BATON ROUGE, La. – Legislation with the goal of ending solitary confinement for juveniles advanced out of a House committee Wednesday following testimony of a Bossier City woman whose grandson
We must not rebuild Swanson-Monroe Youth Center. Here’s why.
Tamia Cenance
Almost every week I’m devastated to learn of new accounts of abuse occurring at youth prisons across the country. Physical, sexual, and psychological abuse runs rampant in youth prisons, and that’s just looking at detention centers in Louisiana alone. For me, it’s personal. My dad was incarcerated when he was a child. He attended numerous schools that were ill-equipped and unwilling to handle his symptoms of ADHD, resulting in him cycling through the criminal justice system. In youth prisons he was subjected to violence and abuse. As a family, we’re still working through the trauma of his encounters with the youth justice system in Louisiana.
The year 2020 has been extremely tough. With a global pandemic, a racial justice reckoning, and a chaotic presidential election, this year has illustrated that the status quo is ineffective, silence perpetuates systemic racism, and civic engagement influences whether or not an officer faces accountability or if elected leaders are committed to protecting citizens from a deadly virus.
With everything weâve experienced this year, itâs infuriating that the Office of Juvenile Justice and Gov. John Bel Edwards have decided to move forward with breaking ground on a new youth prison in January. This year should have taught us that our criminal justice system is a vestige of slavery, with Black children being five times as likely to be incarcerated as their white peers, despite similar rates of risky behavior. Instead of spending millions of taxpayer dollars building a new facility, we should be investing in our young people from the start, ensuring their success through quality p