Dallas News by Lauren McGaughy 4/4/2018
The number of Texas teens behind bars has dropped to its lowest point in decades, as the state yet again rethinks how to incarcerate its underage felons.
The average daily population in the state's five secure juvenile lockups has hovered around 1,040 for years. But after more than 100 offenders were released, paroled or reassigned in the past three months, that number dropped below 900 on Friday.
"Today's population is 889. We have not been this low in decades," Bobbi Kessler, spokeswoman for the Texas Juvenile Justice Department, told The Dallas Morning News on Friday. "Population fluctuates every day, but our current average daily population [since September] so far is 999 — which is the first time it has been under 1,000 since the early 1980s."
Fewer kids are being kept in the state’s five secure juvenile lockups than at any time since 2007.
More:
https://www.dallasnews.com/news/crime/2018/04/06/number-texas-kids-behind-bars-suddenly-lowest-point-decades