RJ Coach James Ferguson is glad to be making a difference in young lives
Ashly Mays happened on a career that was tough at first, but so rewarding
Lloyd Serna, Evins' lead trainer, counsels staff to never give up
TJJD’s direct care staff take on jobs that are detailed and demanding, facing new twists and challenges every day as they work to help young people find success in life.
Our staff shoulder these responsibilities because they know there is no work more consequential and few jobs as rewarding.
This week we proudly salute them -- our TJJD Youth Development Coaches, caseworkers, therapists, trainers and all campus staff -- as we recognize their determination and dedication during National Correctional Officer’s Week (May 2-May 8.) Each day we’ll highlight a new staffer, kicking off today with a profile of Trainer Lloyd Serna of the Evins campus.
Lloyd Serna
Lead Trainer, Evins Campus
For the past 16 years, Lloyd Serna has filled many roles at Evins Juvenile Correctional Facility leading up to his current one as the Lead Trainer.
Serna launched his career supervising youth in the dorms and quickly advanced up the ranks to become a dorm supervisor of youth and staff.
He also advanced quickly after moving into the Training Department, where he was promoted to Lead Trainer in 2017 overseeing the orientations and training of more than 200 employees at Evins.
“He is an incredible asset,” said Chris Ellison, Manager of the TJJD Training Academy based in Austin. “He is knowledgeable and does an outstanding job of sharing his knowledge with others. Lloyd is an incredibly positive individual who will help out with TJJD Training wherever he is needed.”
Serna helps assure that all employees take required trainings to maintain safety on campus and learn the appropriate ways to work with youth.
Training modules also cover the rules and practices around employment discrimination, the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) and cardio-pulmonary resuscitation (CPR). Altogether, new hires and existing employees may take, at various times and depending on their position, up to 38 training modules.
Serna said he looks forward to continuing to build the department and credits its success to teamwork, citing his colleagues: Training Specialist Lucinda Garcia and Learning and Performance Coaches Jose Barraza and Jeanette Trevino. “I couldn’t do it all without them,” he said.
Serna and the other trainers help prepare new hires for the challenges they’ll face and counsel the new employees to “push through those challenges” and not give up.
“The old cliché that this job is not for everyone…well…I think this job can be for anyone,” Serna said, “if you have it in your heart to want to change lives.”
Serna, who is originally from Mercedes, refers to his wife, one girl, four boys, and two step-daughters as the “Serna bunch!” He loves to spend time on family activities and is an avid golfer who likes to play at different golf courses around the Rio Grande Valley.
- Fidel Garcia, Community Resource Coordinator, Evins
Tattoo Removal Program Helps Youth Put Best Face (and Hands and Arms) Forward
By Barbara Kessler, TJJD Communications
They show up every month for a variety of reasons. Some simply rue the decision they made at age 13 or 14 to permanently ink an image on their face or hands. Others are graduating from high school and getting ready for work or college and want to clear the slate, visually and symbolically.
Still others have renounced their gang affiliation and want to be sure no one is confused about that when they return home or visit their old neighborhood. They want the tattoos that link them to a gang gone, gone, gone.
Not all TJJD youth decide to get rid of their tattoos, of course, but those who do can sign up for an appointment with the free mobile tattoo-removal clinic.
“Often, they just don’t want them anymore,” said Amber Gabler, the Giddings-based technician operating the Tattoo Removal Program. “They’re not thinking with their ‘immature brains’ so much anymore and they’re wanting them off, especially those on the face. Some kids want them all off.”
“Yesterday, I saw a young man who had a huge one across the neck and a bunch on his face and all along the arms. He point blank told me, I want them all off,” to improve his chances of getting a job when he’s ready, Gabler said.
The process will take several hours of work spread out over weeks and months, she explained, because the tattoos are removed with a laser, gently, layer by layer, bit by bit, with a healing period in between each treatment. The total removal will likely comprise four, six or even eight treatments.
J.P. is now partway through the process, having completed two treatments and is starting to see some of his old inkwork fade and blur as it heads for oblivion. The 17-year-old at TJJD’s McLennan County campus near Waco said he has received so many tattoos since he started with the first one at age 13 that he couldn’t even give a number for how many he has overall. Each, though, represented a memory, he said, with some memorializing tragic events and the loss of friends or family members.
PUTTING NEGATIVE MEMORIES TO REST
The largest tattoo and the most visible spans the front of J.P.’s neck and spells out the date he lost a friend who was shot to death. That date commemorated both that traumatic loss and also the crime that landed J.P. at TJJD. The events were one and the same.
So while this was a way of honoring his friend, J.P. said he’s realized he can memorialize the young man other ways – ways that don’t taint people’s first impressions of him.
