Journalists and activists have been reporting on the dismal conditions children are subjected to at Louisiana’s Acadiana Center for Youth at St. Martinville for weeks. Now they're calling on Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards to shut down the youth detention facility, located about two hours west of New Orleans.
Activist Tamika Mallory shared a video on Monday posted by the charity Us or Else, which was founded by rapper Tip “T.I.” Harris. In the caption of the post, the charity paints a grim picture of the daily lives of those children who end up at the facility.
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That grim picture:
"Your child makes a mistake. He’s sent to Juvenile Detention to be reformed. You have no choice but trust the system to protect him.
He’s locked away in a small cell for 23 hours at a time
No lights
No exercise
Abusive guards
No court ordered classes
No reform
No help
Some kids were so desperate they dug through concrete walls to escape!
That’s exactly what is happening to KIDS at Acadiana Youth Detention Center in Louisiana! The mental torture that they are experiencing is disgusting! Their only interaction with people was through their meal slot! How is any of this rehabilitation for these kids? We are not going to step aside while this facility creates a pipeline to prison for our kids!"
In partnership with ProPublica and NBC News, the journalism nonprofit the Marshall Project reported on how judicial officials in one courtroom found out about the facility, described as a "high-security lockup," opened in secrecy last summer. A 15-year-old being held in solitary confinement around the clock at the facility was shown from a courtroom screen having been detained for "joyriding in a stolen car," the Marshall Project reported.
"He was getting no education, in violation of state and federal law, nor was he getting court-ordered substance abuse counseling, according to two defense attorneys present," journalists Beth Schwartzapfel, Erin Einhorn, and Annie Waldman wrote. "And no one in the room that day—not the judge, not the prosecutor, not the defense lawyers—appeared to have heard of the facility where Louisiana’s Office of Juvenile Justice was holding him: the Acadiana Center for Youth at St. Martinville."
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The journalists' project relied on hundreds of pages of incident reports, emails, videos, education records, and emergency response logs, as well as dozens of interviews.
They wrote that, while the state of Louisiana treats solitary confinement as a “last resort,” teens at the Acadiana Center, including those diagnosed with mental illness, were held in their cells for at least 23 hours a day for weeks. “They were shackled with handcuffs and leg irons when let out to shower, and given little more than meals slid through slots in their doors,” Schwartzapfel, Einhorn, and Waldman wrote. “Some teens took those brief moments of human contact to fling their feces and urine at the guards.”
“At least two of the teens in the facility harmed themselves so badly that they required medical attention. Some destroyed beds and shattered light fixtures, using the metal shards to hack holes in the cinder block walls large enough for them to escape.”
Two teens actually did escape the detention center in January and were later apprehended. Two more teens escaped in February, ABC-affiliated WBRZ reported. "My tolerance level has pretty much met or is pretty close to the threshold," Sheriff Becket Breaux told the news station at the time. "We have a meeting with juvenile justice to discuss this and come up with ways of stopping this."
The sheriff’s conversation with WBRZ didn’t cover the conditions the teens were fleeing at Acadiana Center.
Rashad, a 15-year-old held at the detention center, told the Marshall Project "you have to have a strong mind" to survive at the facility. Rashad was identified by his middle name for his protection. "You can't think about it," he said. "If you think about it, it will make you sad.” He said he was in his cell all day and had clothes, but no socks, books, paper, or pencils.
Peter Dudley, Rashad’s attorney, told the Marshall Project his "jaw dropped" when he learned of the conditions his client was being kept in. “You’ve got a child that we’re supposed to be trying to rehabilitate. He’s basically being housed like a death row inmate,” Dudley said.
The nonprofit Louisiana Center for Children's Rights filed a complaint with the Louisiana Department of Education last November claiming that the Acadiana Center "systemically deprived the children at St. Martinville of their legal right to a free appropriate public education."
The Marshall Project reported that following that complaint, the detention center added educational classes though they still didn't meet the bar set by state law that students receive six hours of daily instruction.
“Clearly these facilities are underresourced. They’re undermanned,” state Rep. Royce Duplessis told the Marshall Project. “We need to make sure the guards are paid, and these are not facilities that kids want to tear up and jump on the guards and just be destructive.”
Duplessis filed proposed legislation to limit solitary confinement in juvenile facilities to four hours, and requires that the child’s guardians and attorney be notified when a juvenile is held in solitary confinement under any circumstances. The bill states:
"Juveniles in solitary confinement shall be continuously monitored. Facility staff shall engage in continued crisis intervention and de-escalation techniques and make visual and verbal contact with each youth in solitary confinement at least every ten minutes. The intent and purpose of this intervention is to help de-escalate the juvenile's behavior so the juvenile can rejoin the general population as soon as possible."
The bill was last referred to the Committee on Administration of Criminal Justice in March.
