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Historical perspective enables us to celebrate successes, make informed decisions that acknowledge past mistakes, build upon lessons learned, avoid repeating mistakes or worse move backwards. At this particular juncture Louisiana, with the exception of a few parishes, is regressing. This is in part because of a lack of meaningful and efficient collaboration, lack of education for stakeholders, the community and those impacted by the system and understanding where Louisiana began its reform efforts. Louisiana has infrastructures on the state and local levels charged with collaboration and coordination of services that are currently not coordinated, informed or effective.

I. Where reform Juvenile Justice Reform began in Louisiana

It was 1994 and the super-predator mentality of youth in the juvenile justice system had struck a chord among the political elite – thanks in no small part to a public climate of fear nourished by media hype. Laws making it easier to prosecute children as adults and place youth in adult prisons proliferated across the nation. With the highest rate of juvenile incarceration, the number of Louisiana youth confined in juvenile prisons was climbing at an alarming pace and would reach nearly 2,000 children locked up by 1998.

Richard Stalder, the Secretary of the Department of Public Safety and Corrections (DPSC), took his cue and successfully lobbied for more youth prison beds while three former cronies of then-Governor Edwin Edwards were looking for a good deal. Though they knew nothing about youth development or rehabilitation, these businessmen knew how to make a profit and how to sell a prison industry to an economically depressed region. As a result, the for-profit-run Tallulah Correctional Center for Youth (“Tallulah prison”) was opened in late 1994. It was intended to be a place of last resort, only for the “worst of the worst”– even though in its entire existence, the vast majority of its population of youthful offenders (nearly 75%) were locked up for non-violent offenses and over half of them had serious mental health problems. Moreover, its remote location ensured that nearly all of the hundreds of children confined there – over 80% of whom were African-American – were hours away from their homes and loved ones.

Within weeks of its opening, the Tallulah prison was placed under an emergency order by a federal judge due to rampant violence and incompetent management. For the following 10 years, the Tallulah prison would continue to be plagued with abuse and corruption while the beds remained filled with children who were only getting worse by virtue of being there. It would take a series of legal and political battles, coupled with the tenacity and dedication of a group of parents, advocates and other concerned people, to eventually bring down an institution that should have never been built in the first place.

Litigation for Leverage – Youth for Inspiration - Parents for Vision

When the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana (JJPL) opened its doors in late 1997, its staff was almost immediately bombarded with complaints of violence and abuse at the juvenile prisons. Aside from failing to provide adequate medical or mental health care, proper food, appropriate education or other rehabilitative treatment, confined children were routinely and brutally beaten, intimidated with force and humiliation, encouraged to fight-it-out with each other, maced and placed in isolation for weeks or months at a time.

While the living conditions raised serious concerns at all of the then-four youth prisons, the combination of disturbing forces at the Tallulah prison made it an especially powerful target for system reform. Its genesis in a politically corrupt business deal and the fact that investors were continuing to financially profit, literally at the expense of children’s lives, while Louisiana taxpayers were losing millions of dollars to this shady contract, made the violence and abuse at the Tallulah prison especially perverse. On the heels of a United States Department of Justice (DOJ) investigation, and after numerous failed attempts by DOJ to persuade the state of Louisiana to respond to the crisis in its juvenile prisons, JJPL filed a very public and aggressive class action on behalf of youth confined at the Tallulah prison. It was the summer of 1998 and the DOJ soon followed, suing a state over unconstitutional conditions in its youth prisons for the first time in its history.

The lawsuit was eventually settled with an agreement requiring monitoring as part of its enforcement. In the subsequent years, as a monitor of the settlement agreement, JJPL become well acquainted with the continuing problems at the juvenile prisons. We made regular visits to each of the juvenile prisons, meeting with hundreds of children over the years, reviewing thousands of files and documents, auditing countless official abuse investigations and participating in numerous expert tours of those facilities. In this watchdog and advocacy role, JJPL began to hold the juvenile justice system accountable and developed a deep knowledge of the system as well as an insider understanding of the key state and local players. JJPL also began to grow stronger ties with the parents of its clients – many of whom would later become the founding members for Families and Friends of Louisiana’s Incarcerated Children (“FFLIC”). Read the full story here: https://www.fflic.org/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Just-Shut-It-Down.pdf

To watch a video of the Close Tallulah Now video here: https://vimeo.com/187627702

Other resources and available readings here:

The Death of Tallulah Prison: https://www.alternet.org/story/19040/the_death_of_tallulah_prison

Hard Time; A special Report - Profits at Juvenile Prison Come at a Chilling Cost: https://www.nytimes.com/1998/07/15/us/hard-time-special-report-profits-juvenile-prison-come-with-chilling-cost.html

Can This Prison Change Its Stripes: https://www.theadvocate.com/gambit/new_orleans/news/article_8f01ec6b-ce4b-5c88-8bc8-47c66b98b713.html

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Juvenile Justice Reform of 2003 - ACT 1225

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