The Orleans Parish Juvenile Court judges have approved a new policy to keep repeat offenders in jail until they face a judge. If there’s an open charge on a perpetrator, and they’re arrested, they will go before a judge before they’re released.
This shift comes after a lot of conversation on juvenile recidivism and the frustrations police feel at having to arrest the same citizens over and over again. Albeit, it comes right after the vehicle burglary situation in Lakeview, but the problem is much bigger than that. Back in May, the DA outlined an 8-point plan as it related to dealing with juveniles, and he warned then that we were going to be facing a difficult time because of some of the practices and customs we’ve employed in our juvenile justice system, but perhaps now some of that is about to change.Newell invited DA Leon Cannizzaro onto the program Friday morning to help explain.“The Judges modified or retreated from a previous position, and you’ve thanked them in a press release and welcomed this new policy, can you talk more about that?” Newell began.“Since I’ve been in office, I have said that whenever a person is arrested and taken off the street and brought to the Youth Studies Center, a Judge should be the one to make the decision to release them or not - there should be some face to face contact with the Judge, not just an evaluation by counselors and workers over there to determine whether or not they should be released,” Cannizzaro said. “You have individuals who have been brought into adult court for prosecution on serious charges, like murder and armed robbery. When you look at their backgrounds, you find this is not the first time they’ve been involved in the system - they are what we call frequent fliers. And if you’re seriously interested in rehabilitating them, you have to work on them early on. You have to start with the minor cases they come into the system with, and to simply catch and release them, we found that has not worked.” “I talk about this a lot,” Newell said. “We engage in these alternatives to incarceration, we put the electronic monitor on them, they cut it off, we put it on again, they cut it off again. We had an example in Jefferson Parish where they cut the monitor off thirteen times, and I said to the Judges, ‘something’s gotta give.’ We need to force compliance. If we’re going to give them a chance, they need to comply, complete whatever their alternative program is - and we have to open and transparent about what happens when they fail, and there needs to be another sanction.”
