A Texas state oversight report published on Friday, November 13, has found that the unprecedented lockdown of all five state youth prisons earlier this year led to increased self-harm by youth, delayed treatment — including for youth on suicide alert — and an escalated use of force against children in custody, according to reporting by KEDT and KERA, the Texas public radio services.
Source: KEDT / KERA Texas Newsroom
The report was issued by the Texas Sunset Advisory Commission, the body that evaluates the performance of state agencies. The lockdown, imposed by the Texas Juvenile Justice Department (TJJD), confined youth in the agency's five secure facilities to their cells for a period of several days earlier this year. TJJD officials had defended the lockdown as a safety measure taken after assaults against staff.
Harm Inside the Lockdown
An investigation by KERA and The Texas Newsroom, cited directly in the Sunset Commission report, found that children subjected to the lockdown harmed themselves scores of times over a period of just a few days, and that staff struggled to get the situation under control. The commission's report concluded that the lockdown produced the opposite of its stated purpose in key respects, worsening the behaviour it was meant to contain.
"Isolation heightens the probability of a youth acting out," the Sunset Advisory Commission report states — a direct warning that extended cell confinement can deepen, rather than reduce, the risks inside a youth facility.
The report also found a serious communication failure around the lockdown. County juvenile probation departments (JPDs) — which hold custody of children before they are sent to state facilities — were kept in the dark about the lockdown conditions for five days. Juvenile judges across Texas, who make the decisions to commit youth to TJJD, were also not informed during that period.
"A JPD with a youth in a state facility and juvenile judges who make decisions about committing youth to TJJD must be informed about such critical events," the report says, in one of its clearest directives to the agency.
An Agency Already Under a Federal Cloud
TJJD has long been in turmoil. A 2024 investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice alleged rampant sexual and physical abuse inside Texas youth prisons. That federal investigation also cautioned against keeping youth in their cells for extended periods — two years before agency leaders chose to do exactly that, for several days, in the lockdown now under review.
The Sunset report arrives weeks after TJJD's executive director, Shandra Carter, abruptly resigned from her position. Carter has not publicly addressed the exact reason for her departure. A TJJD spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the report, KEDT reported.
What Happens Next
This is the first of three reports the Sunset Advisory Commission is expected to publish in the next few months. The first was authored by commission staff; the second will contain recommendations from the commission's members, who are mostly state lawmakers. The Texas Legislature convenes in January 2027 and will consider the commission's recommendations in a Sunset bill for TJJD, which will decide what changes the agency must make.
For families across Texas — including Punjabi and other immigrant families in Houston, Dallas and other diaspora centres whose children can be committed to these facilities by county courts — the case turns on a basic safeguard: when the state locks down every youth prison it runs, the counties, judges and families connected to the children inside are told promptly, and the conditions inside are independently checked. The commission's next report, with its formal recommendations, is the document that will show whether that safeguard becomes law.