Last Chance in Texas: The Redemption of Criminal Youth

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, 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 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.