Jackson Parish holding pre-trial youth in unlicensed juvenile jail
Despite lacking a required DCFS license, Jackson’s detention center is housing kids awaiting adjudication — and collecting roughly $200 a day per kid from surrounding parishes
Threats facing fragile lower Mississippi river delta to be addressed – and possibly mitigated – by five-year, $22 million research consortium
Tulane University and Louisiana State University will lead the Mississippi River Delta Transition Initiative – working with researchers from the National Academies’ Gulf Research Program, six HBCUs, four Southern universities and two Louisiana marine-focused nonprofits – to ‘navigate the challenges of sea-level rise, erosion and shifting river dynamics’
Proposed cuts to City Year program would do most harm to at-risk kids in under-resourced schools
Behind The Lens episode 218: ‘They need stability … this does not bode well for that’
This week on Behind The Lens, a $9.5 million private security contract for Louisiana youth prisons raises eyebrows.
Historic drought at root of ‘superfog’ and massive I-55 wreck
The combination of fog and thick smoke may return this weekend, as a peat fire in remote New Orleans East swamp burns underground. Unlike the fire in Lafitte, which is actively being battled by firefighting crews, the Orleans blaze is largely unchecked. But it's now watered by two pumps from the Sewerage & Water Board pouring the equivalent of two Olympic-size pools a day into the marsh.
‘Another step backwards’: $9.5 million private security contract for Louisiana youth prisons raises eyebrows
OJJ pays $75 per hour to staffing company for guards. Critics say that contractor seems to be “enriching themselves on the backs of Louisiana's teenagers and taxpayers’
Behind The Lens episode 217: ‘Wetlands may be severed from that historic protection’
A new judicial interpretation of the Clean Water Act leaves more than half of the country’s 118 million acres of wetlands unprotected, including the swamps of Acadiana and key waterfowl habitat.
Revolutionary History: Lost and Found, and Lost Again
How the Desire Street “Panther mural,” painted in 1970 to chronicle Black history for residents of the Desire housing development, met its end.
Louisiana’s inland, non-tidal wetlands are most at risk to lose protections from weakened Clean Water Act
As the Clean Water Act turns 51 today, environmental advocates scramble to understand a new judicial interpretation that leaves more than half of the country’s 118 million acres of wetlands unprotected, including the swamps of Acadiana and key waterfowl habitat.
‘No Phase III’ still a battlecry
Even as construction begins, the fight continues. Within the jail, monitors find, conditions are worse, due to the same old chronic issues: short staffing, violence, and shoddy mental-healthcare.
