The chaos brought by violent juvenile offenders held at the Bridge City Center for Youth in Jefferson Parish and Swanson Center for Youth in Monroe prompted Governor John Bel Edwards to take swift action by bringing in guards from adult prisons.
As The Advocate reports, internal documents show the temporary staff has the authorization to carry and use tasers and pepper spray, a technique used in adult prisons but off-limits in juvenile detention centers.
The internal memos have some civil rights attorneys sounding an alarm.
“The way to understand these policies is that they’re a threat of increased use-of-force on children in facilities that are supposed to be helping children and rehabilitating children,” Aaron Clark-Rizzio, executive director of the Louisiana Center for Children’s Rights tells The Times-Picayune. “If there is too much fear and violence within these facilities, they’re not going to help that by introducing more fear and more violence.”
Last week, five juvenile inmates escaped the Bridge City Center for Youth just before 20 juvenile inmates caused a jail riot. Governor Edwards took action by sending additional staff from adult prisons to the facility and posted State Police troopers there to guard the perimeter.
Parish and state legislators are calling for the governor to close the facility and relocate some of the most dangerous juvenile inmates to another facility elsewhere in the state.
