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Juvenile justice focus shiftsAdvocate Capitol News Bureau
November 26, 2006
By Mark Ballard
After nearly a decade of work to change how juveniles who commit crimes are punished in Louisiana, the focus now has shifted to the “front end” of the system.
Five Louisiana parishes, including East Baton Rouge, in September took the first tentative steps toward rehabilitating the way authorities handle children and teenagers in the state’s juvenile justice system.
But the real kick-off — called Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative — will begin after a three-day conference in New Orleans that starts Tuesday. About 450 professionals from more than 75 jurisdictions around the nation, which have implemented the initiative, are expected to attend.
The Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative addresses the reactions of the so-called “front-end” agencies that first come in contact with troubled youngsters, such as schools, foster homes and police.
Until Tuesday’s conference, Louisiana’s efforts had concentrated on changing the “back-end” of the system from one that emphasized punishment in adult-style prisons to one that focuses on treatment and rehabilitation.
“Because our facilities had so many problems, that’s where everyone’s attention went. But that’s not the best place to start the reform effort,” said Simon G. Gonsoulin, deputy secretary of the state Office of Youth Development, which oversees juvenile prisons, now restructured as secured care facilities.
Reforms on the state level will continue, but the spotlight now shifts to the local level, where most states start their reform efforts, he said.
The Annie E. Casey Foundation of Baltimore is funding Louisiana’s push. The Casey Foundation was set up by the founders of United Parcel Service to assist disadvantaged children and is spending about $150,000 in five parishes for the initiative. It likely will pay an equal amount to provide technical assistance and seminars.
In addition to East Baton Rouge, the other parishes participating are Caddo, Calcasieu, Jefferson and Orleans.
“We’ve focused so much on the back end, the prison end,” said David Utter, director of the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana. His New Orleans-based organization filed one of the lawsuits that pushed the state to change its juvenile justice system.
Behavior that should act as an early warning of trouble often is treated by officials in a way that aggravates rather than corrects the situation, Utter said. Traditionally, the first step is sending the troubled minor to a juvenile detention center, such as the one near Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport. This usually occurs before the child’s problems have been identified and before a judge’s ruling opens the door to treatment programs.
Bart Lubow, director of the Casey Foundation’s Program for High-Risk Youth, points to studies — such as a Justice Policy Institute report scheduled for release the day the New Orleans conference opens — that show that early detention often leads to a life of crime.
Youngsters who have disrupted school classes or committed some minor nonviolent offense are regularly detained because that’s the way it always has been done, he said.
“JDAI is really about changing the behavior of the adults who work in the management system,” Lubow said. Changing adults’ behavior to make broader decisions, he said, will mean “that the first option isn’t detention.”
JDAI’s first-year effort in Louisiana will study how local systems work to determine how and why juveniles are detained initially, Lubow said.
For instance, many youngsters are detained because a judge issued a warrant. The police, who are charged with executing the warrant, often look at the process “like it’s a papal order,” Lubow said. “But if you talk to judges about this, they don’t think all warrants are created equally, and they’re more than willing to consider a differentiated approach.”
Since 1992, the Casey Foundation has used JDAI to help local jurisdictions in 19 states transition to a system that does not rely on detention as the first step in the process.
Initial returns on JDAI from New Orleans, where Casey began the program soon after the city began to repopulate after Hurricane Katrina, have been good.
Orleans Parish Juvenile Court Chief Judge David Bell gives the JDAI high marks. New Orleans police made about 5,000 juvenile arrests — mostly on minor violations such as trespassing — before Hurricane Katrina, he said in a prepared statement. But those numbers have dropped 96 percent. He gives JDAI much of the credit.
“We are building a better juvenile justice system from the wreckage of the old,” Bell said. “We’ve reduced our detention populations and juvenile arrest rates are down. Now, we’re focusing our reforms on the rest of the system.”
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