Child welfare advocates are extremely concerned about Gov. John Bel Edwards’ decision to temporarily move some incarcerated youth to Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, one of the nation’s largest and most notorious maximum-security adult prisons.

Edwards emphasized the teenagers and young adults will be kept in a separate building on Angola’s sprawling campus and will have no contact with adult prisoners. Advocates said it’s still another move away from the rehabilitative juvenile justice model the state has been promising to implement for years.

From a local perspective, Iberia Parish Sheriff Tommy Romero says his team is being told the state’s system of juvenile detention centers are currently at full capacity.

“There is a substantial need for additional juvenile detention centers in the state of Louisiana and especially in Iberia Parish,” Romero said. “Currently, (the) IPSO Juvenile Division is being advised by every parish juvenile facility in the state they are not accepting out of parish juveniles. The cost to house a juvenile is extremely expensive.”

Attorneys who represent minors in juvenile court said the move would likely open up the state to lawsuits. Louisiana law explicitly prohibits overlap between incarcerated youth in the juvenile justice system and adult prisoners. By statute, they must be housed in separate facilities and are not allowed to see or hear each other while locked up.

“The need to build additional juvenile detention centers in Louisiana is immensely necessary,” Romero said. “I believe the inability to not be able to house troubled youths sends the wrong message that there are no consequences for their actions. It’s a public safety issue for the citizens in Iberia Parish.”

Reactionary decision

The governor has admitted the transfer to Angola – which is supposed to take place some time next month – is not ideal, but he is trying to get the Bridge City Center for Youth in Jefferson Parish under control after a string of outbreaks that have shaken the surrounding community.

Over the weekend, six youths at the center overpowered a guard, escaped from the facility and stole a vehicle. One of the escapees then allegedly shot a man during a carjacking in Uptown New Orleans before he was apprehended.

Advocates countered that the incarcerated youth are acting out because the state Office of Juvenile Justice has failed to provide adequate staff training and therapeutic programming at its facilities over the past few years. The move to Angola won’t help, they said.

“Angola is supposed to be for the worst of the worst. Sending those kids there will ensure that’s what they become,” said Shon Williams, who was incarcerated at Angola as a teenager and now works for the Louisiana Center for Children’s Rights. “I know from experience that kids are not safe in adult prisons.”

While at Angola, the youth will be housed in a building near the front gate of the prison’s campus that is attached to an administrative office building. It was most recently used to hold about 30 women prisoners who were forced to move when the state’s only women’s prison was destroyed during a massive flood in 2016.

Jimmy LeBlanc, who leads the state’s prison system, said the incarcerated women were successfully kept safe and separate from the thousands of incarcerated men at Angola. So he feels confident the incarcerated youth can also be kept isolated from the adults.

“These youth will not interact with our inmates at all. Period,” LeBlanc said.

The Office of Juvenile Justice will be running the building and overseeing the care of the incarcerated youth. The prison system – including the administration at Angola – will not be involved in the facility’s operations, LeBlanc said.

Yet advocates are skeptical that keeping the incarcerated youth completely secluded from the incarcerated adults will be possible, especially because the prison’s operations depend so heavily on prison labor.

At Angola, incarcerated people are almost entirely responsible for cleaning, landscaping, farming, cooking and routine maintenance. Incarcerated youth are different from incarcerated adult women because they aren’t supposed to be put to work full-time in those capacities. So if adult prisoners aren’t allowed into the incarcerated youths’ building, it’s not clear how it will get cleaned or how routine maintenance – such as a stopped-up toilet – will be addressed, according to advocates. Angola doesn’t employ civilian janitors.

The prison system has also recently struggled to keep young detainees separated from adult prisoners, according to advocates. When New Orleans juvenile detention center relocated its incarcerated youth to the Elayn Hunt Correctional Center in St. Gabriel during Hurricane Ida last year, the young people reported seeing adult inmates at the prison.

LeBlanc said the situation at Angola will be different because the layout of the prison is more conducive to isolation. At Hunt, incarcerated youth and adult prisoners had to walk within sight of each other in order to get to their living areas. That’s not the case at Angola, he said.

The Office of Juvenile Justice staff will have to take care of some of the tasks that are handled by adult prisoners in other parts of the prison, like custodial work, LeBlanc said. Angola is offering to house staff from the Bridge City center in the “bachelor quarters” on the prison grounds. Historically, Angola has provided housing for its own staff, in part because Angola’s remote location makes it difficult for employees to reach.