When two teens, ages 16 and 17, were picked up for a drive-by shooting in June in New Roads, Louisiana, Pointe Coupee Parish Sheriff’s detectives immediately knew this was not their first offense.
One teen wore two electronic ankle monitors, the other wore three. Both were already charged with attempted murder in another parish, and one may have an additional attempted murder offense.
By federal law, juveniles cannot be placed in adult prisons. Juveniles may be detained in a jail or lockup for adults for no more than six hours during processing, and in that time, they must have no sight or sound contact with adult inmates, according to the federal Juvenile Justice Reform Act of 2018.
The policy went into effect in December 2021 amid a huge decline in juvenile detention facilities. In 2000, the Unites States had 3,047 facilities holding 108,802 youths. In 2020, just 1,323 facilities were still open, housing 25,014 youths, according to the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention.
In many cases, law enforcement has no choice but to send violent teen offenders back home.
“These kids—let me scratch kids—these criminals, are walking the streets,” Pointe Coupee Parish Sheriff Rene' Thibodeaux told The Epoch Times. “So we catch them and we’re trying to arrest them for attempted murder charges in my parish. We contact seven juvenile facilities in the state and one in Mississippi and no place had a bed for us to arrest these juveniles. One of these juveniles already had two ankle bracelets on him and the other one had three.”
“We have a lot of issues right here,” Mr. Thibodeaux said. First, he said, someone should be monitoring the ankle bracelets.
“Do you see how mad I am? These people that already have attempted murder charges on them, they’re out and free, and they come to my parish and try to shoot up more people. And then we put more charges of attempted murder on them, and we still have no place to send them, and we have to turn them loose again,“ he said. ”We have a problem.”
In this case, parents were called to pick up their teens and take them home. The next day the sheriff kept looking for a place to take them and found two beds in Mississippi.
Fewer Detention Options
“We’re not talking about a poor little juvenile that stole a piece of bubblegum or went to church twice on Sunday. We’re talking about ruthless killers,” Mr. Thibodeaux said. “Our Justice system for juveniles has completely failed in Louisiana. I think the state needs to open up a facility to provide us with help. ... The state closed three facilities years ago to save money and now it’s a complete nightmare. And when they changed the age, that also didn’t help anything.”In Louisiana, 17-year-olds were automatically treated as adults until the law changed in 2016.
Now the adult age is 18.
“Now we changed the law and we made 17-year-old people juveniles again,” Iberville Parish Sheriff Brett Stassi told The Epoch Times. “And when we did that, the state told us they had plenty of beds. They do have plenty beds for people who are adjudicated juveniles—if you do a heinous crime and you are 16 or 17 and you get convicted—they do have beds for these people. Where we are lacking is the pretrial beds. We had a person in my parish, committed murder at 14-years of age. No place that would take him in Louisiana. We had to send him as far away as Alabama to find a bed.”
It cost $300 a day to house this minor in Alabama, plus the cost of staff to transport him back and forth for every court hearing.
Push to Close Facilities
California has closed all of its juvenile detention centers as of June after the 2020 passing of the Close to Home law, which places youth who’ve committed even the most serious crimes in small, local facilities, or to live at home under community supervision.Children’s Defense Fund, a left-leaning nonprofit with $55 million in assets, advocates for the closure of juvenile detention facilities.
“Youth prisons are often harmful, large, outdated, punitive places in which children are locked in secure facilities without the compassion, services, and support they need,” the Children’s Defense Fund website says. “While incarcerated, children are often provided with inadequate education instruction, health care, and counseling services and they are at greater risk of maltreatment, physical and psychological abuse, sexual assault, and suicide. Elected officials must protect children and increase public safety by closing youth prisons and investing in restorative, community-based solutions close to home.”
Deadly Consequences
In Beaver County, Pennsylvania, two 15-year-olds might be alive today if the county would have been able to find beds for them in a detention center, Beaver County District Attorney David Lozier told The Epoch Times.Police have charged Lamar Seymour, 18, with criminal homicide for a July 8 incident in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania. A police criminal complaint accuses Mr. Seymour of shooting a 15-year-old in the head and leaving him on the sidewalk at 11:30 p.m.
