Since it first opened its doors last year, the Jackson Parish jail has flouted state-licensing laws for juvenile detention facilities. It’s been consistently accused of abusing and neglecting kids in its custody. And it’s entered into contracts with nearly a dozen other parishes around the state to house the youth from their parishes that are incarcerated pre-trial.
The jail has also been collecting money each month from the Louisiana Office of Juvenile Justice, through an OJJ contract that agreed to pay the jail for at least 30 beds, whether or not OJJ keeps any youth there.
Soon, the lucrative contract will be no more.
In a statement to The Lens, OJJ said that starting at the end of November, it will terminate its contract with the Jackson Parish Sheriff’s Office to reserve secure-care beds for youth who have been adjudicated guilty and sentenced to OJJ by a juvenile judge.
Jackson was a mere stopgap site for a new, state-run secure care facility that opened nearly seven months ago, in May, a spokesperson for OJJ said.
“This contract was a temporary solution until the new Swanson Center for Youth in Monroe—a Tier 1 secured facility—opened earlier this year,” OJJ spokesperson Nicolette Gordon said in an email.
In response to several followup questions from The Lens, Gordon did not explain why OJJ waited so long after the new Swanson facility opened to end the contract with Jackson.
OJJ signed the contract with Jackson last year, in September. It was written as a two-year contract — lasting until September of 2025 — but a provision allowed either party to terminate “for convenience,” with 30-day notice.
David Utter, one of the civil-rights attorneys representing kids held at Jackson, said that OJJ had taken “a huge important step” in terminating the contract.
But from a broader standpoint, Utter questioned OJJ’s judgment to place any youth in the Jackson jail, given the way it was run by Jackson Parish Sheriff Andy Brown.
“He never adhered to the [Children’s Code] requirements of education, counseling, recreation, family contact, and these kids should have never been there in the first place.”
The contract requires Jackson to reserve a number of beds for OJJ secure-care youth, with the state paying monthly for those beds — even when they are unoccupied. Over the past year, Jackson charged nearly $2 million to the state for housing kids in OJJ custody and reserving empty bed space, invoices show.
Since May, when Swanson opened, the state has paid more than $500,000 to Jackson.
Despite the costs accrued, it does not appear the state was paying to reserve a state-of-art facility with staff trained in best practices for working with detained youth.
Instead, kids in Jackson Parish custody reported extensive abuse and neglect. They were regularly maced by guards over minor verbal altercations, held for days on end in solitary confinement, and denied education. Many of those claims were later backed up by inspectors from the state Department of Child and Family Services (DCFS).
The abuses are also outlined in a lawsuit filed by Utter and other civil rights attorneys on behalf of kids who ended up at Jackson after leaving the high-profile juvenile wing that OJJ had created on the grounds of the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. In September 2023, OJJ was forced to arrange a hasty transfer for the Angola youth after U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick ruled that conditions at Angola constituted cruel and unusual punishment.
OJJ’s urgent need to find a new placement for the Angola kids prompted the OJJ to contract with Jackson. But once there, the conditions were no better, lawyers contend.
Still, it appears that some young adults who were sentenced to OJJ as youth will continue to stay in Jackson — and that the state will continue to pay.
‘Nothing short of scheming’
Back in August, OJJ claimed in a court filing that it is no longer utilizing the Jackson Parish Jail as a state secure-care facility.
But the jail still holds some individuals who are — to some degree, at least — within OJJ custody. They can be broken down into two categories. Some youth are there awaiting placement: they have been adjudicated guilty at a local-level juvenile court and were, according to OJJ, transported from their local detention center to Jackson until they could be placed at a separate OJJ secure-care facility. The other group of youth are being held pre-trial on “adult charges” that they picked up while serving OJJ time for juvenile charges.
Juvenile judges can sentence youth to OJJ custody until the age of 21. So if they violate a law while held within juvenile custody, OJJ sometimes files non-juvenile criminal charges — often called “adult charges” — against them in local district courts.
OJJ has claimed that they have not directed Jackson to hold the pretrial adult-charged juveniles. Invoices from Jackson to OJJ in August and September, however, show that Jackson has continued to charge OJJ more than $100 thousand each month for occupied beds.
The Lens unsuccessfully asked OJJ and Jackson for more details about the youth within Jackson’s invoices, to understand which category they fell into.
Even after the contract with Jackson expires, OJJ will continue to pay for the OJJ individuals being held on adult charges, “through the standard process,” Gordon said.
Utter believes that OJJ still has a responsibility to those with adult-charges, and should ensure that they are not held at Jackson where they are “exposed to the worst things that Louisiana has to offer.” At the very least, he said, they should be provided the basic services required for kids in OJJ custody.
