Tx Youth Commission 5 girls sue Brownwood used Regular Strip Search Leather Straps

[ProfessorMurder]

Hurley acknowledged that notwithstanding certain reforms, many of the conditions cited in the brief could be found on any given day at TYC units throughout the state.

"If kids are on a work detail in the cafeteria, before they go back to their dorm, I'm sure they're (strip) searched, to make sure there is no contraband, no weapons," Hurley said. "These are things that are done across the board."

Young inmates are regularly subjected to strip searches even when they have
not left the facility, and guards use force, such as pepper spray, handcuffs
and leather straps, when they resist, according to the suit.

The ACLU filed its class-action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court of the Western District of Texas on behalf of five girls currently incarcerated at the Ron Jackson State Juvenile facility in Brownwood.

Girls at the Brownwood facility are regularly punished with solitary
confinement in cold concrete cells with a metal slab as a bed. Solitary can
last for months, according to the suit.

The five inmates, all of whom are referred to by initials in court papers,
experienced sexual, physical or emotional abuse before going to TYC.
Treatment described in the suit can trigger flashbacks to childhood rapes and
make the girls feel degraded and humiliated

The TYC is already undergoing an overhaul ordered by the Legislature after
inmate abuse and possible cover-ups came to light in early 2007.

Hurley said addressing the special needs of the 150 or so female offenders
had become one of the biggest priorities of the agency's new conservator,
Richard Nedelkoff. He indicated that the agency might take a hard look at the
practice of strip-searching females.