Monitors tasked with overseeing the New Orleans jail and tracking its compliance with the long-running federal consent decree said staff falsified suicide-watch documentation, rubber-stamped investigations to justify uses of force, and that the facility is dangerously understaffed.
The decision by District Attorney Jason William to charge the teens as adults was controversial, if not surprising. During his campaign for DA, Williams promised to keep all cases involving kids in juvenile court, and frequently cited research on youth brain development that indicates kids are more susceptible to peer pressure, more likely to engage in risky behavior, and less likely to consider the consequences of that behavior.
"If there is a concept that’s at the core of American ideology, the American Dream is it, and its logic makes it easy for us to disregard poverty and incarceration as outcomes that only the worst of us reap."
"Calls to defund the police and/or prison abolition can sound scary to those just hearing about them. Understanding what these mean and how they're justified may help people grapple with what might appear frightening and too radical at first."
