Friday, May 24, 1996

Group Convenes to Discuss Juvenile Justice

By By JUAN B. ELIZONDO Jr.
Associated Press

AUSTIN - Texas cannot afford to keep building prisons and would be better off keeping young people from becoming criminals in the first place, Attorney General Dan Morales said Thursday.

His comments opened a two-day "Juvenile Violence and Minority Communities" conference that hopes to find ways to improve the juvenile justice system and to target more efforts toward crime prevention.

Raul Yzaguirre, president of the National Council of La Raza, said that in
juvenile justice, "An ounce of prevention is worth about ton of cure."

"We simply can't build enough prisons," Yzaguirre said. "We need to understand that it is a very good public investment to begin to devise strategies to make sure that our future, that our kids of the future, don't get involved in the juvenile justice system in a way that makes their lives a dead end."

Morales said the state's nearly 150,000 prison beds are the most in the nation and possibly the world. He said the thought of reserving prison space now for elementary-aged children is a sad
commentary on the state's priorities.

"What we are doing in a very real sense is looking at 4- and 5- and 6-year-olds of today squarely in the eye and telling them, 'We're sorry, we don't have enough money to take care of you today, by way of adequate investment in your public education, substance abuse and child abuse treatment prevention and counseling services.

"We don't have enough money to take care of you today, but we are reserving you a room in 10 years. And for that room we are willing to shell out and plan for shelling out $50,000 to construct it and an additional $20,000 every single year to keep you there,' " Morales said.

"I would question whether that reflects the sort of prudent, visionary public policymaking all of us have a right to expect."

Vicky Wright, executive director of the Texas Juvenile Probation Commission, said that while the entire system needs to be considered, the problem is especially tough on minorities.

She cited statistics showing blacks and Hispanic representing about 40 percent of the state's juvenile population but 66 percent of total felony referrals to the probation system and 81 percent of that population that ends up in state juvenile detention.

"We do have a problem of over-representation," she said.