There’s been a rash of juvenile crime across the metro area. Younger and younger people are committing more and more violent crimes, to include murder, armed robberies, carjackings and more. Law enforcement has been successful in identifying and arresting them, but is the system in a position to handle the influx? Newell invited retired Juvenile Judge Lawrence Lagarde onto the show Wednesday to discuss.
“You’re still in tune to what’s happening in the community - what’s your feeling about what’s going on in the streets, and why?” Newell began.
“There’s a lack of accountability,” Legarde responded. “Our laws are getting more and more lax, and the result is that people of all ages are feeling like they can get away with more, and that is particularly true with the youngsters, who are not mature. The thing with youngsters is if they feel like they can get away with something today, you can get away with doing it tomorrow and it will only get worse the day after that. We need to have accountability.”
“What did you see inside the juvenile system that you actually thought worked, from an accountability perspective?” Newell asked.
“Accountability means that if you commit a crime, there must be a consequence, and right now there’s not many consequences. Unless the juvenile commits a really violent crime like murder, aggravated battery or something like that, chances are good that he’s not going to be locked up. A lot of people say we can’t incarcerate ourselves out of this, but we could do a better job if we incarcerate more. We had a similar situation occur in the 90’s where juvenile crime was out of control and we were able to secure more facilities to hold them… but there was an overreaction to that, and people wanted to cut back on it. We had gone from 30 or 40 juveniles being held to over 100 and that was too many. But now we’re at about 30 or 40 and it’s not enough. We have to have a balance and we’re not going to get it right now with the way things are set up - there aren’t any more places to hold these kids, and that emboldens them and it gets worse and worse.”
“I’ve always been a firm believer in alternatives to incarceration that are actually appropriately funded and managed,” Newell continued. “Making sure that the programs we’ve got to get the youth back on the right path are actually working. We imploded the juvenile incarceration system in Louisiana without any viable alternatives that judges had the benefit of sending offenders to. Where are we today? Have we improved on those programs? Are there more of them?”
“It all comes down to funding, which usually comes from the Federal system,” Legarde said. “We had some wonderful programs that lasted a few years depending on the funding, and when the funding was over, we lost those programs… it also has to do with enforcement of the law. We don’t have the police presence right now, and that is also a matter of funding. If you don’t fund the police and fund these programs, these things will keep happening and will only get worse.”
Hear the entire interview in the audio player below.
