New Orleans City Council committee could discuss controversial youth jail today
by Laura Maggi, The Times-Picayune
Wednesday December 17, 2008, 6:47 AM
Ellis Lucia / The Times-PicayuneThe city-run Youth Study Center, 1100 Milton St., in Gentilly, pictured last December.
A year after advocates for accused juvenile delinquents filed a federal lawsuit alleging unconstitutional conditions at New Orleans' youth detention facility, they say little has been done to improve conditions there.
Attorneys from the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana say they are pushing the lawsuit more aggressively, filing a motion this month to establish the suit as a class-action based on depositions of juveniles held at the Youth Study Center this summer. The juveniles described sitting in cells for more than 20 hours a day, having little constructive contact with staff members, receiving haphazard educations, and getting inadequate meals that sometimes include spoiled milk.
At the same time, these advocates said the city staff that runs the center is missing an opportunity to work with national experts to improve conditions there, specifically declining to work with experts at the Annie E. Casey Foundation's Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative.
This initiative has helped the Orleans Parish Juvenile Court develop a risk-assessment tool that proponents said ensures that only children who really need to be locked up -- a category that includes young people accused of violent crimes or repeat offenders -- are held at the center. It has also sparked the creation of an after-school program that provides an alternative for arrested youths who are found to need some supervision but don't need detention.
The Youth Study Center might be discussed when the City Council's Criminal Justice Committee meets today at 10 a.m. in the Council Chambers at City Hall.
Bart Lubow, who heads the initiative for Casey, said he hasn't heard from any of the city employees who run the Youth Study Center in about a year.
"I really don't have a very clear sense of what the city administration really wants to do around that facility, much less them taking advantage of our offers to help, " Lubow said.
Lawsuit cited
Lesley Eugene, a spokeswoman for the city, acknowledged that officials are not working with Casey or any other organization about conditions at the center. This is because the facility is the subject of a lawsuit, which means city officials can't discuss operations, she said.
But Eugene insisted that Youth Study Center employees are participating in other aspects of the initiative to find alternatives to juvenile detention. She said this has meant that city staff members are continuing to participate in other working groups of the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative.
The city employees do indeed participate in the other working groups, said Ilona Picou, who coordinates the initiative as the head of community projects for Juvenile Court. But Picou said the city is effectively blocking improvement on the one aspect of the juvenile system they directly control: the detention of youth awaiting trial at Juvenile Court.
Within the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative are several working groups, which include members from city agencies like the New Orleans Police Department, public defenders or district attorney's office, that work with community advocates and others to improve various aspects of the juvenile criminal justice system.
The working group on conditions of confinement has been trained to evaluate a youth detention center, offering suggestions and assistance for improvements, Picou said. This could mean helping staff at the Youth Study Center or Department of Human Services, which oversees the facility, obtain more teachers from the school system or develop better record-keeping, she said.
Since the lawsuit was filed by the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana a year ago, Picou said the particular working group dealing with the Youth Study Center has been at a standstill and that members haven't been allowed inside the building.
Dana Kaplan, executive director of the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana, said her organization has offered to work out an agreement with the city to allow the working group to move forward, despite the pending federal lawsuit.
"The fact that we are in litigation is a poor excuse, " Kaplan said.
Conditions described
The depositions taken this fall from juveniles recently held at the center show that conditions have not improved since the justice project filed its lawsuit in December 2007, Kaplan said.
Eugene said she could not respond to any questions about conditions at the Youth Study Center, because of the litigation.
The lawsuit asks for the federal court to issue an injunction to force changes at the detection facility, including providing counseling and education, improved medical treatment and more nutritious meals. In the most recent motion, U.S. Judge Ivan Lemelle is asked to certify that all youth at the center are a class that the justice project can represent in the suit.
Juveniles interviewed by attorneys for the city and justice project in October depositions provided similar accounts of the facility, which flooded during Hurricane Katrina and reopened in the summer of 2006.
They described long periods in "lockdown" when they did something wrong, but also said it was standard practice for them to remain in their cells for 20 hours a day.
Each of the youths -- many of whom spent as much as a month in the facility -- described at most two hours of school a day. Some said they never went to school during their stay.
A few juveniles, named only by their initials in the depositions, described fights that were not immediately stopped by the staff.
"They will wait for about 15 minutes until one kid got blood . . . or a black eye or a busted nose and then they'll decide to go break the fight up, " said D.B. about his monthlong stay this summer.
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