Tarrant County’s Juvenile Board has 2 months to fix overcrowding, or judges get axe
Tarrant County leaders are giving the juvenile court system more time to propose solutions to overcrowding and other problems before cutting the funding for two associate judge positions.
Glen Whitley, the head of commissioners court, told the Juvenile Board in August that he was considering eliminating the judges from the county budget, because they didn’t appear to be doing their jobs.
In a compromise, Whitley suggested the county fund the positions through the end of the year to give the Juvenile Board time to come up with other recommendations.
The two judges, Cynthia Terry and Andy Porter, heard only about a third of their scheduled hearings between July 2021 and June 2022, according to a consultant’s report this summer. The light workload possibly contributed to overcrowding at the detention center.
The Star-Telegram in recent weeks has reported on numerous issues in the juvenile justice system, including teens illegally held in the county’s adult jail, juvenile hearings kept posted on YouTube and allegations of racism in detention decisions.
Whitley hopes the commissioners can meet with the Juvenile Board in early October.
“There are many different recommendations that they can make,” Whitley said during Tuesday’s commissioners meeting, adding that he wanted to give the board a deadline. “We’re hopeful we’ll have some recommendations.”
If the commissioners decide to keep the judge positions beyond Jan. 1, the money will be pulled from an undesignated fund.
“I don’t want anyone to think we’re gonna throw that money back into the general budget,” Whitley said.
The two associate judges are appointed and answer to Judge Alex Kim, who runs Tarrant County’s 323rd Juvenile Court and oversees the detention center. Kim, a conservative Republican, opposes the idea of defunding his judges.
Terry is running unopposed this fall to be the 325th District Court judge. Porter is running for the Criminal District Court No. 4 bench.
Kim previously told the Star-Telegram that he trusted Whitley would see that the 323rd District Court was efficient during the pandemic and has “the lowest backlog index in Tarrant County.”
Whitley said that while Kim gives “good explanations” to problems with overcrowding, others tell a different story that make the explanations hard to evaluate.
“The problem is, is that I hear agencies that have provided services for our youth for decades saying things aren’t going right,” Whitley said in an interview with the Star-Telegram on Saturday. “I hear folks, I hear employees, I hear judges saying that.”
Reporter Abby Church contributed to this report.
