BRIDGE CITY, La.—A Louisiana state senator is calling for a detention center housing juveniles who have committed violent crimes to be shut down after an “uprising” of 20 inmates in the facility on Thursday night.
State Senator Patrick Connick, a Republican, told The Epoch Times that the Bridge City Center for Youth (BCCY) wasn’t designed to hold violent criminals, having originally been a girl’s dormitory operated by nuns.
“In the last year, there have been 20 escapes, and these aren’t juveniles who spray paint the side of buildings,” Connick said. “These are carjackers, rapists, and murderers, the worse of the worst.”
At approximately 9:48 p.m. on Thursday, the Jefferson Parish Sheriff’s Office (JPSO) was notified that 20 juveniles had escaped their housing areas and took control of the facility.
“Around 40 to 50 deputies from our Patrol Division and Crisis Management Unit (SWAT) responded and were able to secure the facility by midnight,” JPSO Captain Jason Rivarde told The Epoch Times. “None were able to escape the grounds.”
Rivarde said the facility is operated by the state Office of Juvenile Justice (OJJ).
“One OJJ employee and two juveniles were injured during the uprising,” Rivarde said.
Five teenagers had escaped the facility at around 2 a.m., four of whom have been apprehended, with the fifth still at large, according to Rivarde.
“There have been a number of escapes, and we’ve had to help them retake the facility several times over the past couple of years,” Rivarde said.
A spokesperson for the OJJ told The Epoch Times that the juveniles involved were transferred to another facility, while BCCY was secured on Friday at 12:45 a.m.
It’s an incident that follows a history of escapes and assaults that Connick said exposes a pattern of troubling issues with the facility, one of which is the minimum number of guards who oversee juveniles ranging from 12- to 19 years old.
“No one wants to work in a facility where they will get beaten up and hurt by a juvenile with nothing to lose,” Connick said.
The riot was triggered, Connick said, by the previous night’s escape, which he said, “emboldened the other groups to get agitated.”
In 2005, state officials attempted to redesign BCCY, which by then had already had a violent history, according to a 2012 article from NOLA.com.
This involved transforming its prison-like conditions into more comfortable, decorative changes that reflected “a deeper philosophical shift” in rehabilitation based on the idea that “teenage criminals are redeemable.”
The state OJJ adopted the model used by the Missouri Division of Youth Services, working with that agency and the Annie E. Casey Foundation (AECF).
The AECF initiated the Juvenile Detention Alternative Initiative (JDAI) project in 1992 to establish alternatives to reliance on secure confinement of children through reform strategies.
“These strategies are explicit about racial equity to address the glaring overrepresentation of the youth of color in the justice system; youth, family and community engagement; and community-based alternatives to confinement,” JDAI’s website states.
Connick said the short-term solution, for now, is to get the facility staffed properly, which he said state Governor John Bel Edwards, a Democrat, is working on.
“The long-term solution is to remove the violent offenders and get them to a facility where they can’t escape, can be controlled, and hopefully rehabilitated,” Connick said.
