In one of its first moves since taking over licensing and oversight from the Department of Children and Family Services, the state Office of Juvenile Justice (OJJ) has authorized the use of mace and pepper spray in local juvenile detention facilities. 

OJJ had already sanctioned the use of mace and pepper spray in its long-term “secure care” facilities, which hold teens who have been convicted and put into state custody. But even there, its use was criticized by advocates – and the kids themselves.

At the Jackson Parish Detention Center, guards would use pepper spray in response to minor verbal altercations, said one young man who spoke with The Lens. He described being sprayed indiscriminately while in OJJ custody in Jackson last summer. Each guard carries an orange can of pepper spray, he said, so if a kid talked back, a guard might lift his hand and spray into the child’s face, he said.

In response to a teen showing disrespect or violating an order, guards would also frequently reach into the door of the cell or the dorm and depress the sprayer for five or six seconds, then turn off the water in the cells after teens were sprayed, the young man claimed. The Jackson Parish Sheriff’s Department did not respond to questions from The Lens on the matter.

Once the pepper spray was in the air, the young man said, it would float to neighboring cells, affecting the eyes and breathing of everyone within the area. Its use hit him hard, he said, because he suffers from asthma and found that he could not breathe unless he covered his face with a pillow and blanket. 

“It burns to breathe,” he said. “It cuts off oxygen.” 

On top of the physical pain, he described a psychological toll. 

“It’ll make you feel violated, it’ll make you feel wronged, it’ll make you humiliated, it’ll mess your mind up,” he said. “This is like a torture thing.”

At least one child has reported facial scarring due to the sprays, an advocate said.

The negative impacts of chemical agents goes beyond the initial physical toll on kids, says Mark Soler, former executive director of the Center for Children’s Law and Policy, who has seen its use undermine trust between facility staff and kids, closing off communication in a way that will make it tough for staff to  manage future conflicts.

“When the kids don’t trust the staff, they’re not going to tell them anything,” Soler said. “And anybody who sprays pepper spray in my face —I’m not going to be sharing any information with them.”

Expanding use of mace, to kids held pretrial

In July, OJJ expanded the option to use pepper spray and mace on a whole new group of kids: those who are incarcerated pretrial across the state in facilities that are usually run locally, by cities or parishes.

A new state law took effect on July 1 that put OJJ in charge of licensing and regulating all detention facilities. Before then, it was under the authority of the state Department of Children & Family Services. 

Soon after the shift, newly appointed OJJ director Kenneth “Kenny” Loftin implemented an emergency rule change allowing staff in those juvenile-detention facilities to use “chemical agents” – defined as “any product… which is dispensed by means of an aerosol spray to control an individual’s combative and/or restive behavior.”

Under DCFS, staff in detention facilities were barred from using any “chemical restraints,” including pepper spray and mace. 

Loftin’s move has drawn sharp criticism from youth advocates and attorneys.

“We have this new oversight agency who suddenly needs to put out emergency rules —  rules that bypass the legislative process and bypass a lot of public oversight,” said Aaron Clark-Rizzio, with Louisiana Center for Children’s Rights.

“It just starts looking very much like you want and intend to mistreat children inside jails, which we know in this state are full of children who are predominantly and Black and brown.”

The Office of Juvenile Justice did not respond to questions from The Lens regarding the newest changes, and did not make anyone available for an interview. 

The new regulations appear to allow for a wide range of chemical sprays to be used on kids — with unspecified limits.

The young man who was housed in Jackson Parish told The Lens that guards used two different types of spray. One was a pepper gel carried by guards on their hips, he said, and used for minor altercations between individuals and staff members. Another he called “bear mace,” a stronger substance that came in a larger can, he said. It was used during riots and larger disturbances.

According to a DCFS inspection report from Jackson, the facility used at least three different types of chemical agents, only one of which would seem to be deployed by aerosol, making it allowable by the new rule. 

