Texas prisons and jails are recruiting more teenagers to shore up guard shortage

Nineteen-year-old detention officer Justtice Taylor of the Smith County Sheriff's Office, at the Smith County Jail in Tyler on Sept. 10, 2024. (Credit: Michael Cavazos for The Texas Tribune)

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When Justtice Taylor began working at Smith County Jail last year, the inmates made fun of her, and her coworkers worried she wasn't mature enough for the job.

She was, after all, still a teenager.

“People were skeptical of me being so young and coming straight out of high school,” said Taylor, an aspiring homicide detective who was 18 when she was hired as a corrections officer. “Some high schoolers don’t have their heads straight, but I’m one of the ones focused on my career.”

Taylor is among a small but growing number of teenagers taking jobs inside of Texas’ prisons and jails, which face persistent staffing shortages. Without enough guards, lock-ups throughout the state are keeping inmates in extended lockdowns and struggling to find the manpower to fulfill their promise to give inmates unlimited access to air-conditioned respite and cold showers during the summer months.

To shore up the shortages, state and local leaders are launching new recruitment efforts and programs that allow students to begin corrections training while still in high school, though they must be at least 18 to begin working inside lock-ups.

In 2023, 68 18-year-olds obtained their jailers license, 17 times the number who obtained their license a decade earlier, according to data from the Texas Commission on Law Enforcement, the agency that administers the jailer’s license exam and certifies trainers.

Proponents say hiring 18 year-olds is a win-win: The recent graduates fill a critical staffing need while also jump-starting their career right out of high school.

But critics contend that teenagers lack the emotional maturity needed to work with inmates, many of whom are older and struggle with mental illness or substance abuse issues.

“Criminals are crafty con artists, and 18 year-olds are naive,” said Thomas Washburn, executive director of the Law and Public Safety Education Network, a national nonprofit that focuses on career and technical education. “They don’t have the situational awareness and street smarts that you need.”

Jail and prison officials say they are mindful about which adolescents they bring into their departments, ensuring only the most mature and stable individuals are hired.

“Yes, there are some 18-year-old-kids who aren’t mature and don’t need to work in the jail,” said Smith County Chief Deputy Jimmy Jackson. “Most of that immaturity shows up in our job interviews, and we aren’t hiring them. We are hiring the cream of the crop.”

Highly controlled environment

As chair of the criminal justice department at Odessa College, Naomi DeAnda heard the same refrain from law enforcement agencies across West Texas: They couldn’t hire enough corrections officers. Her department already ran a dual credit program allowing high school students to obtain college credit for coursework focused on law enforcement.

But through a new partnership with Ector County and the local school district, DeAnda and William Misczak, an instructor at the college, launched a program that allows students to obtain the certification to become a jailer while still in high school.

Selected high school juniors learn how to investigate crime scenes, process inmates and de-escalate fights. The program launched this fall with six students, who DeAnda said are lured in by the prospect of earning $65,000 a year as a jailer as soon as they graduate high school.

The Texas Department of Criminal Justice recruits correctional officers at the Sheraton Hotel in Georgetown on Sept. 10, 2024. (Credit: Leila Saidane for The Texas Tribune)

“West Texas is so driven by oil and gas,” DeAnda said. “So these kids come to us and say they have this other thing, criminal justice, that they are looking into and very interested in.”

Hundreds of miles away in Smith County, Jackson launched a similar program through a partnership with Tyler Independent School District. The district has a criminal justice program within its Career Technology Center, but few jobs in that field are available for students once they graduate. Students must be 21 to enter a police academy. Other criminal justice career paths, such working as prosecutors or defense attorneys, require higher education.

Jackson, who was facing a severe staffing shortage in the sheriff’s department that runs the county jail, worked with the school district to create a program that would let students earn a jailer’s license as soon as they graduate. Ten students were enrolled last year, and 13 are signed up for this coming spring.

“I feel like we’ve probably kicked a snowball off the top of the hill, and each year that snowball turns over, it’ll keep getting bigger and bigger,” Jackson said.

