Giddings State School

Giddings State School is a juvenile correctional facility of the Texas Juvenile Justice Department located in unincorporated Lee County, Texas, near Giddings. In 2004, the state school was Lee County's largest employer.

The Giddings State Home and School for Boys opened in September 1972, serving younger boys who were runaways and/or were adjudicated. In 1979 the Gatesville State School closed, and Giddings took some students previously at Gatesville. In 1980 Giddings was designated as the state's maximum security juvenile facility. In 1997 the school's students had mostly committed violent crimes.

At one time the state school had boys and girls. In 2007, the Texas Youth Commission (TYC) announced that Giddings would become male only. As of 2010 Giddings is classified as a high security facility.

In January 2012 115 inmates took a survey from Benet Magnuson, a juvenile justice analyst, and his team of researchers from the Texas Criminal Justice Coalition. Most of the prisoners reported that they felt hopeful about their futures and that they felt safe in the facility. Some stated that fights among inmates had occurred and that they had negative interactions with employees.

As of September 2015 the facility has about 200 inmates.

On Friday September 15, 2015, 60 prisoners engaged in a fight that left three people injured.

Giddings State School is 55 miles (89 km) from Austin, and between Austin and Houston.

The 58 acres (23 ha) Giddings State School has a classroom building, a cafeteria, a chapel, vocational shops, dormitories, a gymnasium, an office complex and a security unit with individual cells. The state school has a 14-foot (430 cm) fence with motion detectors. Since 1997, guards patrol the property in unmarked vans 24 hours per day; at nighttime the guards do not use headlights so potential escapees cannot see them. John Ed Bradley of Sports Illustrated said, "People of a certain sensitivity like to call Giddings a "home" for juvenile delinquents. In truth, it's as much a pen as the one a couple of hours up the road in Huntsville, where the state keeps adult offenders." Bradley explained that the Giddings State School facility, "even in the dark before dawn, resembles a small, carefully planned college sprung up somewhere on the prairie between Austin and Houston."

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