A photo taken by Vinny Schiraldi, a youth justice expert, during a tour of the proposed youth unit at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola shows the interior of a cell in the unit. Schiraldi testified as an expert witness on behalf of plaintiffs in a lawsuit seeking to halt the plan.
A photo taken by Vinny Schiraldi, a youth justice expert, during a tour of the proposed youth unit at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola shows the interior of a cell in the unit. Schiraldi testified as an expert witness on behalf of plaintiffs in a lawsuit seeking to halt the plan.
The federal government is scrutinizing Louisiana's plan to move some teens to the State Penitentiary at Angola, with one top Washington justice official calling the idea "problematic" and urging the state to look for other options.
Meanwhile, some state officials have voiced concerns internally that the plan risks violating federal rules that, among other things, bar states from keeping juveniles within "sight and sound" of adult inmates.
The state’s Office of Juvenile Justice, which has long struggled to maintain order across its various youth prisons, has faced mounting pressure in recent months amid deteriorating conditions at Jefferson Parish’s Bridge City Center for Youth and the Swanson Center for Youth in Monroe. After multiple breakouts and a string of violent incidents, the situation reached a boiling point in July when an escapee from Bridge City allegedly shot someone during a carjacking.
Gov. John Bel Edwards presented the Angola plan shortly after the news broke, calling it a last-ditch effort to temporarily contain some of the most “troubled” youth from the Jefferson Parish facility. In the months since, OJJ has clarified that the state now plans to sequester teens from all across Louisiana’s juvenile justice system who are labeled particularly problematic inside a former death row unit near Angola’s gates.
Days after the governor’s announcement, Liz Ryan, director of the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, sent a letter to Louisiana OJJ Secretary Bill Sommers warning that the plan could be out of compliance and opened the state up to costly lawsuits.
“The state will potentially be in danger of violating federal laws such as the sight and sound separation protection in the [Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act] and the youthful inmate standard of the Prison Rape Elimination Act,” Ryan wrote.
Ryan’s letter to Sommers, entered as evidence in a civil lawsuit seeking to block OJJ from using the Angola facility, urged Sommers to seek “more feasible and long-term solutions."
A few weeks after sending the letter, Ryan appeared at a town hall organized over Zoom for families held at Bridge City who could potenitally be transferred to Angola.
“I was invited to listen to Louisianans share their perspectives on the challenges in the juvenile justice system and to learn how OJJDP can provide support,” Ryan said in a Zoom instant message to The Advocate.
A spokesperson for the federal OJJ did not return a request for comment.
One of the laws Ryan cited, the Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act, sets federal standards for youth prisons. In addition to requiring states keep juveniles away from adult inmates, the law limits which youth can be placed in secure lockups and requires states to try and reduce disproprotionate incarceration of minorities.
State prison systems are not directly bound by the act, but they can lose federal funds if they don't abide by it. And many experts and advocates say the federal rules are widely seen as standards for how effective youth prisons should be run.
While federal funds don't make up a huge part of Louisiana's juvenile justice budget, losing the money would be an embarrassment that does not often happen, said Vinny Schiraldi, a former youth corrections director in Washington, D.C. and later an official over Rikers Island in New York City.
This is not the first time federal officials have probed Louisiana’s treatment of juveniles. Two decades ago the U.S. Department of Justice sued the state, citing violence and a lack of adequate medical treatment and educational services at four of the state’s youth prisons. The state settled that lawsuit and agreed to make changes.
Speaking as a witness in a trial seeking to halt the move last week, Schiraldi told a federal district judge that putting youth in the old death row building — a facility technically on the grounds of the adult prison colony, but miles from adult inmate housing — is unprecedented in the U.S. youth justice system.
OJJ says the youths will not see or hear adult inmates under any circumstances. Officials even promised to hang black cloth from the razor wire-topped fences that surround the old death row unit.
But Schiraldi said that doesn’t mean it will automatically pass the feds’ smell test.
“It’s never in my experience occurred, so I don’t think it’s clear that (the federal law) necessarily allows for putting children in a separate building on the grounds of an adult prison,” Schiraldi told Chief U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick.
“Studies (on this) don’t exist, because this doesn’t happen,” he said.
Curtis Nelson, OJJ assistant secretary, denied that the state is at risk of violating the law. He said state officials have been in “continuous contact” with federal counterparts and “are not aware of any determination that anything in our plan violates federal guidelines for collocated facilities.”
“Throughout our process of establishing the temporary facility in West Feliciana, we have stressed our commitment to ensuring that youth will not come into contact with the adult inmate population at Angola, and that no sight and sound violations will occur,” he said in a statement. “The temporary facility is more than a mile away from where adult inmates are housed.”
But emails between members of the Governor's Advisory Board of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention in late August clearly show some state officials are worried about running afoul of the feds and losing money.
“Unfortunately the loss of funding is not something that we can plan to prevent in this case,” wrote Demetrius Joubert, the JJDP compliance monitor for Louisiana, in an Aug. 31 email.
He added that a federal administrator he consulted said they “could not guarantee that funding past FY 2021 would continue if the juveniles remain in Angola and then subsequently moved to Jetson.”
Joubert also suggested that the state fell out of compliance with federal standards when Orleans Parish transferred juveniles from its Youth Study Center to an adult prison in St. Gabriel during Hurricane Ida last year.
“We have to take into account that due to the youth being transferred from Youth Study to St. Gabriel, that cost us twenty percent of our 2022 Title II funding,” he wrote. “Combine that with the current move date of September 15, 2022, of youth from Bridge City to Angola, we are looking at additional twenty percent losses in 2023 and 2024.”
Joubert declined to comment due to pending litigation. But a spokesperson for his employer, the Louisiana Commission on Law Enforcement, said in an emailed statement that “we don’t know” how the move to Angola would impact federal funding at this time “and it would be premature for us to speculate.”
The spokesperson added that the commission has also “not been formally notified of a final determination” regarding the alleged violation during Hurricane Ida.
Gina Womack, founder of Family and Friends of Louisiana’s Incarcerated Children, sits on the governor’s advisory board. She said this week that “even just the possibility of losing the funding without an actual guarantee” should worry officials.
“It’s frustrating that they are willing to potentially throw away federal money that could be invested in solutions we know work,” she added. “It’s just so egregious on so many levels."
Email Jacqueline DeRobertis at jderobertis@theadvocate.com
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