
Inside Giddings State School, violent juvenile offenders confront their darkest moments to find redemption. This eye-opening journey reveals how innovative therapy transforms criminals through accountability and empathy, challenging everything we thought about juvenile justice. Could these methods revolutionize our approach to troubled youth nationwide?
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A fourteen-year-old boy shoots a man six times over a stolen bicycle. An eleven-year-old girl participates in 120 armed robberies. A teenager murders his own mother with a shotgun. These aren't hardened criminals-they're children. Yet in most of America, they'd be shipped to adult prisons to serve decades alongside career criminals. But in a corner of Central Texas, something radically different is happening. The Giddings State School houses the state's most violent juvenile offenders, and its Capital Offenders program achieves what seems impossible: a 10% rearrest rate for violent crimes, compared to the national average exceeding 60%. How do you reach a child who's learned that violence is the only language that matters? The answer lies not in harsher punishment, but in excavating the buried humanity beneath layers of trauma and rage.
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