Louisiana
River Parishes want $36 million from state to build a juvenile detention center. Is it needed?
A group of Mississippi River parishes is seeking more than $36 million in state money to build a juvenile jail on land owned by Lafourche Parish.
The proposal for a 56-bed lockup follows the state’s tough-on-crime legislative push in 2024.
The state funding application, obtained via a records request by The Advocate, was submitted earlier this year by the Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Office and the River Parishes Juvenile Justice District. The district includes Ascension, Assumption, St. James, St. John the Baptist and St. Charles parishes.
The new jail would focus on rehabilitation, which officials say is especially needed amid high juvenile incarceration rates. Certain Louisiana juvenile offenders are held out of state, because of a lack of space here.
The site for the planned 62,151-square-foot jail is on Veterans Boulevard in Thibodaux on a tract owned by Lafourche Parish Sheriff’s Office.
St. Charles Parish Sheriff Greg Champagne said planning for another juvenile jail began several years ago, yet it will likely be years before a new one is built if a state-appointed commission approves it.
“It’s not that we want to just hold more juveniles. I mean, I think it would be fantastic for everybody if we didn’t have to hold any, but that’s just not reality,” he said. “Some juveniles really commit serious crimes.”
The long-term sustainability and need for a 56-bed youth jail, which the proposal says can be expanded to 72 beds, remains an open question. The New Orleans juvenile center has 76 beds, while the East Baton Rouge juvenile center’s capacity is 36.
And other parishes across the state are competing for the same funds, including a proposed 841-bed jail in Lafayette Parish, according to reporting by The Lens.
Richard Pittman, director of juvenile defender services for the former Louisiana Public Defender Board between 2013 and 2024, said the overall number of youths statewide in custody has decreased.
“When I started there, it was in the middle of a long-term trend of reducing the number of children in custody,” he said. “… This was also in the middle of a long-term downward trend in youthful offending, and an upward trend in reform efforts and reform legislation.”
State sets aside $150 million to house for juvenile offenders
State Sen. Gregory Miller, R-Norco, drafted the 2023 law that created the River Parishes Juvenile Justice District. According to the proposal for the new jail, legislators are working to add Lafourche Parish to it.
The state has allocated $150 million for grants for juvenile detention centers, adult jails, buildings for parish sheriffs and restoration to buildings owned by the Office of Juvenile Justice. State Sen. Heather Cloud, R-Turkey Creek, said at an August meeting that $100 million was available for the first round of funding.
Pittman said the state’s model was a good idea, but questioned whether the state needs such a large expansion of juvenile jail space.
“If we’re going to have detention centers, having regionalized detention centers where different jurisdictions now share the cost, share the burden, share the risk of putting all this money together … is actually not a bad way to do it,” he said. “That that’s actually kind of a preferred model of how to do it.”
The juvenile justice district plans to levy a 0.75 tax millage across the parishes within it to raise an estimated $5.2 million annually, with additional funds of close to $2 million annually anticipated to come from the state paying to house juveniles in secure care.
That type of secure care is used for more serious offenses, according to the Louisiana Office of Juvenile Justice. The office’s data shows 480 youths were held in secure care in the final quarter of 2024.
How much space needed for juvenile detention?
A little over a decade ago, the St. James Parish juvenile detention center closed. A few years later, Assumption Parish Sheriff Leland Falcon closed that parish’s juvenile detention center due to a lack of funding.
But Falcon said he supported the new proposal, since the state plans to reimburse local districts for 30% of the juvenile detention beds whether they are filled or not.
St. Charles Parish Sheriff Champagne said he currently has one youth in a secure-care facility in Mississippi, highlighting the need for a local jail. But he said the parish sometimes goes months without any juveniles in pretrial detention.
Pittman, former juvenile defender services director for the Louisiana Public Defender Board between 2013 and 2024 highlighted such gaps, saying he thought many beds might go unfilled. That public defender board was replaced last year with a new nine-member Louisiana Public Defender Oversight Board.
“The total detention bed space in the state is probably a couple hundred … right now,” he said. “And if you’re talking multiple new detention centers that are that big, you’re talking about dramatically expanding the detention space of the state.”
