Shackles and Solitary: Inside Louisiana's Harshest Juvenile Lockup
https://www.propublica.org/article/shackles-and-solitary-inside-louisianas-harshest-juvenile-lockup
ST. MARTINVILLE, La. Lawyers and a judge gathered in an East Baton Rouge juvenile courtroom last October for an update on a teenager detained after joyriding in a stolen car. The teen appeared on a screen, alongside a caseworker who stunned everyone by describing conditions in the lockup where he was held.
The 15-year-old was being kept in round-the-clock solitary confinement. He was getting no education, in violation of state and federal law, nor was he getting court-ordered substance abuse counseling, according to two defense attorneys present. And no one in the room that day not the judge, not the prosecutor, not the defense lawyers appeared to have heard of the facility where Louisianas Office of Juvenile Justice was holding him, the Acadiana Center for Youth at St. Martinville.
It was as if a secret prison had been opened up, one of the attorneys, Jack Harrison, said. I could see on the judges face both shock and real anger visceral anger.
They had no idea how bad it was.
Scrambling to respond to a wave of violence and escapes from other juvenile facilities, state officials quietly opened the high-security lockup last summer to regain control of the most troubled teens in their care. Instead, they created a powder keg, according to dozens of interviews, photo and video footage and hundreds of pages of incident reports, emergency response logs, emails and education records.
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