The Advocate. October 23, 2022.
Editorial: The controversial Angola Plan for youth has been implemented. Let’s keep it short.
As last week started, officials from the Office of Juvenile Justice took some journalists on a tour of the new lockup on the grounds of the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. The facility, where up to 24 of what officials believe are the state’s most violent teenagers can stay, is just inside the entrance of one of the nation’s most recognized penal institutions.
The officials said the youth detention system needs an overhaul, and that is happening, but some youths need to be moved to deal with safety elsewhere. Critics continue to say OJJ is at fault, failing to provide safe and secure facilities as well as necessary services — particularly the education and mental health services that would help young people turn away from the sort of situations that led them to be locked up in the first place.
One official on the tour said youths could be moved to the Angola property in one or two weeks.
Two days later, officials announced that eight youth had been moved to the Angola building that once housed death row inmates. OJJ called it the “temporary West Feliciana Center for Youth.” It is about 1 1/2 miles from the notorious adult prison on the sprawling Angola property.
In a statement, OJJ said four youth from the St. Martinsville-based Acadiana Center for Youth and another four from the Monroe-based Swanson Center for Youth had been relocated. Ten youth from the Bridge City Center for Youth were moved to the Monroe facility in Ouachita Parish.
There was no official fanfare and no news conference. OJJ’s statement said officials were contacting the youths’ families and legal representatives to tell them about the moves.
Moving the youth to Angola became a controversial option only because a couple of dozen detained youth escaped from the Bridge City facility in a short few months, and one carjacked and shot a man in New Orleans before crashing the vehicle.
When Gov. John Bel Edwards announced the plan in the summer, he said the Angola building would be a “secure, independent housing unit.” The governor promised that the youths would have no contact with adult inmates. He said they would get the services provided at the Bridge City Center.
Youth advocates and critics didn’t believe the governor then. They don’t believe him now.
Angola is known by some as the Alcatraz of the South. It’s the symbol of why Louisiana is known as the incarceration capital of the nation. It is a major contributor to the 2021 designation of the United States as the top incarceration nation, based on the number of prisoners per 100,000 residents.
Is it the right place for a juvenile-justice “campus,” as Louisiana officially seeks to deal with the manifold problems of youth who have committed crimes?
Certainly, some adjudicated youth who are not cooperative, resistant to change and rehabilitation — or violent — need to be handled differently from those who understand that they are being detained because they did something wrong. OJJ’s challenge is one of the hardest in government.
In an August editorial we said the Angola Plan was not a good idea and, at most, such a move should be temporary. We think that’s still true. Angola was chosen for reasons of short-term pragmatism, including the availability of the building under pure state control and where escapes are virtually impossible.
Now that the move has happened, we hope the number of youth staying there will be limited and there will not be any contact with adult prisoners, as promised.
And we hope more permanent solutions are completed as soon as possible. Incarceration without rehabilitation is not a responsible policy for young people, whatever their offenses.
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