Judge Trey Haik announced his plan to launch an Acadiana regional Juvenile detention center to the Kiwanis Club Nov. 2.

The primary issue is the gap in time between arrest and trial. Once a juvenile is found guilty, they are released to the state’s custody. Prior to that, it’s up to local law enforcement to house them.

When Haik was first elected 10 years ago, they didn’t have an issue housing juveniles. At the time, Assumption Parish Sheriff had a juvenile facility and an agreement with the City of New Iberia. Unfortunately, a few years after Haik took office, the facility had to shut its doors over funding issues.

“After that, we limped along, but we’re at a point now where, when there’s a violent crime, and the PD wants to detain that individual, there’s nowhere to put them,” Haik said.

According to Haik, this leaves law enforcement with two options. They can either issue a ticket and a court date, similar to a citation, or the juvenile is sent to facilities out of state. These options each come with their own issues.

“Recently, the nearest place we could find sometimes is Natchez Mississippi. At one point in the past few years, we had several that we had to send to Alabama. Believe it or not, when we had our Louisiana boys in Alabama, I got a call one day saying, ‘Hey, this is the facility in Alabama we don’t want your boys anymore. Come pick them up, they are too much trouble,’ ” Haik said.

When it comes to housing juveniles across Iberia parish, the problem isn’t funding, Haik said, but rather a space issue.

“It’s not a function of whether we can pay enough money. Our city, our mayor, is aware of the problem, and he’s allocated a chunk of the funds to pay for this detention. It’s not a money issue, it’s a lack of places to put them,” Haik said.

Two years ago, Haik decided something had to change, so he reached out to neighboring jurisdictions and local sheriffs to develop a plan for a regional juvenile correctional facility.

It started off as discussions of St. Mary, St. Martin, Iberia and St. Landry Parishes. Once word got out, it grew to nine parishes.

During the last Legislative Session, they successfully passed legislation to create an Acadiana Juvenile Detention District which includes the four parishes mentioned above plus Vermillion, Acadia, Jefferson Davis and Alan.

Initially, Lafayette was slated to be a member of the coalition, but they stepped away from the group early on. At the time, Haik believed this decision was for the best, because major population centers like Lafayette already have support and funding for their own juvenile detention centers.

“The big problem in our state is not the urban or metro areas, it’s the little rural jurisdictions. We have the violent crime, Vermilion Parish has the violent crime, but we can’t afford, as individual parishes, to build a facility,” Haik said.

Former Representative Huval was the handling legislator. Huval said he would handle the discussion, but it was up to Haik and local leaders to drum up support for the legislation.

“We worked on getting letters of support and resolutions of support from parish councils, city councils and parish governments. And again, the support was overwhelming,” Haik said.

The question is, how will it be funded. To answer, they plan to emulate an established and seemingly effective system in Louisiana. In the 80s the parishes on the Northshore like St. Tammany and Tangipahoa established their own juvenile detention district.

“We took their legislation and we plagiarized the heck out of it because it worked, and it worked well. The Florida Parishes established a millage that built, operated and maintained it,” Haik said.

With the introduction of a new administration in the Governor’s office, Haik hopes to receive state funding for construction.

“All I know as a judge standing in front of you is, I’m acutely aware of the problem, I get the phone calls, and I got tired of the problem,” Haik concluded.