Juvenile Justice Information Exchange (https://jjie.org/tag/louisiana/)
Rather than just build more jails, Louisiana juvenile justice system administrators urge officials to take a closer look at policies to address youth criminal trends, in addition to curbing persistent violence and escapes at state correctional centers.
A federal judge Friday ordered Louisiana prison officials to stop housing youth offenders in the former death row of Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola and to relocate them within one week, after finding that conditions at Angola constitute cruel and unusual punishment and violate the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.
The number of children incarcerated in juvenile prisons across the United States fell to an all-time low in 2020, the latest year of available federal data about those facilities, fueling proponents’ hopes of entirely eliminating those detention centers.
The decline in incarcerations came as juvenile arrests have also dropped for most crimes except murder, which has been on the rise in recent years.
The Jefferson Parish District Attorney’s Office in Louisiana plans to continue its criminal case against the 14-year-old shot in the back as he lay prone on his stomach. District Attorney Paul Connick Jr., filed charges against Tre’mall McGee for resisting arrest.
It is a question that has been posed to every level of law enforcement in Louisiana. From the city of Westwego, where the 14-year-old boy was shot in the back, to the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office whose deputies initiated the chase that led to his shooting, to the Louisiana State Police who are responsible for investigating police shootings.
As the coronavirus filled up hospitals across Louisiana, three youth in one dormitory at the Swanson Center for Youth in Monroe became feverish.
For more than a month, as the coronavirus pandemic swept through Louisiana, detained juveniles sat in the nearby juvenile jail while Orleans Parish Juvenile Court’s courtrooms — both virtual and real — sat empty.
Two months ago, her son, now 20, had spent the weekend on furlough, being a regular kid instead of a youth locked up in one of Louisiana’s juvenile detention centers. While an ankle monitor measured his compliance with orders to stay at home, he’d found joy for three days in simple activities like mowing the yard and eating boiled crawfish. He was able to take a shower and use the restroom without asking permission first. But his time was cut short. Though he had been scheduled to stay a long weekend, through Tuesday, his family was instructed to return him to the Bridge City Center for Youth in Bridge City a day early.
The last will and testament came in an email, one most likely monitored by the state. It came from a prisoner, incarcerated for decades at the Louisiana State Penitentiary, better known as Angola. He composed and sent it shortly after the Louisiana Sheriffs’ Association and the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections (DOC) opened a shuttered camp previously notorious for being a site of solitary confinement and violence.
I've seen far too many times how crisis and death unite people, but that unity and common thread that binds all people together is often very short lived, even in a place like Angola. Ranking officials, like Major Bellamy, says "Its us against them," during roll call. Of course other security, who perhaps take offense to that statement, always share their anger, frustration, and anxiety. But when the Coronavirus hit Angola, especially here in Ash dormitory, things began to change very quickly. The usual communication between security and the offender population changed instantly.