Police have charged Nasean Hunt, 18, with criminal homicide for a July 9 incident in Ambridge, Pennsylvania. A police criminal complaint accuses Mr. Hunt of shooting a 15-year old and leaving him in the street.
Both victims previously had contact with law enforcement, Mr. Lozier said.
“Both of those juveniles were among the juveniles who, in the last six months, had been stealing cars by the score in my county,” he said. “We had 91 cars stolen in Beaver County in the first six months of 2023. These cars were stolen, ransacked, and totaled at the end of the joyride. They’re almost all juveniles doing the car thefts. These are felonies. And at least a third of the time when they’re arrested, we’re finding them with a firearm. So, car theft. Firearm. There is no bed to put them in.
“So you put a monitor on their ankle, send them home with mom and dad, and mom and dad say, ‘I don’t want them because I can’t control them.’ Or, it’s a home that obviously has been unable to control the child. And there were repeat offenders among these juveniles who were arrested.
No Hammer
These are not isolated incidents.There has been an increase in juvenile homicide, robbery, burglary, aggravated assaults, and weapons crimes, Mr. Lozier said, and there are no repercussions for young offenders.
“We’ve had multiple community discussions over the past two weeks since these murders happened, and that’s a discussion of school leaders, community leaders, family leaders, church leaders, and the actual immediate family of the victims,” Mr. Lozier said. “Everybody is just screaming for a solution. I mean, everybody wants this to stop. But I have no hammer. In a society right now where it’s only rehabilitative it’s not punishment. We aren’t getting anywhere with the most violent youths, and the volume has skyrocketed.”
Politicians need to stop pushing to eliminate adult charges for juvenile crimes, he said.
“We need that tool. Another issue is federal law was amended that prohibits a juvenile being in an adult facility. We’re all sitting here with jails. Many of us have empty space in our jails. But I can’t put a juvenile in the adult jail. Federal law prohibits a juvenile in an adult facility if they are ever going to be within contact, or sight, or sound, of an adult offender. In other words, I’ve got a jail and I could easily convert one of my pods into a juvenile detention pod.”
But juveniles would have to walk down a hallway to go to the medical clinic, a video hearing, the booking center, or to meet with their lawyer, he said.
“Because at some point in their incarceration in the adult facility they would be within sight or sound of an adult offender, we cannot use any portion of our facilities. So that law is causing a crisis,” Mr. Lozier said.
The solution, he says, is to build juvenile detention facilities, because most of the time in Beaver County, law enforcement cannot find a bed for juveniles. He is advocating for a regional facility in his area.
“We make the phone calls to the nine facilities in Ohio and Pennsylvania that sometimes have beds, and 80 percent of the time there’s no bed,” he said.
In most cases, rehabilitation works. Many first-time offenders go through Mr. Lozier’s office and they have a series of hearings and evaluations of their risk to reoffend, their drug, mental health and education needs. They may be given an ankle monitor, supervised probation, or maybe a semester of school in a shelter where they can get some treatment for drug use, mental health treatment, or anger management.
“Most of the time, that works,” Mr. Lozier said “But you have the worst of the worst. Where we have a child committing armed robbery, aggravated assault with a firearm, murder, rape, and that is becoming more and more common. ... It will continue to get worse because there’s no repercussions for that first violent offense.”
Putting these young offenders in a facility for a couple of weeks or months while their case is sorted out may give them the time they need to think about consequences.
“We don’t have that option right now, so there’s no repercussion for that first violent offense,“ he said. ”They’re increasing the recidivism.”
Multiple chiefs of police in Beaver County have told Mr. Lozier a similar story about arresting minors for stealing a car and being found with a firearm.
“There’s no bed. The parents say, ‘I can’t control them,’ but by law, within six hours, we must release them. So we put a monitor on them and send them home. They reoffend in a week or two, and they still have the monitor on them, or they just cut it off,” he said.
“And they laugh in the back seat of the police car. ‘What are you going to do? Send me home again?’ They know.”
