AUSTIN, TX - The state is offering rides to work, mentors and $200 savings bonds for people who will work in its rural youth prisons or recommend friends who will.

Leaders at the Texas Youth Commission are hoping the incentives will help them attract and keep good officers in an agency plagued with increasing rates of youth abuse, high turnover and rising rates of employee injuries.

Today TYC leaders will face questioning from the House committee that oversees their work. It is the first such meeting since the U.S. Department of Justice launched an investigation this month into possible civil rights violations of youth at the Evins Regional Juvenile Center in Edinburg.

High turnover rates are cited by the agency as the leading culprit of rising youth abuse and employee injuries since inexperienced workers are more likely to lose their cool, they said.

"We certainly hope that these incentives will reverse those trends really in two ways, on a short-term and a long-term basis," said Tim Savoy, spokesman for TYC. "You'll see fewer (juvenile correctional officers) having to put in 12-hour shifts, and hopefully that will alleviate some of the JCOs maybe getting mad and snapping and maybe hitting a youth."

Physical abuse rates against youth in TYC increased ten-fold from 1999 to 2005, according to a Valley Freedom Newspaper investigation published in March.

By 2005, three in 10 youth in the agency were being physically abused, according to the investigation, which used agency data.

Justice Department officials told the state earlier this month they were launching the investigation into conditions of confinement at Evins, where several riots in the last two years have left students injured and resulted in lawsuits against the state.

The agency is expected to lose 45 percent of its officers this year, slightly higher than the 44 percent projected to leave Evins. Some facilities have annual turnover rates higher than 60 percent.

One way to keep employees at Evins is to offer them four-day work weeks of 12 hours each. A pilot program underway in the security unit there has proven popular so far and may be expanded to the rest of the campus or other facilities if successful, Savoy said.

The agency also plans to begin paying overtime when an employee has accrued 80 hours of overtime. It is now is paid after 120 hours.

It will also start pilot shuttle programs to bring workers to the facilities in the most rural areas and allow new hires to work under a mentor before placing them in a dorm alone with the youth. The rides are not now available at Evins.

Those who refer a friend who is hired will receive a $200 savings bond, courtesy of TYC.

The House Committee on Juvenile Justice and Family Issues will discuss TYC's policies on abuse and neglect today in San Antonio.