TJJD News & Announcements

Ron Jackson State Juvenile Correctional Facility’s wide lawns and walkways are nearly deserted on a quiet summer afternoon. Youth in residence are inside taking classes or attending therapy. Several young women rest in dayrooms after an exhausting intramural field game meet that morning. A scant breeze rustles the giant oaks, and then -- a burst of activity! A huddle of girls and dogs spills from a low brick dorm in a far corner of the campus. The chattering hive of pony tails and wagging tails emerges as one, then separates into girl-dog pairs, trotting around the yard. The girls command their leashed canines to walk, sit and retrieve toys. Here at the PAWS Dorm, where 11 girls and their assigned foster dogs live and train, there’s rarely a slow moment, or many contentious ones. Visitors often remark about the “very warm environment,” says Dorm Supervisor Holli Fenton, who helped co-found the PAWS (Pairing Achievement with Service) program at the Texas Juvenile Justice Departmen...

The Gainesville State School Student Support Council will host its annual Celebrity Wait fundraiser from 5 pm to 9 pm Monday, August 6 at Luigi’s Italian Restaurant in Gainesville. The fundraiser will benefit the youth who reside at the facility. The evening will be filled with local celebrities as well as agency celebrities from Texas Juvenile Justice Department (TJJD) coming together to wait tables for a great cause. The tips from the evening will be donated to the Student Support Council, which is a non-profit entity whose purpose is to provide support and services to the youth that the state may not be able to provide.  Programs that are currently supported by the Student Support Council include, but are not limited to sports programming, incentives, Christmas gifts, educational tutoring and recognition, on-line driver education, PAWS, Tornado Ranch, audio/visual training program, family programs, chaplaincy programs, and the Men of Distinction program. Some of the loc...

Cris Burton, who’s retiring this month after 22 years with TYC/TJJD, leaves an important legacy, having served as the administrator of the PAWS (Pairing Achievement with Service) program and one of its founders. This unique canine training and treatment program has helped more than 200 youth rise to the challenge of helping shelter dogs learn good behavior, improving their adoptability. PAWS began at the Ron Jackson State Juvenile Correctional Facility in 2010. It was a collaborative effort between Burton, who’d long envisioned a program modeled on the first prison canine training effort (at a women’s facility in Washington), and Holli Fenton, an employee at Ron Jackson with ties to the dog rescue community in Brownwood. Burton, who has a master’s in counseling psychology, designed the PAWS regimen, which he explains helps to break down the psychological walls that TJJD youth have built in response to their hard lives. Fenton put PAWS into operation at Brownwood, where girls in...

GIDDINGS, Texas – Just as TJJD has been increasing exercise time for youth, the PAWS program is working to raise the duration of exercise and play outings for the PAWS dogs in residence at TJJD facilities. To that end, PAWS is providing more toys and longer lines (exercise leashes) to the youth who work with the dogs. The longer lines will allow greater running distances for the dogs, enabling the youth to give them a workout on the wide grassy areas available on campus. These runs will supplement the dogs’ regular play times within the PAWS fenced areas. The dogs will benefit, and so with the youth who take them for a jog. Everyone wins! And after the work out, the youth trainers and their canine charges can relax in the spring sun. PAWS operates at three TJJD secure facilities – Gainesville State School, Ron Jackson State Juvenile Correctional Complex and the Giddings State School, where these photos were taken. (If you are interested in adopting a PAWS Dog, pleas...

BROWNWOOD, Texas – Youth at the Brownwood PAWS program trained this service dog candidate, Templeton, last year. Now Templeton has gone on to change a life of a teenager who was paralyzed from the shoulders down in a car wreck. Katie’s first service dog died at just 7 years old, leaving her in a very tough position. She depends upon having a service dog to maintain her independence during the afternoons after her caregiver leaves. At the same time, Templeton made the tough cut for becoming a service dog but his match fell through at the last minute. Staff at Service Dogs Inc. in Dripping Springs felt so awful for Katie they decided to place Templeton with her despite the fact that she’d moved away to Seattle. Templeton retrieves things Katie needs such as the remote for the lights so she can go to sleep or an emergency call button/phone. He helps her get undressed and puts her legs back on her wheelchair. Templeton started out at Ron Jackson State Juvenile Correctional Insti...

TJJD has just launched a new FB page to promote our Pairing Achievement With Service (PAWS) program and to find families to adopt trained dogs. Please like the page and share it with your friends! PAWS at TJJD PAWS pairs TJJD youth with shelter dogs and service dog candidates. Qualified boys and girls age 15-18 are responsible for providing daily care, training, and companionship to their dogs. The dogs live with their human trainers for a minimum of 12 weeks while they while... they increase their adoptability by training them for the Canine Good Citizen (CGC) Certification, a test designed to ensure basic good manners, while the youth gain skills such as relationship-building, patience, communication, perseverence, teamwork, and how to set and achieve goals to help them as they prepare to reintegrate into society. Youth who are interested in the PAWS program must apply and meet strict behavior criteria, while the dogs are fostered from local animal shelter partners after being ...

BROWNWOOD, Texas – The three-hour blood drive was a huge success with 15 donors and 19 units of blood collected for the United Blood Services. Sean Richey with the United Blood Services stated, “We are very pleased with how giving everybody is and how smoothly the drives run at Ron Jackson.” Debra Mathis of the Texas Community Farmers Market displayed fresh and dried fruits, trees, plants, vegetables, and jellies. Rebecca Morelock from Bake Artisan Goods offered artisan bread and more. Krista Behler of Crossed Oaks Design exhibited handmade signs. Aaron and Lark Terry, owners of Arrows and Oaks, offered goat milk soaps and lotions. And Cricket Wireless provided a variety of phone plans and accessories. The vendors said that it was more successful than they expected and that  they would love to come out and bring more vendors for the October blood drive. The Pairing Achievement with Service (PAWS) program demonstrated the TJJD youths' training abilities and the dogs’ learned s...

GAINESVILLE, Texas – It’s hard to believe it has already been a year since PAWS (Pairing Achievement With Service) came to the Gainesville campus. The program, in place since June 2016, has done very well by both human and dog standards. Many dogs have been adopted, with one going on to do therapy work in the Dallas/Fort Worth area. PAWS also recently acquired a service dog in training from Service Dogs Inc. that will soon go to formal training at their Dripping Springs facility and be paired with a client in need. Youth from the Gainesville facility did an incredible job building the one and only PAWS Dog Park for the program. Youth, along with the help and supervision of welding teachers Denver Foster and Dennis Westerlin, and Carl Motley, Director of Security, constructed, welded, and painted the dog park structure. “It was really a lot of hard work… and hot!” stated one youth who contributed his welding skills to the project. Members from the Gainesville Student Support Counc...

BROWNWOOD, Texas – Youth incarcerated at the Ron Jackson facility in Brownwood, Texas, got a rare and well-earned opportunity for a field trip to reunite with service dogs they had trained when the dogs first emerged from their own humble beginnings at Texas animal shelters. On January 11, 2017, four boys in the program, along with staff from Texas Juvenile Justice Department (TJJD), traveled three and a half hours to Dripping Springs, Texas, near Austin, to visit the campus of Service Dogs, Inc. The boys and other TJJD youth have been working with trainers from Service Dogs, Inc. for over a year in the nation’s first and only juvenile offender service dog training program. “Youth in the PAWS program (Pairing Achievement With Service) have been living with and training shelter dogs for pet adoption since 2010,” explains PAWS administrator and dog trainer for TJJD Cris Burton, M.Ed. “Youth must pass a psychological screening and have enough time left to work with the dogs throug...