Jackson used JPX, OC spray, and pepper balls, DCFS inspectors reported. JPX, described in the report as a “mace-like substance,” appears to refer to a range of cartridge-based guns that shoot targeted streams of pepper-spray gel. OC spray is shorthand for oleoresin capsicum spray, a generic term for pepper spray. Typically, pepper balls are projectiles fired by a special launcher that burst on impact and create a cloud of pepper irritant.

By using any of the products, the facility was in violation of the standards in place at the time, according to the DCFS report. It is unclear if JPX and pepper balls — because they are non-aerosol — would still be out of compliance with OJJ’s new emergency rules. 

‘Very few’ other states use mace on juveniles

Again, it seems, Louisiana is an outlier in its justice policies.

“While most law enforcement agencies across the country authorize the use of (pepper) spray on adult offenders, very few states authorize its use for juvenile offenders,” according to a 2011 brief on the issue written by the Council of Juvenile Correctional Administrators.

In 2019, only 14 state juvenile justice agencies authorized any use of chemical restraints in secure care facilities, according to a council study, while only seven states authorized its personnel to carry mace in secure-care facilities. (Louisiana sanctioned its use in secure-care facilities after the survey.) 

The handful of states that permitted mace have commonalities. “Additional analyses found that those States that authorized the use of chemical sprays also had adopted policies and procedures that were more punitive in nature and resembled a adult-correction approach to managing juvenile offenders,” according to the council’s 2011 summary.

“For an agency to use pepper spray in its juvenile facilities is testament to a colossal failure to have enough staff in the facility and [a failure] to provide adequate training for the staff in the facility,” said Soler, the former executive director of Center for Children’s Law and Policy. “I spent my career — 40 years — as a child advocate. I went into many, many juvenile facilities around the country and studied them very carefully. There is no need to use pepper spray in a juvenile facility. It’s just a sign that the administration doesn’t have any better ideas.”

Still, Louisiana’s new regulations do carry some restrictions. Chemicals can only be sprayed if youth are “armed/and/or barricaded” or pose “a danger of bodily harm to self or others.” Also, the situation must be urgent to the point that a delay “would constitute a serious hazard to the youth or others, or would result in a major disturbance or serious property damage.” 

Medical staff are to be consulted prior to use, but that only applies if the circumstance does not require “immediate response.”

Following its use, staff must file an incident report.

Those policy guardrails merely prop up unnecessary action, Soler said. There are always other ways, he said, of controlling a situation in a detention facility without resorting to chemical sprays — which is why most facilities don’t use them at all. 

‘Say it, don’t spray it’ – feds prioritize talking before macing

Federal guidelines generally frown upon the use of chemical sprays.

The federal philosophy on chemical restraints is important because Louisiana gets funding through the federal Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention, an office within the U.S. Department of Justice. To receive funding, states must submit plans about policies, procedures and training within juvenile facilities. The federal office’s guidelines, Juvenile Justice Use of Force Continuum, specify that “the least restrictive intervention/interaction should be used to garner cooperation from a youth” in juvenile justice facilities.

Last month, the U.S. Department of Justice used that same standard – “least restrictive intervention” – to describe changes needed within juvenile secure-care facilities in Texas. In a lengthy report, the DOJ included descriptions of staffers mistreating youth and over-using pepper spray, “far more frequently than necessary to meet the threat posed.” 

To comply with federal “least restrictive” standards, Texas juvenile-facility staff now must first attempt verbal redirection and de-escalation techniques and other non-force interventions with each child. If those fail, they must use only the amount of pepper spray needed, followed by “adequate and timely decontamination of all children exposed to pepper spray via timely access to cold-water decontamination showers.”

Texas facilities must also  “identify and prohibit pepper spray use on children with chronic, serious respiratory problems or other serious health conditions that would make pepper-spray exposure particularly dangerous.”

Federal monitors have set limits on chemical sprays because pepper spray and mace could have serious adverse effects on youth. The Children’s Center for Law and Policy, a national organization that advocates on behalf of kids in the criminal legal system, emphasizes that facility staff may be unable to predict which kids might have “dangerous and potentially deadly” reactions to mace, because of asthma and other health conditions.

