mean I can't. I mean, what we really need to do, you know what I'm saying, Like you said, which really is close them all, but you're like, but funk, like I don't have the I mean, this is the best I could do, you know what I'm saying. It's just like I understand so much more now at this stage in my life, in my career and my parents being like all of those nuances. You know, I just

wish I could just rap about it. I wish I could just wrap about it. Do podcasts, you know, saying yeah, I mean you do. You do have a podcast. I do have a podcast, and I do talk about the ship, you know. Yeah, yeah, I wish I had some cathartic way to deal with it. Yeah, rapping sounds actually extremely cathartic.

It really is. Bro But I still think I think I said that when the first time I was on the show, like, yo, let me write a rap for you man, Like, yeah, yeah, I hear you're rid them though I don't know you're RIDM Like if you if I could write it, but if you got rid of them, like I don't know, absolutely not, Um, Yeah, that's that that that that that that will always just be something

I have to admire from afar Um. But I don't know what do you you got anything to plug PROP at the end, at the end of this very bleak day of talking about child prisms that proud right there for you, and then we should perform it at the live show. I do have something to plug. I'm happy with PROP performing at the live show. I don't think

any that's that's not what they're paying for. So I bet you right now if I were to throw on because you've mentioned it already on our shelves, I to throw on like a most like a black on both sides record, but you could probably wrap along. There are songs out there, some some of the doom Tree stuff. I bet you have to throw on both few of them tracks, few of them atmosphere songs. You already know that you could probably wrap a love Yeah. I may

have listened to an astop rocker two in my time. Yes, and that's listen, that's some complex rapping, like you know what I'm saying. That ain't that ain't some easy that ain't some that ain't some easy bars Like that's some complex rapping anyway. Yes, dot com, we'll see how drunk I get during the live stream. But that's one more reason to check out the live stream. Yeah, absolutely, Yeah, and hit me on Twitter. I'm trying to come up with a game for us to play during the live

stream that might involve how drunk. I feel like all the ones are like the boy Howdies and like the Hitler calls. I'd be like, man, Luckily nobody calls me out on my life. You know what I'm saying, because I felt like you wasted, wasted immediately first ten minutes. Yeah. Anyways, Yeah, profit pop dot com. I got some new coffee content coming out, like got some uh, got some you know, music and politics, pod Man, we're getting got renewed, thank you.

Cool more shows coming, you know what I'm saying. Yeah, yeah, check it out. Check out prop check out props book, check out check us out for our live stream on check out our live stream on February seventeenth, Moment dot com slash behind the Bastard. Yeah, check that out. And also, I have a fiction book that is on pre sale right now. If you order during the pre sale for the next couple of months, you will get a signed

copy when it comes out in May. Google a k press after the revolution, and that's where my book will be, a K press after the revolution. By a copy of my novel I learned about a skull fucker, Mike, school fucker Mike. All right, Yeah, that's a great book. Man. You're like, fiction is hard to write. It really is. Boy, howdy that You're like, well, I'm making up a story. Like we've been making up stories since we've been sneaking out in front of our parents, Like we've been making

up stories. But like it's really hard. So like yo, kudo's way easier to just be a judge. Apparently money shim great boy. Alright, boy, howdy indeed, I am Texan. Alright, that's the episode. Bam