“When people see you and meet you that’s the first thing they look at and they judge you by how you look -- and you have tattoos on your face and neck, they think you’re a criminal,” he said.
“And they don’t get to know me, you know what I’m saying? Get to know a person before you judge them.”
Another negative aspect of tattoos arises when homemade tattoos – often crude etchings produced by kids with sharp tools and ink pens – mark a person as having been gang-affiliated or having a criminal background, even though people may not recognize the specific gang symbols or know the affiliation or meaning of the markings.
These random “tattoos that don’t look that good” can be a real hindrance, said M.M., a youth who recently left Ayres Halfway House and is eagerly seeking work in his home community.
He’s observed that older people, and potential employers, will judge that harshly, he said, which is why he had his face tattoos removed and wishes he’d never even gotten them.
“The ones I got removed were gang-affiliated. I didn’t want to be walking around with that stuff.
Nobody wants to hire anybody with face tattoos and a jail record,” he said, adding that the removal process was painful but “not too bad.”
J.P. sees the removals as important part of the fresh start for himself that he’s planning.
“I don’t want to keep living the way I was living. My family, they’re struggling, my dad went to prison when I was 11 and he was deported later, and my mom got deported this last year,” he said.
J.P. received his high school diploma while at the McLennan facility near Waco and when he heads home later this year, to live with a grandmother, he intends to get a job. After that he plans to go to college, and possibly major in chemistry or biochemistry.
Visible tattoos would only jeopardize his plans, he said. That’s why, in addition to the neck tattoo, those on his hands also are coming off. “I’ve heard you cannot get a lot of jobs if you have tattoos on your hands,” he said.
At the moment, J.P.’s tattoos are covered with a clear, sterile bandage protecting them against infection as they heal from the second lasering. As the numbers and symbols on his hands that tied him to a gang begin to degrade, he’s relieved to be shedding this affiliation. “I’m grateful,” he said.
TATTOO REMOVAL LEAVES A POSITIVE MARK
Gabler travels to all five of TJJD’s secure facilities and five halfway houses to treat several youth every month, helping those who want tattoos removed get it done while they’re in residence at TJJD. The youth’s freshened appearance can bring an added dimension to the wholistic transformation TJJD coaches are working to spark. TJJD's young people also receive behavioral therapies and attend school classes as well as daily “nurture” groups. All these activities operate under a trauma informed rubric, called the Texas Model, which emphasizes caring relationships and learning to exercise emotional control.
The tattoo removal process itself can be a learning process in which the youth learn to receive empathetic care and follow-up with self-care under Gabler’s guidance, said TJJD Medical Director Scott LePor. “Amber is exceptional with her skills as a tattoo removal technician as well as incredibly adept at connecting in a healthy way with our youth and establishing a trust-based relationship as they receive these services. Amber not only provides the tattoo removal service, but more importantly, she helps develop life skills with the youth for a more positive life trajectory.”
In this way, the program fits into the Texas Model by offering youth another tool as they deconstruct their past and build a new approach to life. The removals are encouraged, but no one insists. The youth decide if they want the service and they receive medical counseling ahead of the process, which is overseen by TJJD’s Medical Services Directors LePor and Jana Johnson.
Since its launch in 2016, the free service has treated 484 youths or about 96 kids each year, saving each of them hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars, compared to what it would cost to have tattoo removals done later in a retail setting.
“All of them come in scared,” said Gabler, “but we talk through the process” and get to a “level place,” before the laser process begins.
J.P. went through it like a trooper, as do the vast majority of youth, though the laser skimming over the skin does cause some discomfort, she said.
Generally, the dramatic results quickly put that short term discomfort into perspective. Often, Gabler said, youth will drop by later to thank her.
Gabler recalls a recent client who’d been marked, one might even say branded, by two horns tattooed onto his forehead, mimicking the horns of Satan. The tattoo had been professionally done at the urging of gang-related peers, and it was a literal “in your face” statement that set a pre-conceived notion for all who met him.
“I was so ready to get that off of him,” Gabler said, beginning the process this past month. Some of these tattoos, she said, are “full of trauma.”
She recalled a young woman who had been branded by sex traffickers. “She comes from a wonderfully supportive family, but she got caught up with drugs and traffickers,” Gabler said. She helped erase part of the girl’s painful past by removing the trafficker’s tattoos, some of which the girl had already tried to cover with new tattoo images.
Youth who leave TJJD before their removals are complete can qualify for financial assistance to continue the removal process and may even receive help getting new removals as they decide to purge certain memories.
For many, claiming a new appearance to go with their new life is an important finishing touch.
