ustxtxb_obs_2005_03_04_50_00011-00000_000.pdf

Fourteen-year-old twins Jose Luis and Jose Eduardo lost their dad when he was arrested for selling drugs. They haven’t seen him since he was sent to an out-oftown jail. That’s when the trouble began. They’ve made more than a dozen trips to Juvenile since first being sent for jumping one of their classmates in the elementary school lunchroom. The brothers’ story sounds familiar to Case Management Director Pat Campos. “You have to work with the entire family or it’s not gonna work,” she says. “We’ll send a kid out of town to a rehab, and the kid will do excellently. But once they come back home, if we have not worked with that family, it made no sense to send him out of town. The family is the same way they were when that child left. In order to help a child you have to help the entire family. And we have a lot of very young parents. They don’t have any idea how to take care of a child.” Neither does the justice system, at least in the twins’ case. One of the brothers describes his trips to court. “I was always telling the judge I needed help on drugs,” he says. “They wouldn’t listen to me. My PO doesn’t want to risk it. He says that I’m going to run away from there. I’ve never been to rehab even once.” But Jose Luis finds a sad silver lining to his travails: “It sucks to be here, but it’s keeping me safer than out there on the streets. ‘Cause out there on the streets, I was doing all these bad things and in here I’m safe. Out there I can get shot and shit….” MARCH 4, 2005 THE TEXAS OBSERVER 11