TDCJ Deputy Executive Director Ed Owens has been named acting executive director of the Texas Youth Commission (TYC).

Owens, 48, had served as TDCJ deputy executive director since 2002, assisting the executive director with the overall management of one of the largest criminal justice agencies in the nation.

One thousand trees planted in plastic pots outside the Polunsky Unit in Livingston will spend three splendid years there being watered, fertilized, pruned and pampered in every way. But they won’t put down permanent roots until they are on home soil. And that could be at any TDCJ prison unit across the state.

For 30 years a stately structure in Sugar Land once known as “Central Two Camp” housed hundreds of TDCJ offenders. But soon, it is to become a focal point for thousands of homeowners living in a community being developed on 2,000 acres of former penitentiary property.