Texas juvenile prisons were on ‘full lockdown’ for days after officer’s assault, state says

The lockdown affected every Texas Juvenile Justice Department facility, and families and guardians of youth in TJJD custody were notified by email. A second incident at a halfway house also factored into the decision. TJJD Executive Director Shandra Carter addressed board members at their Friday meeting, where she laid out what prompted the statewide response.

Carter said the officer, identified as JCO Hernandez, was hospitalized after being assaulted by a boy who had been sent to TJJD for violating probation on a theft charge. Carter pushed back on any suggestion the lockdown was retaliatory. "I want to be unequivocally clear: this is not punishment, and inherently it is not a violation of youth rights," she told the board.

For Lubbock families with young people in the state system, the lockdown meant days of disrupted contact and routine inside facilities they have no direct access to. TJJD has faced years of scrutiny over conditions and violence inside its facilities, and this incident adds another data point to the long argument over whether the state's youth corrections model is working.