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A federal court ruled on Sept. 4 that former Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards cannot dismiss a lawsuit by juveniles who said they are being imprisoned in a Jackson Parish facility that also houses adult inmates.
Should all of the youth in the custody of the OJJ be removed from the Jackson Parish and housed in OJJ secure care facilities, the lawsuit will be moot, the judge said.
“But under the circumstances, Plaintiffs have the right to seek discovery to determine whether OJJ youth are improperly being held in an adult facility and/or whether OJJ youth held in the collocated juvenile facility are nevertheless being exposed to adult inmates or lacking monitoring by OJJ juvenile justice specialists,” the judge wrote.
“Accordingly, the Court will allow limited, narrowly tailored discovery on these specific issues.”
Any other issues of confinement are to be filed in a separate lawsuit, the judge concluded.
In its lawsuit, the organization said there were “36 class member youth” incarcerated with adults at the Jackson Parish Jail in “shocking and abysmal conditions.”
The high-risk juvenile offenders were transferred to the prison after being moved out of a facility at Louisiana State Penitentiary, an adult prison in Angola and the largest maximum security prison in the country.
They had initially been housed at a former death row building at the penitentiary, which is commonly known as Angola Prison, as part of a plan unveiled by Edwards in July 2022.
The state lost its appeal of the injunction, and the OJJ subsequently sent the youths who had been at Angola to the juvenile unit of the newly opened Jackson Parish facility.
In the meantime, the state moved to dismiss the ACLU’s lawsuit based on mootness, arguing that the OJJ had closed down the facility at Angola and had no plans to reopen it to juveniles in the future.
However, the ACLU argued that the case was not moot because the state had failed to show that its allegedly wrongful conduct would not recur after the case was dismissed.
In her ruling, Dick noted that an investigator for the Southern Poverty Law Center attested that some of the youth aged 18 or older who remain in OJJ custody up to the age of 21 have been housed with adults in some dorms, while others under 18 who are not housed in the adult dorms or in cells with adults “reported they are around adults almost every day.”
The imprisoned youths also encounter adults in the hallway or cafeteria, and adults pass their cells on a regular basis, Dick said, citing the investigator’s testimony.
Based on the testimony and concerns that the youth may be incarcerated with adults, the state’s motion to dismiss based on mootness was denied, the judge said.
The Epoch Times contacted the OJJ for comment but didn’t receive a reply by publication time.