This past May, June, and July, children detained in several Texas juvenile prisons were denied regular access to toilets, forced to urinate into empty water bottles and defecate on pieces of paper on the floor. According to The Texas Tribune, unable to keep the required child-to-staff ratio, staff at two Texas juvenile lockups kept children in their cells without access to bathrooms from 4:30 pm to 8:00 am on weekdays and up to 22 hours a day on weekends.
According to the Tribune, at Giddings State School "the children had no choice but to use water bottles, milk cartons, lunch trays or pieces of paper as makeshift toilets," during the longest periods of isolation.
