Sick Kids

The ward is painted in bright blues and greens; inspirational, never-give-up quotations paper alternate walls. Kids wear their own clothes to maintain a sense of individuality and identity, says Linda Green, the nurse manager over child and adolescent services, and they can bring their own bedsheets. Sleek, sculpted chairs and IKEA-type tables sit in the front room next to long black couches and a big-screen TV. The gold-colored game room has nonviolent video games, foosball, Ping-Pong and an air hockey table.

"We didn't want to be the juvenile detention center south," Harper says.

"Derrick's" mother was addicted to crack before he was born. His father was in prison and his mother was in and out of jail for possession, so Derrick spent his childhood being bounced around San Antonio projects. The 18-year-old says he has been arrested seven or eight times, started drinking when he was six and soon moved on to smoking weed dipped in embalming fluid and recreationally using Xanax and codeine.

"My aunt's boyfriend used to chill in the block and sling dope, and I used to chill with them," he says. He was 14 when he asked his "uncle" to teach him the business. "I seen all the jewelry and the cars," he says. "They had big pieces of chain and Rolexes -- I wanted all that." His mother had her friends buy from him in exchange for free drugs for herself.

He was a member of 74 Hoover, a branch of the Crips, drove a blue 1981 Cutlass and wore three one-carat diamond studs in each ear. He dropped out of school before he was 16. "I was too busy in the streets," Derrick says.

The first time he was arrested for possession he was sent home two hours later. A week after that he was arrested and again immediately released. The third time, he ran from the police, throwing 2.5 ounces of cocaine into the bushes so he was charged only with evading arrest.

Seeing a psychologist was a condition of his probation, but he never went. "I would just disappear," Derrick says.

After a dirty urine test, he was sent to Crockett and was diagnosed with conduct, mood and polysubstance disorders, depression, physical abuse as a child and bereavement for his recently murdered uncle. Now he's reading the second Harry Potter book, studying for his GED and he's on phase 3.9 of a four-level resocialization scale. He's thinking about becoming an auto mechanic so he can support his sons, aged five and a half months and six months.

An hour south of Dallas, Corsicana looks like a rundown outlet mall; nearly every store boasts factory warehouse prices. On the edge of town, across from the mall -- Wal-Mart, JCPenney and a corn dog store -- is the Corsicana Residential Treatment Center. Surrounded by a 15-foot candy cane fence, this is where TYC sends the state's sickest kids.

In 1887 locals donated 200 acres to create an orphanage. TYC bought the home in 1957, sent the orphans to public schools and started bringing in mentally ill offenders.

Corsicana is supposed to house 109 juvenile delinquents. On an early October afternoon it has 121: 66 males and 55 females. And, like always, a waiting list. Bulldozers are ripping up the roads, and the air is filled with dust. TYC is renovating the cottages, tearing up worn carpet and laying fresh tile. Construction workers are building a new school and converting two buildings into dormitories to house 48 more students by next fall.

There are seven staff psychologists and three part-time psychiatrists who rotate being on campus every day but Sunday. They need more staff members, says the superintendent, Dr. Don Brantley. Intensive treatment here costs $194.51 a day for severely emotionally disturbed kids and $280.02 a day for kids in the 41-bed stabilization unit -- compared to the average $102.19 a day for general offenders at other TYC institutions.

Brantley has a Ph.D. in psychology and talks about being more flexible when dealing with kids classified as "emotionally disturbed." Most incarcerated adolescents are given a set structure and clearly defined, heavily enforced rules, but he says that doesn't work with mentally ill kids. "We need to give them a little leeway," he says. These children, he says, need to be protected. "It can be very difficult for them if we don't recognize that this is a kid that can't compete."

On the other hand, he talks about kids who think they will be coddled at Corsicana so they lie to psychiatrists about voices they don't hear. "There's payoffs for earning a mental health diagnosis," Brantley says. "Some kids outright fake it."

He cites teens who halfheartedly hang themselves when a guard is coming, or tie a noose around their neck, then rap on the door to make sure they don't die. "They don't have the wherewithal or the courage," Brantley says. "Over time, you can see how gamy it is."