Dallas County at odds over findings in a juvenile report, continues work with researcher

Dallas County commissioners and the district attorney are moving forward with another contract to pay for an investigation into issues at the Juvenile Justice Department, despite objections from the department and the board.

The feud over partnering with the independent research group Evident Change, which already has completed one controversial study of the agency, is the latest battle in the ongoing war between commissioners and the board that oversees the department.

Commissioners recently approved a second $50,000 contract to explore ways to improve the juvenile justice process. They voted 4-1 on Dec. 5, after a debate between Commissioner John Wiley Price, the only opposing vote, and District Attorney John Creuzot.

In recent months, families, guards and commissioners have scrutinized the juvenile department over conditions at the detention center. Creuzot initiated the first Evident Change report after seeing children cycle in and out of the system, only to be charged as an adult for serious crimes, sparking interest from county commissioners who have sought more information, but their efforts were shot down in court.

In March, Evident Change filed an initial report that said Dallas’ juvenile justice system opts for more punitive measures than other Texas counties and is not up to nationally recommended standards.

Price, who had been on the Dallas County Juvenile Board for 20 years, has defended the department and its independence while most of his colleagues on the commissioners’ court have tried to gather information on the treatment of children in the system.

Price and officials at the juvenile department say Evident Change’s report was inaccurate.

“This is flawed methodology that Evident Change has done,” Price said at the Dec. 5 meeting.

Evident Change and the juvenile department used different datasets in several ways that led to substantially different results on how long a child remains in the detention center and which children are placed in the detention center.

It appears that the two reports were drawing conclusions from different datasets. The original report found more than a 100-day difference in the average length of time youth spent in detention and a 24% decrease in the number of children in the detention center who have been determined to be low-risk of reoffending.

Others say that even if there are disagreements over the findings, Dallas’ juvenile justice system needs to be examined and improved.

“Change is not easy, but it needs to be done,” Commissioner Elba Garcia said in approving the contract. “It’s time to move forward.”

The Dallas Morning News spoke to families and former and current guards at Dallas’ detention center, where some children wait for a judge to decide whether they will be placed on probation, released or held for more time in a county or state facility. They told stories of children locked in their cells for prolonged periods of time, rare outdoor time, and insufficient medical care.

The conversation got heated between Price, Creuzot and Commissioner Andrew Sommerman at the commissioners’ meeting.

Price said the Council of State Governments is doing a similar study for free. Creuzot said the group never contacted him about their study.

Price raised his voice at Creuzot and Sommerman, saying the juvenile board and department needed to be involved in the decision to work with Evident Change again.

Creuzot pushed back, saying that the original 2022 contract – signed by the commissioners’ court and Juvenile Board Chair and Judge Cheryl Shannon – allows Evident Change to access data related to the department through December 2024.

“You’ve still got to get through the juvenile board,” Price said.

Shannon told The News in an email that she sees the original contract as fulfilled, and so any further involvement or data sharing with Evident Change would require a second agreement.

“Given the flaws identified in the Evident Change report by juvenile department staff, I would not anticipate the department approaching the board with a request for further services by Evident Change,” Shannon said.

Juvenile Department Director Darryl Beatty did not respond to a request for comment. Shannon said he was not included in discussions for a second contract with Evident Change.

Data discrepancies

Julie Childers, the juvenile department’s deputy director of executive and administrative services, told the commissioners’ court in October that Evident Change’s report in March was “flawed.”

When asked if the department got a chance to comment on the report before it was published, Childers said “minimally.”

Espinosa told The News that she gave the department several opportunities to comment on the report. A timeline of her emails showed she sent the department her report March 6, and three days later, department staff emailed Espinosa with feedback, concerns and requested corrections.

Childers said in an email to Espinosa that she identified concerns with race and ethnicity data, chiefly that race and ethnicity should be analyzed jointly. Espinosa said those issues were addressed in a phone call and the report was amended before publication weeks later. In the report, the Hispanic population was considered separately from the white population.

One of the biggest challenges to the Evident Changes report was over what number was used to reflect how many children were considered low-risk of reoffending when placed in the detention center, Childers said.

Evident Change reported that 47% of the youth in detention were determined to be low-risk. Childers said that number is 23%. The juvenile department deputy director said that the report excluded 3,000 “referrals,” leading to skewed data.

In the juvenile justice system, a “referral” is like a “case,” so a child who has been in and out of the detention center has had several “referrals.” Espinosa said her report focused on what happened to the child as a whole, rather than looking at each “referral” individually.

“Her method was a different approach,” Espinosa told The News.

Childers also disagreed with the amount of time that Evident Change said children have spent in the detention center.

“That’s one of the flaws with that report,” Childers told commissioners in October.

When the report came out in March, Espinosa said the average length of stay was 140 days for children who had been sent through the formalized court process. Espinosa said she focused on kids who were arrested, placed in the detention center and waited for their case to move through the court system while locked up.

Childers’ data said the total average was 37.9 days in March.

When asked by Sommerman during the October meeting why these concerns were not voiced months ago, Childers said the team only became aware of data “discrepancies” when the department could not replicate Espinosa’s findings in mid-September.

Beyond the disputes surrounding data, Evident Change found major bottlenecks in Dallas’ juvenile justice system that another report has agreed with.

In August 2023, the Council of State Governments presented findings to improve outcomes in Dallas County’s juvenile justice system. The report recommended a large overhaul of the county’s approach to juvenile justice.

“Dallas County lacks a shared vision for the juvenile justice system grounded in research-based principles, policies, and practices,” the presentation said.

The News has requested copies of the Council of State Governments’ reports multiple times since Dec. 6 but has yet to receive them, as well as made a public records request for the reports. The group’s presentations, which have been shared with The News, focused more on probation than the general detention population.

The Council of State Governments’ report found that probation conditions are not tailored to a child’s risk, needs, or circumstances, and that conditions have remained largely unchanged for decades.

“Current conditions don’t reflect research or best practice approaches for reducing juvenile recidivism,” the Aug 2023 presentation said.

It’s unclear whether the juvenile justice board and the juvenile department will cooperate with Evident Change’s new investigation under the second contract.

The juvenile justice board is not meeting again until January, so no further consideration of work with Evident Change will happen this year, Shannon said in an email.

Price told Creuzot the board needed to be included in this decision.

“If you want to go talk to them or whatever, and they want to renege on it, fine. I don’t care, I’m gonna get the information one way or the other, and so it really doesn’t matter,” Creuzot told Price. “I would appreciate it if we could all do it together.”