In early April, inspectors from the state’s Department of Children and Family Services (DCFS) traveled to north Louisiana to visit the Jackson Parish Jail. Their mission was to determine whether the jail should be licensed to hold youth being detained pre-trial.
The visit was belated.
For months prior, Jackson Parish Sheriff Andy Brown had been housing kids awaiting trial without the required license to house them, in violation of state law — and, somehow, without the knowledge of DCFS, the agency that was overseeing juvenile-detention facilities at the time.
Meanwhile, parish criminal-justice officials across the region were well aware that the Jackson jail was holding youth — and getting paid hundreds of dollars a day to do it.
There are few other places in the region that keep pretrial kids, so Jackson became sought-after by courts who wanted to keep juveniles in custody until trial. A West Baton Rouge judge noted in one youth’s detention order in September of last year that no other facilities in the state would accept the juvenile, sending him to Jackson “until other placement is found.”
The Jackson jail took in newly arrested kids from parishes all over the state: Bienville, Claiborne, Iberia, Iberville, St. Landry, Union, West Baton Rouge, Richland, Avoyelles, and Franklin.
Despite the lack of license, prosecutors in these parishes frequently asked judges for detention orders that sent the kids to Jackson, and the judges signed off.
Delinquent kids coming from Angola also land at Jackson
At the same time, Jackson was also housing kids who had already gone through trial, were found guilty — “adjudicated delinquent,” in juvenile-court terms — and placed in the custody of the state’s Office of Juvenile Justice (OJJ).
Many teens in OJJ custody were shipped to Jackson last year, in mid-September 2023, when OJJ emptied out its juvenile facility at Angola, after a federal judge ruled that kids could no longer be housed there.
Last fall, both pretrial kids and those in OJJ custody reported being abused at the facility, where they said staff used mace, shock-gloves, denied them education, and held many children in solitary confinement for more than a week at a time, despite DCFS standards capping use of solitary at four hours and state law putting an eight-hour cap on OJJ’s use of solitary for most children.
Some teens held at Jackson claimed that jail staff refused to break up fights between juveniles. They reported being held in close proximity to the jail’s adult detainees, despite federal law that very specifically prohibits detained juveniles from being within “sight and sound” contact with incarcerated adults.
Parents pleaded to have their kids moved somewhere else — without success.
In theory, DCFS – as the agency in-charge of Louisiana’s pretrial detained youth – would have provided oversight, remedy, and perhaps even closure of the jail’s juvenile operations.
Judging by DCFS’ own regulations, closure would have been the most correct result.
According to those regulations, when a youth facility opens prematurely, DCFS automatically disqualifies them from the licensure process. Agency regulations mandate disqualification: if a facility operates as a juvenile-detention center without going through an initial leasing inspection, “the licensing inspection shall not be completed,” and “and the application shall be denied.”
But after Jackson had operated for several months without a license, DCFS moved forward with the licensing inspection, according to email and documents obtained by The Lens.
Yet another agency that failed its duty to children, said Gina Womack, director of the advocacy organization Family and Friends of Louisiana’s Incarcerated Children.
“It is beyond outrageous that the Jackson Parish facility could illegally hold pre-adjudicated youth and mistreat them for months without recourse,” Womack said.
Neither DCFS nor OJJ responded to The Lens’ questions about this story.
Inspectors arrive, finding scant education, mace, and prolonged solitary confinement
When inspectors finally visited in April, their findings appeared to broadly support allegations made by incarcerated kids, communications between DCFS and Jackson Parish Sheriff’s Office officials show.
A “Statement of Deficiencies” report prepared after the inspection outlined how Jackson was failing to meet a whole range of DCFS juvenile detention facility standards.
The separation between the adult section of the jail and the juvenile section was insufficient, the report found. DCFS regulations required that the area for pre-trial juveniles should be a “separate, self-contained unit.” But at Jackson, all ages of detainees were using the booking area, a multi-purpose room, the rec yard, the nurse’s office, and other areas, on a staggered schedule.
There were also significant healthcare shortcomings, the report found. There were too few staff and many of them lacked the state’s required training in CPR and first aid. When youth arrived at Jackson, no one conducted required health screenings at intake –– and few kids in custody received a medical or mental-health assessment within their first 72 hours at the facility, as required.
Also, as the kids had reported, they were indeed being maced. Staff overseeing juveniles used three different types of mace — pepper spray, pepper balls, and a targeted pepper gel, according to the DCFS report.
That flew in the face of DCFS regulations, which bar the use of any chemical sprays. (OJJ, after being put in charge of licensing and oversight from DCFS in July, approved the use of mace in an emergency order.)
Jackson had also applied for a waiver from DCFS to use tasers on kids, the report noted. It is unclear whether that waiver was approved. (OJJ recently denied that tasers are used at Jackson, in response to youth grievances filed in federal court.)
In terms of education, too, the report found neglect. Because many students who end up in the state’s juvenile-justice system are academically lagging, OJJ’s detained children attend school at least six hours a day, year-round. But inspectors noted that wasn’t happening at Jackson.