In general, children are especially vulnerable because they are “smaller in size, take more frequent breaths per minute, and have a limited cardiovascular stress response when compared to adults,” according to a Children’s Center fact sheet. The risks are even greater inside detention facilities, which often have limited ventilation. 

The Children’s Center analysis acknowledges that juvenile facilities must prioritize keeping youth and staff safe. But it notes that “[m]ost facilities fulfill that responsibility without using chemical agents such as pepper spray and tear gas.” 

When sprays are allowed, the Children’s Center experts warn, staffers may automatically reach for the spray cans —  instead of finding “more effective and humane ways” of managing youth with behaviors that are often rooted in mental diagnoses such as emotional-behavioral disorders.

‘If a parent pepper sprayed their child they would be arrested’

Beyond giving detention staff permission to use pepper spray, the emergency order by OJJ opens the door to other previously banned practices and omits some youth protections.

DCFS had prohibited juvenile-detention staff from “punching, hitting, poking, pinching, or shoving,” a child in handcuffs or other restraints. The new emergency order removes that prohibition.

Under DCFS, medical providers in detention facilities were required to “ensure that any medical examination and treatment conforms to state laws on medical treatment of minors.” That provision has been deleted.

Also, detention centers are no longer required to notify a child’s attorney when the child is accused of committing a crime while in detention, a provision that assured that a child had immediate legal backing for any in-custody offenses.

The newly implemented changes, when taken together, appear to be advocating “for harsher, more punitive and violent treatment of children,” while simultaneously avoiding accountability, Clark-Rizzio said.

In recent years, OJJ has been sued several times over the mistreatment of kids in their custody. In 2022, civil rights groups sued the agency over their plans to move kids to a wing of Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola that had previously been used to house adult death-row prisoners. Last year, U.S. District Judge Shelly Dick ordered OJJ to move the youth out of Angola after finding that the agency was holding kids in solitary confinement while failing to provide sufficient education and mental-health programming.

The emergency rules are in place for six months, until mid-January. The new emergency rules also temporarily resolved a technicality, by bringing administrative code into compliance with the new law, which mandates that OJJ take over licensing and oversight from DCFS. 

Some critics believe that the OJJ order itself did not comply with state law, because it wasn’t triggered by any emergent conditions. State law only allows emergency orders for certain allowable reasons – including to “prevent imminent peril to health, safety, or welfare of youth, support staff, or the general public,” the reason used by OJJ last month. 

“No ‘emergency’ justifies such a response,” Meg Garvey with the Orleans Public Defenders Office said in a statement. 

Once January arrives, OJJ can move to make the changes permanent, likely through the standard procedure for administrative-code changes — which include posting the change in the Louisiana register, soliciting feedback, and submitting a statement of fiscal impact. 

Garvey also described the order’s focus, the use of chemical sprays on juveniles, as “illegal,” pointing to a provision in the Louisiana Children’s code, which mandates that care for detained kids be “as nearly as possible equivalent to that which the parents should have given him.”

“If a parent pepper sprayed their child they would be arrested,” Garvey said.

JJIC still bans use of chemical agents in the facility

It’s not yet clear how local detention centers in Louisiana are responding to the change in rules, and if they plan to start utilizing mace or pepper spray.

The Juvenile Justice Intervention Center, the pre-trial detention center in New Orleans, bans the use of any chemical agents in the facility and considers it “grounds for the immediate dismissal of the employee(s) involved,” according to policies posted online.

A spokesperson for the city confirmed that those policies were still intact, despite the changes by OJJ. 

JJIC administrators will likely remain opposed to using chemical agents in juvenile facilities, regardless of state standards, said Clark-Rizzio, whose clients are typically held in JJIC.

“Our understanding of that facility and its leadership is that they do not desire or intend to use pepper spray on the children there, Clark-Rizzio said. “So this (OJJ) change hasn’t led to them suddenly using pepper spray.”

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