A state lawmaker from Houston has filed a budget amendment aiming to close a scandal-plagued North Texas juvenile prison.

The move comes roughly days after a pair of Houston Chronicle reports on the ongoing chaos and chronic understaffing at the Gainesville State School, where officers and inmates reported repeated outbursts of gang-related violence, "hits" on guards, fights and vandalism.

The budget rider proposed on Friday by Rep. Gene Wu, D-Houston, would have the Texas Juvenile Justice Department stop sending teens to the facility as of September, and order officials to formulate a comprehensive closure plan by March 2020 with the goal to shutter the unit by September of next year.

"This unit has similar problems to the other four TJJD units, but the number of problems and the scope of the incidents has gotten to a critical point," Wu said Tuesday. "And if we don't act now, then when?"

An agency spokesman said officials hadn't yet discussed the amendment with its author and felt it would be premature to comment.

READ MORE: Gangs, lack of guards spark teen riot at understaffed Texas juvenile prison

The Gainesville facility has a history of significant problems, including a 2017 sex abuse scandal in which multiple officers were arrested for having or trying to have sex with teenage inmates.

Since then, multiple officers have been terminated for everything from failing drug tests to punching youth, and last month local police arrested a guard who allegedly assaulted her boyfriend — the facility's security chief — during a Super Bowl party in on-campus officer housing just outside the unit's fence.

And, though the inmate population is the lowest it's been in years, the use of force and deployment of pepper spray spiked last year, according to state data. By November, youth-on-youth assaults had more than doubled from the prior year, up to 82, while the use of restraints rose from 76 to 142, and pepper spray uses also more than doubled.

In mid-2018, an ombudsman report described the increase in inmate-on-inmate assaults as "attributable to gang activity and youth vying for leadership positions within the various gang factions." During a site visit over the summer, oversight officials saw kids openly using gang signs and handshakes.

Then in the fall, on-campus tensions between Crips and Bloods finally boiled over into a six-day mass disturbance that eventually spread across most of the sprawling campus 60 miles outside of Dallas, according to state records.

Driven by boredom, gang tension and a desire to protest, up to 40 teens blew dust into the smoke detector to unlock the dorm doors, then got out and started running around the campus, destroying property and assaulting staff and each other in a "major campus-wide disruption" according to reports from the Office of the Independent Ombudsman. Though the outbursts recurred over the six-day period, they were not continuous the entire time, officials stressed.

Gainesville State School-De... by on Scribd

One staffer described the facility as the "Wild West," while the state oversight office wrote that inmates and officers saw it as a "gang war" that lasted far longer than the six-day disturbance that started in November.

"The Crips are currently considered to be 'on top,'" the ombudsman wrote in a December review first reported on last month in the Chronicle. "The Pirus have also become involved. There is currently a vying for rank within the Crips. The issues are likely not over and target date(s) for continued disruptions are possibly (sic) during the holidays."

Some teens were allegedly putting "hits" on the staff, ordering targeted assaults on guards, according to the report. But in its written response, the agency described the problem differently.

"We do not have a 'gang war,' but we do have a gang issue which may represent itself in a myriad of ways," agency officials wrote. "Facility administration will continue to work with staff to properly identify the issues so that the term is not misused."

READ MORE: ‘Out of control’: Report on juvenile prison ‘gang war’ draws lawmakers’ attention

After the six-day disturbance, the facility went into a restrictive lockdown, during which some kids said they'd been shackled at night to use the restroom - though agency officials clarified that practice ended once the smoke detectors were fixed.

Two youth told oversight officials they'd been forced to defecate in empty food trays because they weren't allowed out to use the bathroom. One teen said he'd been pepper sprayed "for no reason."

In the fallout, four top prison officials lost their jobs and weeks later, the agency shut down the unit's new equine therapy program.

Gainesville State School -J... by on Scribd

Last month, the agency disputed the Chronicle's description of the six-day outburst as a riot and emphasized that they consistently maintained control of the rural facility.

"There simply was no ongoing six-day riot," Texas Juvenile Justice Department Executive Director Camille Cain said in a statement. "To be clear, there were a series of disturbances over the course of several evenings involving youth activating fire alarms in an effort to exit the dorms and cause disruptions."

Lawmakers who reviewed the reports of oversight officials begged to differ.

"It's an out-of-control place and quite frankly the leadership knows it," state Sen. John Whitmire, D-Houston, who chairs the Senate Criminal Justice Committee, told the Chronicle last month. "They have for months known that Gainesville is a danger to the youth, the staff and the community."

Though the senate dean said he planned to tackle the problem with an "urgent" committee meeting, on Tuesday he questioned the idea of outright closing Gainesville given the lack of staff at the other four juvenile lock-ups.

"The agency is so dysfunctional that they tell me that if they close Gainesville, they have nowhere to put the kids because they're so understaffed in other locations," he said Tuesday. "I can't endanger the other campuses."

Wu acknowledged the the concerns, but reiterated the need to act.

"Staffing is a serious concern - I don't doubt that in the least bit," he said. "But there's always concerns; it's TJJD. There is nothing about TJJD that is not concerning - but that should not stop us from moving forward with something that is positive in the long-run."

The closure amendment would order the agency to try to figure out a way to move some of the kids elsewhere to avoid overcrowding the remaining lock-ups.

"In developing the plan the Juvenile Justice Department shall work with treatment staff, experts in trauma-informed care, youth case managers, mental health staff, and an advocate for youth with disabilities to engage in a careful case review of youth in Gainesville and the remaining facilities to determine whether any youth can be moved to alternative settings, either in contract placements, or their home communities," the rider reads.

And, Wu added, Texas has "some of the brightest people" working on the issue. "I'm confident we can figure out how to move 150 kids."