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, Louisiana Illuminator reports. The state operates seven juvenile prisons around Louisiana, not including the recently remodeled facility at the state penitentiary in Angola. A federal judge ordered the Office of Juvenile Justice (OJJ) to remove the offenders it was holding there because it didn’t provide suitable housing or services. Currently, state officials operate youth centers that have reached capacity, and many local jails aren’t designed to house juveniles separately from adults. The agency says the struggles at juvenile facilities make it hard to help the youths in its care. “I think there are kids, young people who by the time we’re sending them back to their communities, we probably have done more harm than we have done good,” OJJ Deputy Secretary Curtis Nelson said at Tuesday’s meeting of the Juvenile Justice Facility Standards Task Force, a legislature-created panel that’s received input that could eventually shape new state laws or changes to existing ones.
Louisiana currently has 693 juveniles in state custody, Nelson said. They are nearly evenly split between high-security facilities and non-secure sites such as group homes and individual residences. Because of a lack of space at secure state centers, the Office of Juvenile Justice has to hold youth either at regional or parish detention centers, which don’t have staff or programs to house them longer than two weeks or direct them to a non-secure option. Joseph Dominick, executive director of the Florida Parishes Juvenile Detention Center and president of the Louisiana Juvenile Detention Association, proposed that Louisiana follow Alabama’s lead and separate its juvenile justice system from adult corrections. His comments fell in line with earlier statements from Nelson, who has advocated for a more therapeutic approach to youth offenders. “The juvenile justice system was not designed to be a mini version of the adult correction center,” Nelson said. “It was designed to give rehabilitative services to adjudicated youth. And when you have to remove them from their communities, that removal should be done as a last resort measure. It should be done for public safety.”