A Texas legal advocacy nonprofit is calling for the state's juvenile justice agency to halt groundbreakings on two new youth prisons in the wake of restrictive lockdown conditions at the agency's five correctional facilities across the state.

In the Texas Civil Rights Project's letter to the Texas Juvenile Justice Department's executive director Shandra Carter, the group condemned the statewide lockdown that confined hundreds of kids to their closet-sized cells for several days, sometimes with only minutes of release each day.

"The agency has continuously proven an inability to safely staff and operate its existing youth prisons and deliver the rehabilitative services and care it is tasked to provide," the letter reads. "It would be negligent for TJJD to continue the process of opening more facilities while systemwide operational challenges and staffing issues persist."

TJJD currently oversees five youth prisons housing about 750 kids total who have committed serious or chronic offenses. The department is set to break ground on two new youth prisons in the coming days: a facility south of Houston Thursday afternoon and a facility in Waxahachie on Wednesday.

The Waxahachie facility will focus on kids with the highest mental and behavioral needs, according to TJJD's web site. The Houston-area facility will serve youth with "high-risk and violent behavioral profiles."

"Celebrating new construction while children in existing facilities are harming themselves during statewide lockdowns is indefensible," Sarah Beebe, the supervising staff attorney at the Texas Civil Rights Project, said in a press release Wednesday. "TJJD should cancel the groundbreakings, ensure all youth in their custody are safe, and return as many to the community as possible."

A representative from Finish the 5, a campaign under Texas Civil Rights Project's pursuing the closure of the state's five youth prisons, also signed onto the letter.

The groups accused TJJD of violating children's constitutional rights — namely the Fourteenth Amendment protection against excessive periods of isolation. The Texas Civil Rights Project also argued that while TJJD's policy manual offers no guidance on the use of lockdowns or shutdowns as a consequence for breaking the rules, the manual states children are entitled to a hearing before the agency imposes consequences that "materially alter their living conditions," the nonprofit wrote in its letter.

TJJD told The Texas Newsroom last week the agency is seeing children with more severe mental and behavioral health needs than ever before, leading to violence and self-harm regardless of the lockdown. But another legal nonprofit, Lone Star Justice Alliance, said in a press release last week kids in custody dealing with those issues need more intervention, treatment and activities, not less.

The organization is calling for TJJD to conduct an independent investigation of the lockdown. Lone Star Justice Alliance also suggests establishing a safety floor when staffing shortages occur, improving juvenile justice at the county level and increasing agency transparency.

"Texas must reject the idea that self-harm, deprivation, and escalating force are inevitable when children have serious needs," said Elizabeth Henneke, CEO of Lone Star Justice Alliance. "TJJD leadership cannot punish children for the agency's staffing shortages or use isolation to manage conditions it has failed to fix."

A 2024 report on an investigation by the Department of Justice warned keeping kids in their cells for long periods of time could have "harmful psychiatric effects, including hallucinations, paranoia, depression, anxiety, self-harm, and suicide."

The letter comes after KERA News and The Texas Newsroom obtained internal agency records and reported the details of the lockdown, which TJJD imposed in response to what Carter called a child's "exceptionally brutal assault" on a correctional officer at a North Texas youth prison in August.

KERA News reached out to TJJD for comment and will update this story with any response.

The lockdown is a novel approach in Texas' youth prisons as part of TJJD's "lockdown," "shutdown" and "slowdown" protocol — listed in order of the most to least restrictive statuses.

The agency eased the lockdown restrictions that kept kids in their cells for hours on end after a few days. But in shutdown status, youth still spent most of their days in their cells, getting out in 15-minutes intervals to participate in group activities, according to the internal records.

As of Sept. 14, only two of TJJD's 62 dorms were on lockdown, with the majority being in slowdown or regular programming. The agency told The Texas Newsroom last week kids are out of their rooms for about six hours during slowdown and, in regular programming, are out of their rooms "the entire programming day."

The records from a youth prison in the Rio Grande Valley and another east of Waco show kids detained in TJJD facilities engaged in self harm in the early days of the lockdown in mid-August. That included swallowing screws from ceiling vents, banging their heads against their cell walls and fashioning ligatures from clothing and bedding to tie around their necks.

Due to agency protocol that prevents an officer from letting a child out of their cell unless at least one other officer is present, several children urinated on their cell doors or in milk cartons while awaiting staff escorts for bathroom breaks at TJJD facilities.

And there were at least five recorded instances of officers pepper spraying youth at the Rio Grande Valley prison — three of which violated agency policy on approved pepper spray use, according to the agency's Office of Inspector General. TJJD, however, approved the use of pepper spray on children in custody when necessary, even while they are handcuffed and shackled at the legs.

A week after the lockdown began, Carter told TJJD's oversight board the lockdown was "not a punishment, and inherently, it is not a violation of youth rights." She called the lockdown a comprehensive safety reset needed in the wake of the assault on a North Texas juvenile correctional officer, which Carter said took place after the officer let the child out to use the restroom while the officer was alone.

The Texas Civil Rights Project and other youth advocates, however, argued the effects of the lockdown were punitive.

"We vehemently oppose the practice of using group punishment to control behavioral concerns of one or a few youth, and condemn any ongoing reset, lockdown, shutdown, and slow-down practices," Beebe wrote.