From left: Smith County Chief Deputy Jimmy Jackson and detention officer Justtice Taylor. (Credit: Michael Cavazos for The Texas Tribune)

TCOLE approved the program, allowing the county to train high school students, granting an exemption to current rules requiring people to be 18 years old when they begin training. Teenagers do not have to complete any additional training, beyond the TCOLE-required basic jailer course, to start working inside county jails.

Taylor, who has worked in Smith County for close to eight months, said the experience of working in a jail has been quite different from what she imagined. Based on the true-crime television shows she had watched, she pictured jail as a scary place, filled with violence and chaos. In reality, she said, jail is a highly controlled environment, and her fellow prison guards are always ready to help her when an inmate acts out or has a medical emergency.

“This is my second family,” Taylor said. “You never know what your day is going to be like. But the good days outweigh the bad.”

Gretchen Grigsby, director of government relations for TCOLE, said that so far, only Smith County and Randall County have piloted a program for high school students. But, she said other departments have expressed interest in launching their own version.

TCOLE is asking the Legislature to allocate $3.46 million over the next two years to fund new staff who would support school districts that want to create a jailer certification program.

“It’s something we are seeing more demand for from the agencies,” Grigsby said. “We need resources from the Legislature to have the staff to support it.”

The tools to succeed

The 120 hours of training jailers must receive before taking their certification exam includes modules on mental illness and how to screen inmates for suicide risk. It also teaches jailers how to assert their authority.

Jailers, the training materials state “must make clear their role as leaders.”

“If the jailers do not claim a leadership role, inmates will assume it themselves, which typically leads to violence and brutality,” the material states. “Once lost, leadership is often very difficult to regain.”

But that instruction is not sufficient to give 18-year-olds the tools they need to succeed as a jailer, some experts say.

“Training is important but so is life experience,” said Michele Deitch, a senior lecturer at the University of Texas at Austin’s School of Law and LBJ School of Public Affairs. “Eighteen-year-olds do not have fully formed frontal lobes yet. They are barely equipped to be in the adult criminal justice system, let alone supervise people.”

Destiny Ferrell, an 18-year-old jailer in Randall County, said she learned early on that she has to be strict at all times. Otherwise, inmates will take advantage of her.

“They want to see how far you can go,” Ferrell said. “You can’t start off easy. You have to just tell them ‘go, do this.’”

Ferrell said corrections is not for everyone. You must have tough skin, she said, and be aware of the challenges you will witness.

During her 12-hour shifts, Ferrell works alongside a veteran jailer. She said she’ll continue working with a partner until she feels more confident and has all of her responsibilities down. Multitasking is an important part of the job, she said, adding that at any given time, she must keep track of the whereabouts of 48 inmates as well as her fellow guards.

Ferrell said her family is supportive of her new job. Her mother is the one who pushed her to sign up for the training in the first place. She thought Ferrell had a one-sided view of the criminal justice system — one based on negative portrayals of police officers.

Recruiting poster at the Smith County Jail in Tyler. (Credit: Michael Cavazos for The Texas Tribune)

“She thought I needed a different perspective of how criminal justice works,” Ferrell said. “She believes you should be knowledgeable about everything.”

Some parents are more hesitant about their children taking a career in corrections. In Smith County, Jackson recently fielded a call from a parent concerned about her son’s interest in becoming a jailer. Jackson promised to give the mom a tour of the jail, in hopes of convincing her that it is a safe place to work.

Corrections officers face higher than average rates of depression and PTSD compared to the general population, research shows. One study found 50% of officers say they rarely feel safe at work and that one in three have experienced symptoms of posttraumatic stress disorder.

Chris Forbis, sheriff of Randall County, said working inside of a jail is no different than going into the military, something 18-year-olds are able to do. He said that he is careful to screen out applicants who can’t handle the stress of working in a jail. And new officers are paired with an experienced jailer for several weeks before they go off on their own.

“There are certain 18-year-olds who I would not put in a pod, and then there are some who are more mature than the 40 year olds,” Forbis said.

Disclosure: Odessa College, University of Texas at Austin and University of Texas at Austin - LBJ School of Public Affairs have been financial supporters of The Texas Tribune, a nonprofit, nonpartisan news organization that is funded in part by donations from members, foundations and corporate sponsors. Financial supporters play no role in the Tribune's journalism. Find a complete list of them here.