“We have much work to do,” Hunter writes, “to ensure that an anti-terrorist component is part of the planning process for every special event that attracts thousands – Mardi Gras, festivals and holiday celebrations, even our Sunday second-line parades.”
"I keep paper and pen with me at all times because, like the most dynamic dreams, creativity is as wispy as Louisiana mist and dissipates quickly if not seized,” writes John Corley, associate editor of the Angolite, who says that, in his mind, he still lives in 1989, ‘the year I fell.’
This poem received second prize for poetry in the 2024 PEN Prison Writing Awards.
The author, who is also associate editor for the Angolite magazine, won an honorable mention for this essay in the 2024 PEN Prison Writing Awards.
"I am not a person who came to prison and became a writer, I am a writer who happened to come to prison."
This story was awarded the top PEN Prison Writing Award for fiction.
Local governments request more than $500 million to build regional and local juvenile-detention facilities — and to repair and construct some adult jails.
Invoices show that Jackson charged OJJ nearly $2 million dollars over the past year to house juveniles in the jail, despite grave allegations of abuse and mistreatment.
Donna’s Law, which allows people to ban themselves from gun ownership, has proven one of the few areas of gun policy where Republicans and Democrats can agree. But it has made little headway in Louisiana, home of the bill’s namesake.
A year ago, when Jackson Parish opened its new, unlicensed juvenile jail, kids complained of extended stints of solitary confinement, along with extensive abuse and violations. A DCFS inspection supported those claims, but the agency gave the jail a license anyway.
