Jefferson Parish President Cynthia Lee-Sheng is no fan of the Bridge City Youthful Offender Center. She aired her grievances with detention facility and its second escape in as many months this morning with WWL’s Tommy Tucker.
“It really needs to just be closed. It’s not the appropriate place in terms of the building. It’s not the appropriate place in terms of where it’s located in a residential neighborhood. And it’s no place for violent offenders to be housed.”
Sheng calls the facility a danger to the community and says the latest escape—where fleeing inmates were turning door knobs on residents’ homes and one person was carjacked—shows the people of the area are at the mercy of the facility.
“This is a danger to the community,” Lee-Sheng says. “And not just the residents that live right there, they don’t deserve to live like this, they want what we all want: peace in their homes and feeling safe in their neighborhood.”
She says the former facility, built to female offenders, is totally inappropriate for the violent youthful offenders the facility is now housing.
“When you build things and you build them to house violent offenders, you build it in a certain way. Which is a different way than you build a girls-home. You build walls and you design things in a certain way. You’ve got to house people in a building designed to house violent offenders.”
Sheng will be waiting to hear what Governor John Bel Edwards will be saying in an address later this afternoon.
