Federal Judge Allows 'Untenable' Plan to Send Juvenile Inmates to Angola Prison

https://www.commondreams.org/news/2022/09/24/federal-judge-allows-untenable-plan-send-juvenile-inmates-angola-prison

Federal Judge Allows 'Untenable' Plan to Send Juvenile Inmates to Angola Prison

JULIA CONLEY
September 24, 2022

Critics of mass incarceration are condemning a ruling handed down late Friday by a federal judge in Louisiana, who admitted the state's plan to send teenage inmates at a juvenile detention center to the notorious state penitentiary at Angola was "disturbing" even as she decided the plan could move forward.

Chief U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick ruled that the Office of Juvenile Justice (OJJ) can send two dozen children under the age of 18 from Bridge City Center for Youth, located outside New Orleans, to the Louisiana State Penitentiary, denying a motion brought by several law firms and the ACLU to halt the plan.

The plan was proposed by the OJJ after a series of escapes from the Bridge City Center, which were also used as the reasoning behind subjecting youths in the facility to solitary confinement earlier this year.

Dick said in her ruling that "locking children in cells at night at Angola is untenable" but that the state cannot tolerate "the threat of harm these youngsters present to themselves, and others."

She also noted that some of the youths who may be sent to Angola are "traumatized and emotionally and psychologically disturbed" but suggested that the state prison, the largest maximum security prison in the U.S., can provide a more "secure care environment" for them.

Ahead of the ruling, the ACLU warned on Thursday that the plan is "unprecedented and dangerous."

(Bad judges everywhere.)