Advocates for juveniles held in a former death row building at a Louisiana prison for adults say the youths are suffering through dangerous heat and psychologically damaging isolation in their prison cells with little or no mental health care, inadequate schooling and foul water
FILE - Vehicles enter the main security gate at the Louisiana State Penitentiary — Angola Prison, the largest high-security prison in the country in Angola, La., Aug. 5, 2008. In a federal court filing dated Monday, July 17, 2023, advocates said that juveniles held in a former death row building at the Louisiana prison for adults are suffering through dangerous heat and psychologically damaging isolation in their cells with little or no mental health care, inadequate schooling and foul water.
There was also an affidavit from a medical expert who said the prolonged solitary confinement the youths are exposed to causes “significant risk of serious psychological harm.” Another expert discussed the physical and psychological dangers of keeping the youths in un-airconditioned cells, with fans that are unreliable.
When Edwards announced the plan, state officials were under growing pressure to do something after a series of escapes from the violence-plagued Bridge City Center for Youth in suburban New Orleans. One inmate is suspected in a carjacking and shooting that happened before he was recaptured. Establishing a detention center at Angola was described as a last-ditch but necessary measure amid capacity and safety concerns at juvenile detention facilities.
“While locking children in cells at night at Angola is untenable, the threat of harm these youngsters present to themselves, and others, is intolerable,” Dick wrote at the time. “The untenable must yield to the intolerable.”
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