Kids swallowing screws from a ceiling vent. Children cutting and reopening wounds, and urinating on themselves.
Those are just some of the episodes detailed in thousands of pages of internal records related to last month’s unprecedented multi-day lockdown of youth prisons across the state — records that paint a disturbing picture of the effects of extended confinement imposed by the Texas Juvenile Justice Department.
The documents obtained by KERA and the Texas Newsroom mention scores of episodes of self-harm by children during the first few days of the lockdown. Youth banged their heads against the hard cell walls, and fashioned ligatures from clothing and bedding, the records show.
Correctional officers struggled to get a handle on the situation and deployed pepper spray repeatedly, they wrote in shift logs.
They also often waited hours for backup staff to arrive to escort children out of their cells for basic needs, and in some instances, during more urgent situations. And in a handful of instances, it took more than 30 minutes for a staff member to enter a cell and remove ligatures kids tied around themselves.
Lisa Capers, a former training director for the agency, said the records describe a “self-perpetuating disaster” in which youth are acting out because they’re in isolation, prompting staff to be even more punitive.
“A lockdown like this is going to have impact on the kids and on their outlook and their frame of mind and their mental health,” she said.
The lockdown was prompted by an “exceptionally brutal assault” against a juvenile correctional officer in early August, TJJD executive director Shandra Carter told the agency’s oversight board. She insisted that it was “not a punishment, and inherently, it is not a violation of youth rights.”
She also wrote in an email to staff that “most youth have responded appropriately” to the lockdown, though she acknowledged “some expected increases in challenging behavior.”
TJJD chief of staff Nathan McDaniel said in an emailed statement Monday that kids in the agency's facilities are dealing with higher mental health needs than ever before, meaning self-harm and violent behaviors occur whether youth prisons are on lockdown or not.
"When youth are in danger of serious self-harm, staff intervene immediately," McDaniel said. "When youth exhibit harmful behaviors but are not in imminent risk, staff are instructed to communicate and monitor the youth and wait to physically intervene until additional staff support arrives. This promotes safety for staff and youth."
The spokesperson added that youth sometimes exhibit certain behaviors to lure staff into their rooms and assault them.
The mother of a 13-year-old currently in a TJJD facility likened the lockdown to being locked in solitary confinement. She asked The Texas Newsroom not to name her, her son or the facility he resides in because she feared retaliation against her son for speaking out.
The teen told his mom he and fellow youth were confined to their cells for all but 30 minutes every day to shower or use the bathroom. They had to be handcuffed and shackled whenever they left their cells, agency records show.
The mother said her son has an assortment of mental health diagnoses, including autism, ADHD, disruptive mood dysregulation disorder and a learning disability.
He also struggles with separation anxiety, making it hard on him when visitation was suspended during the lockdown.
“I don’t understand why they shut everyone down,” the mother said. “Why punish everybody?”
A brutal assault leads to severe consequences
The assault that prompted Carter to impose the lockdown happened at the Gainesville Juvenile Correctional Facility, a prison with about 125 kids located near the Oklahoma border. The victim, a juvenile correctional officer, was hospitalized for a week afterward.
On Aug. 21, Carter told the agency’s oversight board that the officer violated agency policy before the assault occurred by opening the youth’s cell door without a second staffer present.
Carter called the episode an example of widespread “complacency” across the agency and said that during the lockdown, leadership would make sure all officers knew they could not open cell doors by themselves. She acknowledged that many staffers were anxious about being accused of mistreating youth as a result.
“I cannot tell you how many people that I've had to assure, if in this lockdown youth end up peeing in the bottle because they don't choose to take the bathroom break that you offered them … that is okay, we will deal with that,” she said.
But records detail numerous instances in which youth waited hours for restroom breaks and other basic needs during the lockdown because there weren’t enough staff on hand.
Staff at multiple dorms wrote that kids were getting frustrated with the delays in bathroom breaks. An Aug. 16 log from the Evins Regional Juvenile Center in the Rio Grande Valley shows some kids were waiting at least two hours to use the restroom, leading one youth to urinate in a milk carton.
“Youth was apollogetic, stated he couldn’t hold it anymore, youth had not come out for restroom in over 2 hours,” an officer wrote just after 8:30 p.m. Youths’ names were redacted from records provided to The Texas Newsroom.
Some days, kids couldn’t make any phone calls because there weren’t enough staff escorts.
“Due to lack of staff no phone calls were offered,” one staff member at the Mart State Juvenile Correctional Facility — east of Waco — wrote the afternoon of Aug. 17. Staff wrote in another shift log from Mart that youth were “disregulated due to no phone calls on F-4 for three days,” referring to one of the dormitories.
Also on Aug. 17, three separate youth in a different dorm urinated on their doors within 15 minutes of each other. That was after officers called for restroom assistance, which they had done twice before and requested again multiple times throughout the night.
At Mart, staff watched kids tie ligatures around their necks and had to wait for backup before untying them, they wrote in numerous instances. Within 40 minutes on Aug. 15, three different kids tied ligatures, and one of them was described as “not responsive but breathing.” It’s unclear from the log whether this meant the youth was unconscious or just not speaking.
