BATON ROUGE (AP) — Around two dozen juvenile inmates at a troubled Louisiana detention center won’t be moved to the notorious state penitentiary at Angola until at least the middle of next month, as a legal battle over their transfer plays out, officials said Tuesday.
The juveniles are currently being held at the Bridge City Center for Youth in Jefferson Parish. Officials have long acknowledged issues at the center, which wasn't designed to house certain high-risk inmates. There have been at least four escapes this year, as well as a riot in which 20 juveniles took over parts of the complex.
But the plan to move them to Angola has been sharply criticized by criminal justice advocates, former officials and parents of children currently held at the center, The Times-Picayune/The News Orleans Advocate reported.
A federal lawsuit to block the state from moving forward with the transfer was filed Friday on behalf of a teenager currently held in Bridge City who is set to be transferred to Angola, the newspaper reported.
The defendants in the case — which include Gov. John Bel Edwards and the Office of Juvenile Justice — and their attorneys said Tuesday they would not transfer any of the inmates until at least Sept. 15. A preliminary injunction hearing is scheduled for Sept. 6.
The governor's office did not immediately respond to an email seeking comment Tuesday. The ages of the juvenile inmates have not been released.
The timing was spelled out in court documents from Chief U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick, and the plaintiff’s attorney confirmed it during a press conference Tuesday.
“Listen, under no circumstance, regardless of what these children may have been accused of, should it be OK for them to be housed at an adult facility,” said the plaintiff's attorney, Ron Haley.
The governor told reporters in July that the youths “will not, under any circumstances, have contact with adult inmates.”
But Haley questioned the governor’s statement, specifically asking whether a juvenile inmate who needed medical care would be taken to the prison's nearby infirmary, which houses adults, or to a hospital 30 miles (50 kilometers) away.
The Angola building that the governor said would be used to house the youths once held the adult prison’s death row. Most recently, it housed female inmates relocated after a state women’s prison suffered damage in 2016 flooding.
But Angola is only a short-term solution. Edwards said the juveniles will be transferred to the Jetson Center for Youth in Baker once renovations there are complete.
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