Sick Kids

The emotionally disturbed kids and the general offenders are treated much the same, with 16-hour structured schedules filled with counseling and resocialization skills. Boys sleep in the same red metal bunks bolted to the floor and are put in the same sterile solitary cells if they misbehave. The main differences are that disturbed teens often have their own rooms, carpeted floors instead of tile, and they can't be pepper-sprayed. Caseworkers have half the workload with the mentally ill offenders, and instead of being immediately punished for acting out, kids are talked to and disciplined according to their individual diagnosis. "If it's part of their disorder that they're highly aggressive, then the kid can't be reprimanded for being highly aggressive," says the superintendent, Don Freeman. "It's a lot of paperwork. These kids require so much, they're so needy."

Outside, a boy in an orange jumpsuit is screaming, "Fuck you! Get your fucking handcuffs off me!" A guard grabs the boy's shoulders and slams him hard against the white transport van. As the boy screams, the guide gently steers the tour in the opposite direction, talks about how the spacious lawn is often filled with boys tossing footballs, and points out the unfinished agility course -- tires, pull-up bars and poles. The fire marshal condemned the indoor swimming pool five years ago, the library shelves are only half full with mostly outdated books, and the scoreboard in the gym is broken. At the basketball tournament last week, the chaplain kept score on butcher paper. "I was just glad the fountain worked," he says.

---

When she stole the Mustang, Becky says, she was planning to get locked up. She didn't like living with an overbearing, alcoholic mother who was rarely home and wouldn't let her have friends over, so Becky ran away. Life on the streets was worse. She heard that kids who were arrested were treated the way she thoughts teens were supposed to be treated -- they were given food and clothes and attention.

"I was living through misery," Becky says. "I didn't have what I needed. I didn't have people there every day. I was getting nowhere."

With nowhere to go, many mentally ill kids do what Becky did, committing progressively worse crimes, getting angrier and sicker until someone notices and helps them.

"They go from bad to worse," says Schnapp, with the Mental Health Needs Council. "The end result of not serving these kids is literally destroyed lives and oftentimes expensive, unproductive prison sentences. We can trace that back to the fact that we neglected them -- we neglected them when they really needed help when they were juveniles and when they were younger."

Becky is a shy, quiet girl with freckles and jumbled teeth. She says she's out of the "suicide mode," but she still craves cocaine. Her mouth dry, her stomach knotted, she stares at the floor, picking up anything white.

She gets angry when she sees other Corsicana girls carving railroad tracks into their arms. She wants to get some cocoa butter to heal her scarred skin. Someday, she says, she wants to be a massage therapist.

Halfway through her resocialization plan, Becky has a couple of years left in TYC. When she gets out, as when she came in, there will be nowhere for her to get treatment -- unless she gets into trouble again.