The Jackson jail employs one teacher, who did not hold class or work with children in groups. Instead, the instructor worked with kids “one on one or a couple at a time throughout the day,” which fell far short of the six daily hours of instruction.
And when the teacher wasn’t available, the facility didn’t hire substitutes. “The kids just do not have school that day,” the deficiencies report states.
The facility also didn’t allow kids to have in-person visits with their parents or family members — only video visits. Nor were they providing kids with pillows or pillowcases. Youth were forced to shower and use the restrooms in front of one another and staff, in violation of regulations that mandate privacy.
Perhaps most alarmingly, staff at the facility reported that they housed the children in solitary confinement — known as “room isolation” — for up to 10 days at a time. DCFS standards mandate that room isolation be used “only while the youth is an imminent threat to safety and security” and “only for the time necessary for the youth to regain self-control and no longer pose a threat.”
“I remember being in there for much more than a week, probably a week and a half,” said one teen who was held there soon after the jail began taking in OJJ kids. “Solitary for that long, like, it’ll drive you insane. I ain’t lying, those four walls get overwhelming. It’s just you, yourself, the sink, the mirror and the bed.”
The maximum amount of time a kid can be held in isolation at one time, according to the standards, is four hours.
“Solitary confinement is one of the harshest punishments for any human being, especially for children,” said Alanah Odoms of the Louisiana ACLU, who emphasized that young people deserved a “safe humane environment, with appropriate licensure, at the very least.”
The juvenile who was held in Jackson had also been held for a while in the Angola OJJ facility. “I’d give Angola the upper hand as a place for kids,” he said. “Like Jackson was just a bad place. We were all hoping for something better when we went to a new place. But I know that from the time I got to Jackson, I was praying and hoping everyday that I could get as far away as possible from there.”
Sidestepping DCFS fines, contracting with OJJ
The Jackson Parish Sheriff’s Office also seems to have skirted tens of thousands of dollars in fines. State law mandates that “whoever operates a juvenile detention facility without a valid license” from DCFS “shall be fined $1,000 for each day of operation without the valid license.”
Though it’s unclear exactly when Jackson began housing pretrial kids in its facility, records show that a judge in West Baton Rouge Parish ordered a pretrial juvenile into custody as early as September 3, 2023. With the stipulated $1,000 daily fines, the Jackson Parish sheriff would owe upwards of $200,000 for the jail’s unlicensed period, between September and May.
No email messages between Jackson Parish officials and DCFS indicate that any fines were paid, and neither agency responded to questions regarding the issue.
Meanwhile, it seems that the jail’s juvenile beds have continued to pull in thousands of dollars a day, through detention orders from parish courts – and from OJJ itself, which signed a two-year contract with the Jackson jail last year in September, as OJJ was trying to empty its Angola juvenile facility.
The OJJ contract requires that Jackson hold open 30 beds in the facility for kids in state custody. In return, OJJ pays a per diem of $143.43 per bed — nearly $130,000 a month — whether or not the beds are occupied. And if OJJ houses more than 30 kids at Jackson, the state pays Jackson a $250 per diem for those kids.
Money began flowing very soon after the new jail opened. By December, through its September OJJ contract, Jackson had billed the state more than $160,000, according to an invoice obtained by The Appeal. That contract, with its $143 per diem, notes that any agency without a contract pays a much steeper, $350 per diem, to house youth.
Sheriff Brown’s office did not provide information regarding which parishes it contracts with in response to inquiries from The Lens.
DCFS: ‘The facility does not have a license’ to accept pre-adjudicated youth
As the OJJ contract was being inked, and as media covered the move of OJJ kids from Angola to Jackson, the situation came to the attention of a licensing official at DCFS, who warned Jackson Parish Chief Deputy Brent Barnett that the jail did not pass muster for pre-trial juveniles.
“Currently, you do not have separate accommodations…as required by the current Juvenile Detention Licensing Standards, to be able to accept youth who need a juvenile detention placement,” she wrote to Barnett on September 19. “As such, we are unable to proceed with licensing at this location.”
Several days later, on September 22, DCFS licensing director Angie Badeaux wrote another email to Barnett reiterating that point, cc’ing Sheriff Andy Brown.
That same day, however, Brown entered into a contract with OJJ that acknowledges the facility was housing pre-adjudicated youth, in direct contradiction of DCFS instructions. As the contract states: “The Jackson Parish Sheriff’s Office is also housing pre-adjudicated juveniles for other agencies, and can be housed in the same dorm as OJJ-adjudicated Juveniles.”
DCFS was still in the dark for another month, it seems. In October, after being contacted by The Lens for a story, DCFS discovered that – in the face of the repeated DCFS warnings in September – Brown had gone ahead and housed pre-trial kids anyway.
Judging by the agency’s response, that was a surprise. In an email on October 27, a DCFS spokesperson told The Lens that the agency was “not aware of any pre-adjudicated youth being placed at the Jackson Parish facility.” “
“The facility does not have a license to accept such a placement,” the spokesperson wrote. “Based upon the information we have just been provided regarding an alleged pre-adjudicated youth being placed there, the Department will look into the matter.”
