In Texas" Juvenile Correctional Facilities, Assaults Among Inmates Have Soared Jeff Heimsath for The Texas Tribune Removing a detainee after an outburst. Confirmed youth-on-youth assaults in correctional facilities have more than tripled. GIDDINGS - On a rainy February day, teenage boys wearing elastic-waisted khaki pants and white T-shirts, many of them heavily tattooed, walked in single-file lines across the Giddings State School campus. A few of them lifted black windbreakers above their heads in a hopeless attempt to stay dry as they made their way from the cafeteria to their classrooms under the watchful eyes of corrections officers. "I need release!" one boy shouted across the yard at the hulking figure of James Smith, a former college basketball player who is now the operations director for the Texas Juvenile Justice Department, as he strolled by. This day, the Giddings facility, one of six secure juvenile correctional institutions in Texas, was quiet. It was the type of scene legislators were probably hoping for in 2007 when they initiated an overhaul of the juvenile justice system following reports of staff members physically and sexually abusing minors under their supervision. But 10 years" worth of data on the number of physical and sexual assaults and pepper-spray incidents at youth correctional facilities across the state indicates that this serene atmosphere is often disrupted by violence among the youths. Overall, confirmed youth-on-youth assaults have more than tripled at the secure juvenile offender facilities statewide in the five years since lawmakers approved those reforms. Attacks on staff members have also increased. The data do show progress for the reform efforts, including reductions in violence perpetrated by staff and in all types of sexual assaults. Cherie Townsend, executive director of the juvenile justice agency, acknowledged there is room for more work, but she said that reforms are making the facilities safer. Advocates and experts, however, say the rise in youth-on-youth assaults and attacks on staff indicate there is still critical work to be done. "It's really disappointing," said Deborah Fowler, deputy director of Texas Appleseed, a nonprofit organization that advocates juvenile justice reform. The implementation has not been what we hoped for. In 2007, following reports that staff at what was then the Texas Youth Commission had sexually and physically abused youths in their custody, legislators passed laws intended to improve conditions at the lockups. They gave counties incentives to keep low-level offenders in their communities, where they could be close to treatment services and support systems. Only felony offenders who had failed at other programs would serve sentences at secure state facilities. Lawmakers also prohibited the incarceration of anyone older than 18 at the facilities. The average daily population at the secure facilities has dropped to about 1,200 in 2011 from nearly 3,000 in 2007. As the youth population has decreased, so has the number of assaults by staff. The number of confirmed incidents of sexual harassment or misconduct dropped to 3 in 2010, the last year for which data were available, from 10 in 2007. At the Corsicana Residential Treatment Center, where the state sends offenders who have serious mental illness and disabilities, the rate of confirmed staff-on-youth physical assaults in 2007 was more than 7 in 100 youths. By 2010, that rate dropped to 1.5 and then to 0 in 2011. Similar reductions were reported at other institutions. But confirmed physical assaults among youths have increased significantly. The rate of confirmed youth-on-youth physical assaults at state secure facilities grew to 54 assaults per 100 youths in 2011 from 17 assaults per 100 youths in 2007. Staff assaults by youths have climbed to 37 confirmed assaults per 100 youths last year from a rate of 10 per 100 youths in 2007. Michele Deitch, a University of Texas professor and an expert on prison conditions, said the same reforms that have helped reduce staff-on-youth violence have created new challenges among the youths.