The staff member also wrote that “multiple SA (suicide alert) and cell checks were missed due to the above incidents.”
In a different dorm on Aug. 15, staff noted a “long wait for security to respond” after one youth tied a ligature at 8:40 p.m. It was removed with a “cut down tool” 39 minutes later, the log says.
And on Aug. 17, another staff member wrote that three youths had a “wrap” around their necks at the same time. The staffer called for backup, but was still waiting more than 20 minutes later, writing, “I cannot enter cells without other staff present especially while on lockdown.”
The log does not make clear when all the ligatures were removed.
Officers also deployed pepper spray multiple times during lockdown. The superintendent at the Giddings facility outside of Austin sent an email Aug. 12 asking Carter and other leaders for permission to use pepper spray on aggressive youth in shackles during lockdown.
Carter asked TJJD’s deputy executive director, general counsel, chief ethics officer and other top colleagues what to do.
“Is this a policy change I can make? Is this considered a violation of youth rights?” Carter wrote.
Records provided didn’t show what response Carter received to her question, if any, but Evins’ assistant superintendent sent over action plans for lockdown and shutdown procedures. Those plans show staff were instructed to announce if they have pepper spray and use it if the youth is aggressive, “per policy.”
Michele Deitch, director of the Prison and Jail Innovation Lab at the University of Texas at Austin, said pepper spray shouldn’t be used on kids at all, especially if the youth is already restrained.
“Using it for a kid who is already restrained and not able to injure somebody is absolutely a violation of that youth's constitutional rights,” Deitch said.
There were at least five recorded uses of pepper spray on kids at Evins in the early days of the lockdown, according to the records. At least three of those incidents didn’t meet the criteria for approved pepper spray use, the agency’s Office of Inspector General found.
In one instance, inspectors wrote that officers used pepper spray even though there was no “imminent threat.” They recommended debriefings with staff so they could “learn to slow things down and have better judgment.”
McDaniel with TJJD said the agency's use of force policy requires correctional officers to begin with verbal de-escalation and proceeds in response to the child's behavior.
"OC spray (pepper spray) is used when other interventions have failed or are impracticable to prevent injury or loss of life to a staff or youth," McDaniel said. "TJJD’s use of force continuum is consistent through all programming levels."
Despite the conflicts officers noted in daily logs, some agency staff felt the lockdown was effective for training. A case manager supervisor from the Mart facility named Lindsey Emmons asked Carter in an Aug. 17 email to consider conducting lockdown drills every quarter. At Mart, Emmons said, she saw improved staff compliance with policy, more coordinated emergency responses and staff trusting that leaders prioritize preparation and safety.
“I believe this proactive approach strengthens overall facility operations and aligns with our shared commitment to maintaining the highest standards of safety and security across TJJD,” Emmons wrote.
Carter responded that the agency had already initiated a plan for quarterly lockdown drills.
‘Pretty drastic thing to do’
Texas’ five youth prisons house about 750 kids in total, and administrators have long complained that those children are becoming increasingly violent. Youth advocates counter that mismanagement and understaffing at TJJD is the real problem, and that the recent extended lockdown will only make the situation worse.
A 2024 investigation by the Department of Justice underscores that concern. The federal report warned that keeping youth in their cells for extended periods of time put them at “high risk of harmful psychiatric effects, including hallucinations, paranoia, depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide.”
At the time, TJJD was often imposing lockdowns at various facilities due to staffing shortages. But last month’s lockdown stands out because it lasted for several days in a row and wasn’t prompted by a staffing concern.
“I'm trying to rack my brain back 25 years, but I don't ever recall a lockdown of every single facility at the same time,” said Capers, the former training director for the agency. “It’s a pretty drastic thing to do.”
The agency began easing the lockdown restrictions after a few days, but many dorms across the youth prisons remained in a status called “shutdown” for weeks afterward. During shutdowns, youth still spend the vast majority of the day locked in their cells, allowed out only for a limited number of 15-minute intervals to participate in group activities.
As restrictions wind down, former staff and youth advocates are questioning whether the process meaningfully addressed issues that led to the assault on the juvenile correctional officer — or if the lockdown only served to punish.
That includes Elizabeth Henneke, an attorney with the Lone Star Justice Alliance. Henneke has clients in TJJD facilities who experienced the lockdown. She called the measure an extreme response.
Carter told the board the lockdown would mark the beginning of a “new normal” at TJJD, but Henneke worries the measure has just damaged trust between kids and staff.
“These kids are not going to trust the system, especially those kids who were performing well before the lockdown, they worked hard,” Henneke said. “Now they know — they don’t think, they know — that one person’s actions can take all of that away from them and put them back in the closet, to be by themselves for that long.”
Neena Satija is The Texas Newsroom's investigative editor and reporter. Toluwani Osibamowo is KERA’s law and justice reporter. Got a tip? Email Neena at nsatija@kut.org and Toluwani at tosibamowo@kera.org.
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