It’s an argument that Utter made late last month at a meeting of the state’s Juvenile Justice Reform Implementation Act Committee hearing. “I have read reports that OJJ’s position is that there are no OJJ kids in Jackson Parish jail,” he said. “I can tell you that’s just not true. What OJJ is saying is that when a child has an OJJ disposition and they get charged in an OJJ facility as an adult, they’re moved to Jackson or other facilities and therefore OJJ owes them nothing. Owes them no education, no counseling, no right to visit their family. That strains credulity.”
Other longtime juvenile-justice leaders also are frustrated with the lack of transparency about youth at Jackson. OJJ has been “nothing short of scheming,” said Gina Womack, the director of Families and Friends of Incarcerated Children (FFLIC).
Womack formed FFLIC before Hurricane Katrina to highlight serious concerns with abusive state juvenile facilities like Tallulah in Louisiana. That led to concerted reforms across the state. Yet now, two decades later, she again has grave concerns about kids sentenced to state custody. “Youth are not receiving the proper treatment, services, or education that is necessary to rehabilitate them and help them become contributing members of our society,” Womack said in a statement. “Instead, young people are being further harmed and traumatized at Jackson while systems leaders hide behind vague language and technicalities to blur the lines between treating kids — some of whom have not been found guilty of any crimes — like adults.”
As Womack and other advocates emphasize, judges place kids in OJJ custody to be rehabilitated. But to families in New Orleans and elsewhere across Louisiana, these levels of abuse and neglect means that children return home from OJJ custody traumatized and without a chance to get help with their educational and mental-health needs.. “Sadly,” Womack said, “OJJ’s lack of transparency, dishonesty, and failure to take responsibility for kids at Jackson has real-life consequences for youth and families.”
Worse than Angola?
Womack is not the only one to accuse OJJ of acting in bad faith. Middle District of Louisiana Judge Shelly Dick has similarly slammed the agency for a series of broken promises and misrepresentations over the past several years.
OJJ’s decision to house kids in Jackson was part of a longer saga that began in 2022 when the state, after a series of escapes and violent incidents at its secure-care facilities, announced it would transfer a number of youth in custody to a new juvenile wing that the state had created on the grounds of the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola — in a former death-row facility.
The facility would provide a more secure space to temporarily house kids with behavioral issues, OJJ said.
The move immediately promoted outcry from youth advocates. Even before kids were moved there, civil-rights attorneys filed suit, attempting to block use of the new Angola facility, arguing that it was unconstitutional because it was fundamentally an adult facility and inappropriate for youth. But after a hearing in the Middle District of Louisiana, Shelly Dick, the federal judge, sanctioned the move.
However, troubling reports emerged from Angola soon after the kids were moved. Kids were being held in solitary confinement for extended lengths of time, regularly maced and handcuffed, and denied access to their families, adequate education and counseling. After overseeing another hearing on the matter, Judge Shelly Dick changed her mind about Angola as a place for children.
In September, Dick ordered the state to remove kids from Angola, because conditions there constituted cruel and unusual punishment, in violation of the constitution.
“Virtually every promise made was broken,” Dick wrote, finding that Angola was “causing severe and irreparable harm to the wards that the Office of Juvenile Justice is obliged to help.”
To comply with the judge’s order, the state moved dozens of youth to the Jackson Parish jail, which had recently opened as both an adult facility and a juvenile detention center.
The exodus from the penitentiary setting did little to appease civil-rights attorneys representing the Angola kids, who immediately objected, saying that the Jackson facility was not designed to accommodate youth.
Again, the troubling reports started soon after the new move, as kids began to report conditions and treatment that in some instances were worse than what they had experienced at Angola, they said.
As a result, the lawsuit that initially targeted the Angola facility continued on, with lawyers arguing, again, that federal intervention is again needed to ensure the safety of kids in custody at an adult facility – Jackson.
Two months ago, in September, after OJJ filed a motion to dismiss the case, Dick answered with a denial, noting that she had “previously found in this matter that [OJJ] have made promises and representations to the Court that were not trustworthy.”
It’s not immediately clear how OJJ’s decision to end the contract with Jackson will impact the litigation.
Since Dick’s ruling emptying Angola’s juvenile wing in September 2023, the Jackson Parish Sheriff’s Office has been busy creating its own questionable juvenile hub.
Though initially unlicensed to hold pre-trial youth, the jail has taken in millions of dollars from local governments around the state to house pre-trial kids. Jackson has also been working to expand its capacity for juveniles by revamping shipping containers on a nearby field into mini-juvenile dorms, prompting concern from advocacy groups, oversight officials, and state lawmakers.
Last week, during a debate on the floor of the state Senate over a proposed constitutional amendment that would remove limitations and allow many more kids – no matter their age or crime – to be charged as adults, Sen. Regina Barrow, (D-Baton Rouge), expressed alarm over what she had heard about Jackson.
“I recently learned that we currently have young people up in north Louisiana housed in a shipping container,” said Barrow, who pledged to go visit Jackson in person. “I pray to God that it is at least livable,” she said, “and we don’t have children living as animals.”
