Since April, 17-year-olds arrested in East Baton Rouge Parish have not been jailed here. Instead, they have been transferred over a hundred miles north to correctional facilities in Jackson and Catahoula parishes.
It costs the parish $175 per detainee per day for them to be kept at other facilities.
There is no indication East Baton Rouge Parish will stop busing these minors any time soon, and in an email the Mayor's Office said it will continue to pay those costs.
As of Tuesday, Sept. 17, five 17-year-olds from East Baton Rouge Parish were being held at the Jackson Parish Correctional Facility in Jonesboro. Another five are currently housed in Catahoula Correctional Center, according to a spokesperson for the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff's Office.
And another 12 were being held in booking at East Baton Rouge Parish Prison, to be transferred to one of those correctional facilities, should the 17-year-olds fail to bond out. Two of those held in booking have since had their 18th birthdays and will remain at the parish prison.
The exact costs accrued since April are unclear. The Advocate has requested from the Mayor's Office any invoices from either facility, which would show the overall costs.
While the sheriff made the original decision for 17-year-olds to be transported to facilities in other parishes, the Mayor's Office is footing the bill to house these detainees. The Mayor's Office is responsible for all funding for the parish prison, while the Sheriff's Office is responsible for staffing and securing the facility.
According to the sheriff's spokesperson, the required costs to house juveniles are higher than those for adult prisoners.
Plans for a new parish prison
One result of the situation: renewed calls for construction of a new East Baton Rouge Parish prison.
In a May 22 meeting, Metro Council members approved a request from Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome to fund an architectural assessment and proposal for a new parish prison, juvenile detention center and juvenile courthouse facilities. The architectural firm Grace Hebert Curtis was contracted for the 90-day assessment.
The Mayor's Office is now moving forward with a series of "public listening sessions" to receive input from residents on where jail facilities should be placed and how they should look.
The first of these sessions will be held from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Tuesday, Sept. 24, at the River Center Downtown Library.
“It’s critical as we look to ensure we are providing correctional facilities here in East Baton Rouge Parish aimed at cutting crime and reducing recidivism, that we do this in close communication with our East Baton Rouge Parish residents to hear what we all want together for our community in the future,” Broome said in a news release. “I want to thank the EBR Juvenile and Jail Task Force for their work over the past year in bringing to the public’s attention the need for our community to support bringing our jail, juvenile detention, and court facilities in line with best practices in justice design today."
No specific methods to fund the construction of a new prison have been identified, but there are multiple possibilities. The Mayor's Office said bond sales, grant funding, public-private partnerships, or some combination are all possible ways such a project could be funded.
Until the new prison is designed, funded and built, there are no other active solutions to return 17-year-old detainees to in-parish housing.
Repairs to the parish prison
Part of the dilemma is the rundown nature of the parish prison.
In an April letter from East Baton Rouge Sheriff Sid Gautreaux to the mayor-president, the sheriff said that areas in the prison set for housing male 17-year-olds were plagued by "extensive mold, rust" and that "portions of that wing [have been] covered in raw sewage."
Since then, 420 repair orders have been completed by City-Parish Building and Ground staff, who meet weekly with the parish prison warden and her staff. These repairs have included tens of thousands of dollars of damaged glass replacement, and the replacement of plumbing and lighting in five different wings of the prison.
According to a statement from the Mayor's Office, staff from Buildings and Grounds did discuss some potential improvements with prison administrators that could be made to prepare sections of the jail to meet federal requirements.
However, according to the Mayor's Office statement, the Sheriff's Office indicated that the best option would be for 17-year-olds to be transferred to other parishes' facilities instead.
How we got here
State laws regarding where 17-year-olds can be jailed, federal laws regarding living conditions for detained minors and disagreement between institutions on the parish-level have led to the situation at hand.
The result is a situation where 17-year-old detainees are considered too dangerous to be housed with younger juveniles by state law, but too vulnerable to be housed with adults by federal law.
In March, Gov. Jeff Landry signed legislation into law repealing "Raise the Age" policies, which required that 17-year-old detainees be housed alongside minors.
When the change went into effect, the Mayor's Office prepared to send 17-year-old detainees from the parish's juvenile detention facility to the parish jail. But the situation quickly reached a stalemate when Gautreaux sent a letter to the Mayor's Office saying the parish jail was unfit to house minors.
Gautreaux cited the federal Prison Rape Elimination Act of 2003 (PREA), claiming that the law required "youthful inmates" to be housed separately from adult inmates. His letter said facilities at the parish prison were not in good enough condition for him to allow 17-year-old detainees to be housed there.
According to an April correspondence to the Mayor's Office, Gautreaux claimed the adult facility lacked housing for female 17-year-old detainees, a separate area detainees could receive their state-mandated education, and a separate area for detainees to exercise.
By April, an agreement was reached where 17-year-olds would be transported to the Jackson Parish Correctional Facility in Jonesboro. Catahoula Correctional Center is now another facility housing Baton Rouge detainees as well.