On the same day, October 27, Sheriff Brown emailed DCFS officials, asking them why the facility could not receive a license, noting that his jail was doing a better job keeping youth separate from adults within the jail. “Would you please clarify the reason we cannot receive a license to house pre-adjudicated youth?” Brown wrote. “Our site [sic] and sound issues are resolved.”
To keep pre-trial youth, Badeaux responded, the jail would need to resubmit an application, and stop using the same space for OJJ secure-care youth. She offered to meet and schedule calls, to work together to license the facility.
Yet it does not appear that anyone from DCFS ordered the Jackson jail to stop housing pre-adjudicated youth. Instead, email messages obtained by The Lens show that, for several months, DCFS reviewed documentation and judicial orders for the kids being held there.
Not until April, six months after being alerted by The Lens, did DCFS inquire about Jackson jail conditions or send anyone to the facility, according to the email correspondence.
Even after DCFS was presented with the inspectors’ report from the April visit – with its array of violations – DCFS did not penalize the Jackson Parish Sheriff’s Office, it seems.
DCFS has broad authority to deny a potential juvenile-detention facility’s application, for many reasons: if inspectors find “a violation of any provision of the standards, rules, regulations, or orders of the department,” “cruelty or indifference to the welfare of the youth in care,” or if a center is “operating any unlicensed [Juvenile Detention Facility] and/or program.”
But four months ago, in May 2024, DCFS officially licensed Jackson to hold youth — despite the facility’s list of documented deficiencies, reports about mistreatment by kids in custody, and the pleas of parents and advocates.
After the April inspection, a DCFS official informed the sheriff by email that his staff needed to “correct the deficiencies immediately.”
Just two weeks later, in early May, after the facility had spent at least eight months operating without a license, DCFS issued its formal approval and gave Jackson a license to house pretrial youth.
It’s unclear if DCFS ever conducted a follow-up inspection, to ensure that Jackson had corrected its list of deficiencies.
But in the weeks leading up to the May licensure, the sheriff’s office produced a policy document entitled “Juvenile Regulations Per DCFS” and an “Offender Orientation Handbook,” meant to inform juveniles of their rights, responsibilities, and facility policies, including the grievance process.
“The law holds us responsible for you,” the handbook reads. “(I)t is our wish that your stay here be as pleasant as possible under the circumstances.”
‘This is about profit-making’
Like many Louisiana sheriffs, Brown, who has held the office since 2004, understands the economic benefits of a jail with excess detention space. The state Department of Correction has long paid local jails to house more than half of state prisoners – an unusual arrangement seen only in a few other Southern states.
Early in his tenure as sheriff, Brown struck a deal with the private prison company LaSalle Corrections, which agreed to build and run a new 1,250-bed jail in Jonesboro, the parish seat. The jail, which opened in 2007, housed prisoners from around the state, and gave a slice of the profits to Brown’s office.
Brown acknowledged that the jail was much larger than necessary for a parish the size of Jackson, but said he deferred to LaSalle, since the company was building it. “They’re going to build it on a scale where it fits their needs, not necessarily mine,” Brown told the Times-Picayune.
More recently, state and local prisoners had to move out, as the facility began contracting with federal Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) to house primarily immigrant detainees.
The deal with ICE was more lucrative for his office, Brown said. “I can’t sit here and tell you an untruth,” he told PBS and the Times-Picayune. “My thought was, ‘This is going to economically be better for my department and for this area.’”
Brown used an eye-popping $6 million surplus in his budget to construct a new, 450-bed jail — which opened at the end of July 2023 and now houses local pretrial defendants and juveniles. Once again, with this facility, Brown touted the jobs it brought to the parish.
But to Gina Womack of FFLIC, who has advocated for incarcerated kids for more than two decades, the facility’s poor conditions and lack of oversight point to money accrued at the expense of incarcerated kids.
“This is about profit-making, not child welfare and public safety,” Womack said. “Our youth are the ones who suffer abuse in unsafe facilities lacking adequate care, education, and services.”
A year into his new facility, it appears that Brown is already expanding its capacity by adding shipping containers as juvenile housing units.
“It is essentially a container village,” said the state’s ombudsman, former East Baton Rouge Juvenile Court Judge Kathleen Stewart Richey, who was given a tour in April and told the Advocate then that she was troubled by the plan. “Their plan is to put six kids in a container,” she said.
In August, a Jackson Parish official informed OJJ in an email that the PODS would house 69 juveniles.
It appears that many of the kids who were in Jackson as juveniles will now be spending time there as adults as well. According to court filings, 23 kids who have active current juvenile dispositions but were arrested while in custody after they turned 17 are now being held in the Jackson jail as adult pre-trial detainees, facing new charges.
OJJ has claimed they are no longer responsible for those kids.
“These individuals are not in OJJ’s physical custody at this time,” the agency wrote in a recent filing. “These individuals will not be returned to OJJ custody unless their adult charges are resolved and their juvenile dispositions have not yet expired.”