44 pages • 1-hour read
Last Chance in Texas: The Redemption of Criminal Youth
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Index of Terms
Capital Offenders Group (COG)
The Capital Offenders Group is an intensive rehabilitation program for juvenile inmates at the Giddings State School. The program focuses on resocialization under the assumption that humans can unlearn damaging behavioral patterns. It emphasizes group therapy involving role-play to help the students observe their harmful behavior through a different lens. The goal is for students to develop a sense of empathy that will prevent them from reoffending. The program has an impressive recidivism rate: Only 10% of the students who graduate from COG ever commit another crime.
Determinate Sentencing
Determinate, or blended, sentencing is a conditional judgment of a young felon’s crimes. It allows a teenager to enter a rehabilitation program such as COG. Youths who successfully graduate will be allowed to reintegrate into society. Those who fail will face a lifetime in prison. Determinate sentencing was developed as an attempt to allow a second chance to teenagers who aren’t yet hardened criminals. Simply trying them as adults would doom them to life imprisonment and destroy any chance for rehabilitation.
Giddings State School
Giddings is one of many state institutions nationwide that house teenage offenders, but it handles those who are classified as the worst offenders. Most of its inmates have committed grave, violent crimes. Unlike other such institutions, Giddings focuses on rehabilitation rather than punishment. The grounds look like an upscale prep school rather than a penitentiary. The COG system at Giddings is unique, in not only Texas but also around the country, and its rehabilitation success record is very high.
Role-play Stories
Each COG student must tell and participate in many different stories. They must tell the group their life stories, including the abuse-related traumas that led them into crime. Then, they must tell the pivotal crime story that got them arrested and sent to Giddings. Afterward, the storyteller stages a role-play scenario in which the other students act out the roles that the storyteller described.
The most difficult part of the role-play occurs when the storyteller must act out the role of their victim. This frequently results in an emotional breakthrough for the student. There is a risk that some stories will trigger rage in one of the other participants, so the role-play allows all students to develop new insights about their own behavior.
Texas Youth Commission (TYC)
The Texas Youth Commission is the administrative body overseeing criminal youth facilities within the state of Texas. There are 13 such institutions scattered across Texas. All of them attempt rehabilitation of inmates instead of simply incarcerating them, but to date, Giddings is the most successful of these state schools.
Thinking Errors
When students at Giddings are admitted to the COG program, they receive a manual that includes a list of thinking errors, which include “deceiving, downplaying, avoiding, blaming, making excuses, jumping to conclusions, acting helpless, overreacting, and feeling special” (5). Because these thought patterns enable people to deflect responsibility for their actions, the program’s goal is to eliminate the students’ thinking errors and help them accept accountability.
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