Budget cuts threaten gains made in 10 years
January 3, 2010

By Matthew Hamilton / This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it / The New Star

In 1999, state corrections assumed control of Tallulah's infamous youth prison.

Reform advocates portrayed the privately run prison — beset by allegations of abuse from prison guards, squalid conditions and lack of educational and medical services — as the epitome of the state's poor record of rehabilitating young offenders.

In the course of the next 10 years, the Tallulah prison would close as a youth facility as part of a broader effort to overhaul juvenile justice in the state. Both administration officials and reform advocates acknowledge Louisiana has improved what was a failing juvenile justice system at the start of the decade, but budget shortfalls in the last years have raised doubts if or when the state can fulfill that progress in the next 10 years.

David Utter, the former director of the Juvenile Justice Project for Louisiana, conveyed the hope his fellow reform advocates felt in the first years after the turn of the millennium.

"There is, for the first time I can recall, a serious effort by many people to find ways to fix this broken system," Utter told the Associated Press in December 2001.

The comment came after an Orleans Parish Juvenile Judge first ruled that a Tallulah inmate should be released because he wasn't safe from the prison guards. Early that year, in his April 2001 State of the Judiciary Address, then- Louisiana Supreme Court Chief Justice Pascal Calogero Jr. called on lawmakers to remake the system.

"We all know, intuitively and from research, that the abuse and neglect of children is a major contributing factor in the development of delinquency, and that delinquency is a major contributor to adult crime," Calogero said.

The state Legislature subsequently formed the Juvenile Justice Commission and held a series of public meetings in 2002 to seek input and inform Louisianians about the problems of the old system and the consensus forming around how to fix it.

Among the problems, commission members identified the inconsistency in juvenile sentencing, the issuing of prison time for nonviolent offenses, the lack of alternative programs to sentencing and abuse by facility staff.

In a study for the commission, the Annie E. Casey Foundation concluded the juvenile facilities were little more than an extension of the adult corrections system. The study recommended transitioning from big "lockup" facilities to community facilities or supervised probation.

In 2004, the same year the Tallulah facility was closed as a juvenile prison, then-Gov. Kathleen Blanco signed a bill that separated juvenile justice from the adult corrections and created the Office of Youth Development, later changed to the Office of Juvenile Justice, which reports directly to the governor.

Even with the reforms, reports of violence kept coming from the youth facilities. In 2005, JJPL issued a report claiming acts of abuse increased that year. Then-Sen. Don Cravins D-Arnaudville, who co-chaired the Juvenile Justice Commission, attempted to shut down the lockups in Monroe and East Baton Rouge. In what would become a familiar critique for the next several years, Cravins said the reform efforts had stalled. He threatened to file bills again in 2008 that would close big lockups.

In 2009, Lt. Gov. Mitch Landrieu, the other co-chair of the commission and the chairman of the Juvenile Justice Implementation Commission, toured the Swanson Center for Youth in Monroe after reports of inmates beating staff and found the dormitories too big.

The Jindal administration has promised more than $6 million to renovate two dorms at Swanson, but critics still contend the facility is overcrowded, outdated and understaffed. The resolution to these problems remains clouded by the dour economic climate. Last month as part of a recessionary reduction of the executive branch, OJJ announced plans to eliminate $9.8 million from its budget, amounting to hiring freezes and the reduction of "duplicative, underutilized or underperforming contract services."

Mary Livers, current OJJ deputy secretary, said no state service has changed more than juvenile justice in the last 10 years and cited the positive results of that change.

"Five years ago we had around 2,000 youth incarcerated," Livers said. "In a five-year period that number has been reduced to under 600."

She said OJJ is also hoping to implement a more rigorous approach for youth sentencing that aims to reduce inconsistency.

While the two lockups in southern Louisiana have seen great strides in implementing the reform recommendations, Livers said Swanson is still not where anyone wants it to be.

"I would love to be able to depopulate Swanson tomorrow," Livers said. "I would love to be able to do it, but it's not fiscally practical. One thing we do have that is going to help us is the approval of an Acadiana facility, and that will relieve some pressure on Swanson. All those steps take time."

She said 2013 will be the earliest the state can shift juveniles away from Swanson.

Dana Kaplan, current executive director of JJPL, agrees that the last 10 years have seen progress, but it's not enough.

"In the last statistics I saw, around 50 percent are still in for nonviolent offenses," Kaplan said. "There's certainly been an increase in alternatives, but we've unfortunately seen backsliding."

She said the budgets cuts will slash programs like pre-trial diversion, mentoring and day-treatment.

"I think certainly there have been improvements," Kapland said. "At the same time, it's no secret that there's a number of problems at Jetson (in East Baton Rouge Parish) and at Swanson, in part because of the large size of facilities. Children are getting into more trouble when they get there because it's not an effective juvenile justice system."

Kaplan said the state budget crunch is an opportunity to go even further.

"It's exactly in this moment we should be looking to fund program that are outcome-driven, evidenced-based and serve kids better for less dollars," Kaplan said.

"It's certainly short-sighted to cut community programs. If we don't address the problems up front, there will be a large price tag later on."