SB 103's Unintended Consequences

One provision of SB 103, the TYC reform bill, lowers the maximum age of a TYC inmate from 21 to 19. I previously discussed this change here.

Under the new law, TYC must discharge any child in custody on an indeterminate sentence on that child’s 19th birthday. A child who is at TYC on a determinate sentence will be released to adult parole on the child’s 19th birthday.

It will be interesting to see how this affects determinate sentence cases. TYC can seek to transfer a determinate sentence inmate to the adult prison system. Now that such inmates must be released to parole upon turning 19 if they are still at TYC, will we see more transfer referrals for 17 and 18-year-olds? In addition, when they have the option, prosecutors may be more likely to pursue determinate sentence cases with older juveniles, since an indeterminate sentence will now be completely discharged at age 19 instead of 21.

There is another possible consequence of this new provision. Prosecutors may now seek to certify more juveniles to stand trial as adults.

Critics of the new law say prosecutors around the state will push to have more youths certified to stand trial as adults if the crimes they are accused of committing would make them too serious a risk to have back on the street after only a year or two behind bars.

“The Legislature really tied our hands on this one,” said Riley Shaw, a juvenile crimes prosecutor for the Tarrant County district attorney's office. “We are going to be looking at seeking [adult] certification in a greater number of cases than we had been under the old system.”

Shaw’s concerns were echoed by a representative of the Texas County and District Attorneys Association, by an urban county jail administrator and by a criminal justice advocacy group that had championed the overhaul of the youth commission on grounds that young offenders in state custody needed stronger measures on the books to safeguard their rights.

...That might be the best answer for the community, but not for the young offender, said Isela Gutierrez, who handles juvenile issues for the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition.

“We think that was an unintended consequence of Senate Bill 103 that will have to be addressed,” said Gutierrez, whose organization supported the legislation. “Being back in the community [too soon] isn’t the right place for a lot of these kids, but neither is adult prison.”

Edmonds and Shaw said it's too soon to judge how many young offenders might be tried as adults because of the new law. But the jail administrator for the Bexar County Sheriff’s Department said his agency is expecting as many as 100 such cases over the next year.

Deputy Chief Dennis McKnight said that he’s been advised by local prosecutors to prepare to house up to 100 young offenders in the Bexar County lockup while they await trial in adult courtrooms. It won’t be an easy task, he said.

“You can't just put these kids in any bed you find,” McKnight said. “They’ve got to be segregated from the adult population. A lot of them are going to be gang members who’ll have to be segregated from each other. There’s going to be mental illness issues, substance abuse, you name it. And then, you're going to have to have education programs for them. An adult confinement facility is not designed for all that.

“Last year, I had four juveniles in my jail,” he added. “And I had a real hard time dealing with that many.”

Locking up more juveniles in adult prison was not the solution the Lege had in mind, but it is a likely result of SB 103.