It's taken some time, but I think -- I HOPE -- there's a new dawn approaching.  Seems to me the cat is wiggling out of the bag a teensy bit, so to speak, so maybe we'll start seeing some light shed on what we've been having to deal with.  One can only hope.

I've been active in posting my views (and rants) hither and yon online so maybe, just MAYBE someone will pick up and run with it.  We'll see, eh? 



This morning's Austin American Statesman had a front page story about shady dealings in another related State agency, and mentioned TYC a number of times; maybe they're just gearing up to do a piece on our agency as well?  For sure, there's enough shady dealings and shady characters to go around!



If so, us JCO's are gonna be put under a spotlight.  People will WANT to know what we think.  My advice is to not engage in personal vendettas... just say what you know to be true of THE SYSTEM and why/how it isn't working, in your personal experience.  Do you work out of ratio?  Get threatened by youth or staff?  Experience negative discrimination in any form?  THOSE are the kinds of things we need to share with anyone asking what is wrong with things on campus.   Sure, we all hate CoNextions -- but if we're going to gripe, we need to have SPECIFIC instances of how and why it doesn't work.  I know -- that's not going to be too hard to do, even if you started working here after it was shoved down our throats when ReSocialization was given the boot.

There's basicly a few simple things I think most of us JCO's really are concerned about in regards to our jobs: 1.) Decent pay  2.) Personal and Youth Safety (as much as can be made possible in an inherently unsafe line of work)  3.)  Meaningful outcomes for our efforts.  Frequent visitors to this site may have noticed I've hardly EVER bitched about the pay we get... and more often rant about the way we're just spinning our wheels when it comes to the lousy "product" we're turning out.  And I'll say it yet again -- the kids are NOT getting the rehabilitation and treatment they need.  I have very little faith in the new TJJD ideal of keeping juvenile felons in their communities to pull the wool over the eyes of overworked probation officers and snowjob everyone else as well.  Sorry,  but I still think the best thing to do is LOCK THESE KIDS UP and make it UNPLEASANT enough for a LONG ENOUGH TIME to get them to re-think (and perhaps repent?) what they did to get in trouble to begin with... and NOT MAKE THE SAME STOOPID MISTAKES.



Look at the kid in the picture above... where do you suppose he is NOW?  Still locked up?  Probably just about hitting retirement age by now, if he's still alive.  Probably has grandkids.  Do you think the State of California helped him by locking him up and treating him like what he probably was -- a CRIMINAL -- for a while?  Or did the offer him snowcones and slip-n-slides?  I kinda doubt it.  Looks to me like he's trying to appear tough, but we all know he's just another scared kid who was caught doing some illegal act, got caught... and was PUNISHED.  Yeah, I know, that's a "dirty word" nowdays... but if that's what they did in response for whatever HE did to necessitate getting a mug shot -- I'll bet he leaned a lesson and may not have re-offended.  One can only hope.