Last Chance in Texas: The Redemption of Criminal Youth First Edition Edition

Starred Review. It's hardly surprising that Texas, with its reputation for being big, brash and tough, would run one of the country's most aggressive programs for criminal youth. Teenagers who commit violent crimes are confined to a secure campus, but the Texas Youth Commission also provides them with an opportunity to reclaim their future. In this important book, Hubner, an editor for the San Jose Mercury News, expertly examines the big picture: the spike in juvenile crime from 1984 to 1994, and the legislative initiatives that led to the creation of the TYC. It's his ability to tie those facts to the reality of daily life at the Giddings State School through the eyes of the students, therapists, teachers and athletic coaches that gives this book its power. Hubner focuses on Elena and Ronnie, two young offenders at Giddings, as they are forced to confront and make sense of their pasts, re-enacting the most traumatic scenes of their childhoods and their crimes. Like Elena and Ronnie, nearly all the students at Giddings come from chaotic, abusive families. Hubner underscores the TYC's success in contrast to national recidivism rates for youthful offenders, which hover between 50% and 60%; a 2004 study reported that only 10% of graduates of the school's Capital Offenders group have been rearrested for a violent crime after three years on parole.
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Adult/High School–A thought-provoking documentary about the Capital Offenders Group treatment program at Texass Giddings State School. The institution houses nearly 400 of the most violent juvenile offenders in a program designed to alter the life trajectory of its residents. Writing from his position as an observer, Hubner sketches a rich tableau of daily observations, describing the rigorous, disciplined regimen wherein boys and girls engage separately in resocialization sessions painstakingly choreographed by teams of psychologists. Two students serve as primary case studies. Readers are immersed in the raw intensity of 16-hour days where participants in structured psychodramas form emotional connections, enabling them to identify, confront, and ultimately master destructive behavior patterns. Essential to the process is acknowledging accountability and internalizing a genuine sense of guilt and remorse for the hurt they caused their victims. The programs aggressive methods are considered somewhat controversial, and the author is careful to report this, but lower rates of recidivism are a compelling testimonial to its effectiveness. Readers will have a visceral appreciation of the offenders hard-won gains, of the volatility and extreme emotions in the healing process, and of the risks of opening up to peers when isolation and rage have long been cultivated as defense mechanisms. The bottom line is that individuals who fail to meet the programs standards are dispatched to serve their sentences in the state penitentiary, in some cases for 25 to 40 years, rather than receiving parole and a fresh start. A sensitively written study, with extensive endnotes.–Lynn Nutwell, Fairfax City Regional Library, VA
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.