A rural jail in northern Louisiana is doing big business, incarcerating juveniles. But as Nick Chrastil reports for The Lens, the jail began to hold pre-trial kids eight months before the facility was licensed, as required, by the state’s Department of Children and Family Services. Plus, it wasn’t being run well. Last fall, when Jackson Parish opened its new, unlicensed juvenile jail, kids complained of extended stints of solitary confinement, along with extensive abuse and violations. In April, DCFS inspections supported the bulk of those claims, but the agency gave the jail a license in May anyway.
To build the new jail, the sheriff had plunked down $6 million from his office’s savings – earned by housing Louisiana state prisoners and immigration detainees in a different structure. And soon after it opened, the jail received an influx of teens who were in the custody of the Office of Juvenile Justice and were shipped to Jackson in mid-September 2023, as OJJ emptied out its juvenile facility on the grounds of the notorious Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. The OJJ contract inked at the time pays Jackson Parish $143.43 a day per bed for 30 OJJ beds — nearly $130,000 a month — whether or not the beds are occupied. And now, a year into his new facility, the jail is already expanding its capacity by adding shipping containers, to house 69 juveniles.
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