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A powerful, bracing and deeply spiritual look at intensely, troubled youth, Last Chance in Texas gives a stirring account of the way one remarkable prison rehabilitates its inmates.
Random House
September 2005
304 pages
ISBN: 0375508090
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction
While reporting on the juvenile court system, journalist
John Hubner kept hearing about a facility in Texas that ran
the most aggressive–and one of the most successful–
treatment programs for violent young offenders in America.
How was it possible, he wondered, that a state like Texas,
famed for its hardcore attitude toward crime and
punishment, could be leading the way in the rehabilitation
of violent and troubled youth? Now Hubner shares the surprising answers he found over
months of unprecedented access to the Giddings State
School, home to “the worst of the worst”: four hundred
teenage lawbreakers convicted of crimes ranging from
aggravated assault to murder. Hubner follows two of these
youths–a boy and a girl–through harrowing group therapy
sessions in which they, along with their fellow inmates,
recount their crimes and the abuse they suffered as
children. The key moment comes when the young offenders
reenact these soul-shattering moments with other group
members in cathartic outpourings of suffering and anger
that lead, incredibly, to genuine remorse and the
beginnings of true empathy . . . the first steps on the
long road to redemption. Cutting through the political platitudes surrounding the
controversial issue of juvenile justice, Hubner lays bare
the complex ties between abuse and violence. By turns
wrenching and uplifting, Last Chance in Texas tells a
profoundly moving story about the children who grow up to
inflict on others the violence that they themselves have
suffered. It is a story of horror and heartbreak, yet
ultimately full of hope.
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