“The kids that come to us, the majority have suffered some sort of trauma, they’ve seen people get shot, they’ve had friends who’ve been murdered,” Gabler said. “And a lot of them who were in a gang or in the ‘hood, they’ve tagged themselves with that, but as they’ve matured, they want to change. They no longer want to see that reminder. It goes so much deeper than the skin.”
Photos: Robin Black
Ayres youth talk with adult prisoners about books, recovery and going home
By TJJD staff
Talk about making interesting connections. Earlier this month, Ayres House youth got to hear directly from adults serving time at the Kyle Correctional Center.
The meeting was a virtual one, in which the men in residence at KCC answered questions sent in earlier by Ayres youth. They recorded the answers on a videotape, which was then played for the youth at Ayres House.
The kids' questions primarily concerned the designated topic that KCC was working on, reading and literacy, and the mens’ lives at KCC. The men, mostly in their 30s and 40s, have all been incarcerated or served probation previously and are currently assigned to a substance abuse program at the Kyle unit.
The boys wanted to know: What keeps you level-headed in there? What are some of your favorite books and why? For those of us who don’t really read, how can we get more interested in it? What is the main lesson you learned while at KCC? What community re-entry tips have you learned that could help us?
Listening to the answers the KCC residents gave was quite exciting for the youth, said Patty Garza, TJJD’s South region community coordinator, who helped organize the unique virtual gathering March 10 at Ayres. The youth made comments afterward that they felt they shared similar backgrounds with the KCC residents, she said.
The youth and the men at KCC also share a similar status. Both are at a juncture, poised to head back to their communities with renewed personal goals and a plan for progress. Community service is a part of that journey at Ayres House and KCC and the men had prepared for weeks for the literacy project.
The work is part of a broader year-long community outreach effort that has four phases and began with the focus on literacy and the visit to Ayres, said KCC Warden Bernadette Rodriguez. KCC residents and staff will continue the literacy component with outreach to a local elementary school and a retirement home in the Kyle area.
At each visit, the staff of KCC is delivering donated books, including more than three dozen that went to Ayres.
Youth at the halfway house had put in a list of requested titles -- “Mamba Mentality” by Kobe Bryant; “The Hate You Give” by Angie Thomas; “The Giver” by Lois Lowry, the Harry Potter series, Manga books and many more – and were delighted when many of these books appeared last week.
“Some of those books had different volumes we couldn’t find, but the majority we did provide for them, and I know they were excited about that,” said Warden Rodriguez, who explained that KCC staff collected and made the donations.
KCC, based in Kyle just south of Austin, is a privately run facility that contracts with Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ). The corporation that operates KCC, Management and Training Corporation (MTC) is celebrating 40 years in business this year with the program of community service, Rodriguez said. Both the staff and residents of KCC are working hard to craft the local shape of the outreach, which calls for the remaining three quarters of 2021 to focus on hunger, fighting mental illness and finally, homelessness, Rodriguez said.
For the hunger component, the KCC residents are growing lettuce, potatoes, onions and other vegetables, the first crop of which they’ll donate to the local food bank later this spring.
The residents, who take vocational and anger management classes in addition to the substance abuse program, greatly enjoyed the outreach to Ayres, which was “very personal for them,” Rodriguez said.
“Many of them were in their shoes at one point, so they could relate. They told their own stories of coming up struggling with literacy,” she said.
In addition to showing the video addressing the youths’ questions, the men shared another video they’d made for the blind residents of the nursing home. In this second video, they read poems and short stories out loud, modeling both literacy and caring.
The Ayres youth were keenly interested in the virtual get-together, Garza said. “The guys sat still and were 100 percent engaged with the entire KCC resident video. They absolutely loved it and smiled, nodded, laughed,” she said.
The key message from the men: Take literacy seriously. It will make your life easier and you’ll be more confident.
Several of the KCC residents told how reading had opened up opportunities for them. One reported that learning to read well led to his earning three associates degrees ensuring he’s employable and another urged the boys to give reading books for pleasure a try.
“For me, I take a book and read the first chapter. If it catches my eye, I’ll continue. That’s how you could do it or sometimes, don’t let the picture catch your eye because a picture can be deceiving,” he said, “. . . just read the first chapter to see what’s going on.”
The men also shared their life skills tips: Maintain a small circle of friends that you know have your back and want the best from you. Connect with a sponsor or mentor and stick with the program. Set small goals and build on them, one step at a time.
“I know it’s corny, but education really is everything,” one man said. “They can’t take away what you learn and know.”
Photos: Top left - Ayres Halfway House youth watch a video sent by KCC residents as Warden Rodriguez looks on; center right -- Ayres staff hold donated books; bottom -- Warden Rodriguez speaks to the Ayres youth.
Patty Garza, Volunteer Services Coordinator for TJJD, San Antonio, and Barbara Kessler, Communications, contributed to this story.