A federal judge will not block Louisiana’s plan to move about two-dozen troubled juvenile offenders from Bridge City Center for Youth in Jefferson Parish to the State Penitentiary at Angola. Civil rights attorneys and the parents of the children say teenagers should not be sent to Angola, but legal analyst Dane Ciolino says the state made a convincing argument to Judge Shelly Dick.
“They were not going to treat the juvenile offenders at Angola the same way that typical inmates would be treated at that facility,” said Ciolino.
The state is looking to reduce the population at the Bridge City Center because of numerous escapes and fights at the facility. In her ruling, Judge Dick acknowledged the concerns of having juvenile offenders at Angola, but something needs to be done about the safety inmates at the Bridge City Center for Youth.
“While locking children in cells at night at Angola in untenable, the threat of harm these youngsters prevent themselves, and others, is intolerable,” she wrote. “The untenable must yield to the intolerable.”
The Edwards administration has said the transfer to of juvenile inmates to Angola is only temporary, until renovations are completed at the Jetson Center for Youth in East Baton Rouge Parish. Ciolino says Judge Dick took that into account in her ruling.
“And this is not a permanent solution, this is a temporary one while the state tries to come up with a better alternative,” said Ciolino.
The state has not publicly set a date on when the juveniles will be transferred to Angola.
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