During this Texas legislative session, I have witnessed Sen. John Whitmire blame children for the persistent and chronic deficiencies in our state-run juvenile justice facilities. He choose to use hostile, provocative language, instead of pushing for evidence-based reforms that are working in 46 other states.

Responding to a series of incidents at the state-run facilities where children have died or been physically harmed, Whitmire first remarked on January 28 at a Senate Finance Committee hearing : “You need to let me know where you want to take them [youth in the Texas Juvenile Justice Department] fishing so I don’t show up … they’re capital murderers, they’re sex offenders, they’re rapists, they’re the toughest of the tough right there at Giddings.”

This was both inaccurate and disturbingly dismissive of children over whose future Sen. Whitmire, as dean of the Senate and chair of its Committee on Criminal Justice, has influence. According to 2017 data , just 6.6 percent of the children admitted to the juvenile-justice department had committed the offense of aggravated sexual assault, while just 0.1 percent (or one individual) were admitted for capital murder. The majority (52.3 percent) were admitted for second- or third-degree felonies.

As TJJD Executive Director Camille Cain noted: “You’d be surprised how many car thieves we do have.”

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To understand the youth population in TJJD secure facilities, you need to look further than their offense level. As of 2018, 44 percent have significant mental health needs, and 65 percent have a history of abuse, neglect or family violence. More than half (53 percent) of the girls have been identified as likely sex trafficked. Sixty-five percent of all youth in TJJD have an incarcerated family member.

These are kids trying to overcome significant challenges, including histories of complex trauma.

Whitmire’s vision of dangerous, unredeemable teenagers reveals an attachment to the long-discredited “superpredator” myth that drove the misguided mass incarceration policies of the 1980s and 1990s — policies that states, including Texas, have been working in recent years to reform. After all, the greater capacity of youth to rehabilitate from even serious criminal behavior is one of the reasons we have had separate juvenile justice systems in this country for more than a century. Whitmire has chaired the Committee on Criminal Justice for more than 15 years. He should have a better understanding of this population than he apparently does.

But he is also known nationally as the main obstacle to the common-sense reform known as “Raise the Age.” In Texas and three other states, the law requires all 17-year-olds to be automatically treated as adults in the criminal justice system, regardless of offense. The majority of 17-year-olds arrested in Texas are accused of only nonviolent misdemeanors, and there is widespread support for raising the age to 18.

There is no reason that improvements to TJJD cannot take place simultaneously with implementation of Raise the Age. In fact, rather than reform the juvenile system twice, returning 17-year-olds can and should be integrated into urgently needed TJJD upgrades. Despite concerns about capacity limitations, under the leadership of Cain, youth incarceration has dropped to 800 from more than 1,000. After extensive review of the population, it made more sense to her to return youth back to their communities for reentry and support services, rather than keeping them in the high-cost deep end of the youth justice system.

But Whitmire continues to push in the wrong direction. Responding to disturbances at the Gainesville State School in north Texas and at the Evins Regional Juvenile Center in Edinburg, he proposed to move the 800 or so children incarcerated by TJJD into a closed jail in central Texas. Warehousing hundreds of teenagers in an old jail does nothing but guarantee they will be dramatically worse off when they are released.

The harms the adult system inflicts on children are well known. Nationally, children are five times more likely to be assaulted in the adult system and nine times more likely to commit suicide, while an adult conviction on their record can be used to restrict access to education, housing, military service and employment. Given these restrictions, it is not surprising that youth charged as adults have a 34 percent higher recidivism rate than those who remained in the juvenile system. Changing the law so that 17-year-olds start in the juvenile system would reduce the harm these children face, improve their future prospects and benefit public safety — all of which is why the reform has such broad bipartisan support in Texas.

Children belong in a system that was created to address their unique needs — and this includes 17-year-olds and children charged with felonies, even serious ones. TJJD is holding these youth accountable while providing services that address underlying needs and skills that will prepare them for the future. The anachronistic mindset of one senator should not be allowed to derail sensible, widely popular legislation.

When the time comes, Whitmire shouldgrant Raise the Age a hearing and a committee vote. In the meantime, perhaps he could drop by the Giddings State School, or any of the five state-run facilities, and spend time with the youth there.

Maybe they could even go fishing.

Evans is the state campaigns director for the Campaign for Youth Justice, a national initiative devoted to ending the practicing of trying and sentencing children in the adult criminal justice system.