LA to Set Standards for Juvenile Detention
The Louisiana Legislature has passed a bill that would set standards for juvenile detention facilities, one of the long-deferred promises from the state’s landmark juvenile justice reform legislation. Report from The News Star.
House Bill 1477, introduced by Rep. Damon Baldone, D-Houma, and passed by the state Senate last week, would establish statewide standards for the safety and secure custody of juveniles while they await a court’s decision on their case. The bill directs the Louisiana Juvenile Detention Association to conform with nationally recognized standards and best practices. Detention facilities around the state would uniformly run their day-to-day operations, hire and train staff, according to certain qualifications, and maintain a staff-to-child ratio.
The legislation creates a task force that would guide the creation of the standards. The task force is composed of the Louisiana Public Defender Board, Louisiana District Attorney’s Association, Louisiana Department of Social Services, Louisiana Council of Juvenile and Family Court Judges, Louisiana Commission on Law Enforcement, Louisiana Sheriff’s Association, Office of Juvenile Justice, Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana and the MacArthur Foundation’s Louisiana Models for Change.
The bill also sets a firm time line to determine the standards. By July 1, 2011, the state’s Detention Association is ordered to develop and recommend uniform standards for local juvenile detention centers, with guidance from the task force. By July 1, 2012, the Department of Social Services will develop rules to govern the licensing of facilities, and by Jan. 1, 2013, all juvenile detention facilities must be licensed.
Mike Rhodes, juvenile services director at Green Oaks Detention Center in Monroe, said Baldone’s bill would affect the area’s major juvenile detention center.
“We would fall under those standards and would have to have an operations manual to match those standards,” Rhodes said. “For the last several years we haven’t been under widespread standards or any agency to inspect us.”
Rhodes said he is looking forward to putting the standards in place. “It just makes us run the facility better,” Rhodes said. “It makes sure we can do our job.”
The establishment of juvenile detention standards was a key component in Act 1225, a broad overhaul of the state’s juvenile system in 2003. Following controversial reports of abuse among juvenile delinquents and squalid conditions in youth prisons, legislators passed a law that successfully removed juvenile incarceration from the adult-focused Department of Corrections, closed the infamous youth prison in Tallulah and eventually established an objective measure of a juvenile’s needs and risks before they were sentenced. Other key provisions of Act 1225 never materialized as intended, and for seven years a standard for detention facilities was one provision that never came together.
Dana Kaplan, executive director of the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana, said she expects the bill to be signed into law and called the legislation a success.
“I think it is a great step for juvenile justice efforts, and I think it will be an even bigger step once standards are in place,” Kaplan said.
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