River parishes want $ 36 million from the state to build a minor center. Is it necessary? – The defender

A group of parishes of the Mississippi River is looking for more than $ 36 million in state money to build a minor prison on land owned by Lafourche Parish.

The 56 bed lock proposal follows the state’s legislative impetus for a crime in 2024.

The statement of state funding, received through a request for records from the lawyer, was presented earlier this year by the office of the Lafurce parish sherry and the river parish area for minors. The area includes Ascension, Assumption, St. James, St. John the Baptist and the parishes of St. Charles.

The new prison will focus on rehabilitation, which employees claim is particularly necessary against the background of high rates of imprisonment. Some minors criminals in Louisiana have been detained outside the state because of a lack of space here.

The site for the planned prison of 62,151 square feet is on the veterans boulevard in Tibodo on a tract owned by the Lafurche parish sheriff.

St. Charles Greg Champagne’s parish sheriff said that planning another prison for minors had started several years ago, but it will probably take years before a new one was built if a state -appointed committee approved it.

“Not that we just want to keep more minors. I mean, I think it would be fantastic for everyone if we didn’t have to hold one, but it’s just not a reality, “he said. “Some minors are really committing serious crimes.”

The long -term resistance and the need for a 56 beds youth prison, which the proposal says can be extended to 72 beds, remains an open question. The New Orleans minor Center has 76 beds, while the capacity of the East Baton Ruzhi is 36.

Other parishes throughout the country are competing for the same means, including a prison with 841 beds in the Lafayet parish, according to the lens.

Richard Pitman, director of Services Services Services, for the former Louisiana Defender Council between 2013 and 2024, said the total number of young people across the country has declined.

“When I started there, it was in the middle of a long -term tendency to reduce the number of children in custody,” he said. “… It was also in the middle of the long -term trend of decline in youth insults and an ascending trend in efforts for reform and reform legislation.”

The state allocates $ 150 million to accommodate minor offenders

State Senator Gregory Miller, R-Norco, prepared the 2023 law, which created the river parishes for minor justice. According to the proposal for the new prison, legislators work to add Lafourche parish to it.

The state has allocated $ 150 million for grants to minors to detention centers, prisons for adults, parish sheriff buildings and restoration of buildings owned by the minor justice service. State Senator Heather Cloud, R-Turkey Creek, said at a meeting in August that $ 100 million was available for the first round of funding.

Pitman said the country’s model was a good idea, but asked if the state had such a great expansion of a minor prison.

“If we have a detention centers, having regionalized detention centers, where now different jurisdictions share the costs, share the weight, share the risk of raising all this money … It’s not really a bad way to do it,” he said. “This is actually a preferred model how to do it.”

The minor justice area plans to impose a 0.75 tax medication in the parishes in it to raise approximately $ 5.2 million a year, with additional $ 2 million a year expected to come from the state that pays home minors in Safe care.

This kind of safe care is used for more serious crimes, according to the Louisiana minor service. Office data show that 480 young people were carried out safe care in the last quarter of 2024.

How much space is needed for a minor detention?

Just over a decade ago, the Center for Defense of Minors St. James closed. Several years later, the sheriff of the Assumption of Leland Falcon has closed this center detention center for the parish due to lack of funding.

But Falcon said it supports the new proposal, as the state plans to restore local areas for 30% of minor detention beds, whether full or not.

The parish champagne of St. Charles said there was currently a young man at a Mississippi sure -care institution, emphasizing the need for a local prison. But he said the parish sometimes passes months without any minors in pre -detention.

Pitman, a former Director of Defender Services for minors to the Louisiana Public Council between 2013 and 2024, stressed such gaps, saying that many beds could remain unfilled. This Public Defender Council was replaced last year with a new nine -member council to supervise Louisiana’s defenders.

“The common space for detention in the country is probably a few hundred … at the moment,” he said. “And if you speak numerous new detention centers that are so large, you are talking about a drastic expansion of the state of detention.”