A Baton Rouge teenager once appeared on camera as proof that violence prevention could work. Two years later, he is charged in a shooting that killed 17-year-old Martha Odom. Their stories are not separate tragedies. They are connected by the same policy choices, budget cuts and abandoned promises that leave one child dead and another held by a system that failed to hold him sooner.
Of all the children taken from their families in Louisiana in 2024, 93% did not allege sexual abuse or physical abuse. Far more common are cases in which family poverty is confused with “neglect.”
Jada and other Black girls often take the first steps toward the delinquency pipeline in the schoolroom, where teachers too often misread curiosity as sassiness—or as Louisiana law describes it, "willful disobedience."
The state of Louisiana is building a long-needed door for women leaving prison. But for girls leaving childhood detention, there is no threshold, much less a door.
A message to all city leaders and adults from “The Seven That Make It Happen,” a youth council of Black teenagers ages 16 and 17, who are detained pre-trial in Orleans Parish’s juvenile jail
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.
Nick Chrastil on The Lens' lawsuit against the state Office of Juvenile Justice for public records related to its $9.5m emergency staffing contract. And author Matthew Kincaid joins us to talk about his new book: Freedom Teaching.
This week on Behind The Lens, Jackson Parish’s is housing kids awaiting adjudication in a detention center unlicensed to do so and state A through F letter grades are due out soon.
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