Louisiana
Federal appeals court upholds Texas’ Ten Commandments law. What does it mean for Louisiana?
A federal appeals court on Tuesday upheld a Texas law requiring public schools to post the Ten Commandments, just weeks after the same court allowed a similar Louisiana law to take effect.
A majority of judges on the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that Texas’ law, which is nearly identical to Louisiana’s, is constitutional and does not violate students’ religious freedom. In February, the court lifted an injunction on Louisiana’s law, which cleared schools to put up the posters, but the judges said it was too early to rule on that law’s constitutionality.
Tuesday’s ruling could bode well for Louisiana’s law if it eventually returns to the 5th Circuit, considered the country’s most conservative federal court of appeals.
In their majority opinion, the judges rejected the argument that posting the Ten Commandments in classrooms would pressure students to honor the biblical mandates or adopt particular beliefs.
“To plaintiffs, merely exposing children to religious language is enough to make the displays engines of coercive indoctrination. We disagree,” the majority wrote about the Texas law, known as S.B. 10. A minority of the court’s active judges dissented.
Even though Tuesday’s ruling only addressed the Texas case, defenders of Louisiana’s legislation celebrated it as a victory. Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill said the 5th Circuit’s argument in upholding Texas’ law was identical to the one Louisiana made in defense of its law.
“Our law clearly was always constitutional,” she posted on X, “and I am grateful that the Fifth Circuit has now definitively agreed with us.”
Louisiana’s Republican-controlled Legislature passed the law in 2024, which requires all public K-12 schools and colleges to display the Ten Commandments in every classroom. A group of parents quickly challenged the law in court, and a federal judge issued a preliminary injunction that stopped the state from enforcing the law.
In February, the 5th Circuit reversed the lower court’s decision, saying it had been premature to block the law before it took effect. The judges said they could not rule on the law’s constitutionality before seeing how it played out in schools.
But in the case of Texas’ law, which that state’s Republican-led Legislature passed in 2025, the court did rule on the merits.
Rejecting arguments made by attorneys for the Texas families who challenged the law, the 5th Circuit majority said that requiring public schools to post the Ten Commandments does not amount to the government endorsing a particular religion, which the U.S. Constitution forbids. The law also does not impose religious beliefs on students, the judges wrote.
“As noted, S.B. 10 authorizes no religious instruction and gives teachers no license to contradict children’s religious beliefs (or their parents’),” the majority opinion says. “No child is made to recite the Commandments, believe them, or affirm their divine origin.”
The Texas families were represented by the American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Texas, Americans United for Separation of Church and State, and the Freedom From Religion Foundation, with the law firm Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP serving as pro bono counsel. The same groups, including Louisiana’s ACLU chapter, represented the Louisiana families.
In a statement Tuesday, the organizations said they are “extremely disappointed” by the 5th Circuit’s ruling, adding that they expect to appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court.
“The First Amendment safeguards the separation of church and state, and the freedom of families to choose how, when and if to provide their children with religious instruction,” the groups said. “This decision tramples those rights.”
Nearly all major industries in Louisiana added jobs over the past year, signaling momentum for a stronger future, according to a recent report from Leaders for a Better Louisiana.
The organizat…
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SHREVEPORT, La. (KTAL/KMSS) — Police say a man shot and killed eight children, including seven of his own, following a domestic dispute in Shreveport.
The incident took place early Sunday morning, April 19, on West 79th Street in the Cedar Grove neighborhood. According to the Caddo Parish Coroner’s Office, the victims included three boys and five girls, aged between three and 11-years-old. Seven of the children were siblings, while one was a cousin. Two adult females were also injured, including one who was shot at a home located in the 500 block of Harrison Street.
One of the adults was inside the home on West 79th Street when the children were killed. She managed to escape through a window with two of the children and reached the roof. The woman jumped down with one of the children. Unfortunately, the other child did not manage to escape. Police later found his body on the roof with a gunshot wound. The surviving child was taken to the hospital with a broken leg.
The children were identified by their mothers as Jayla (age 3), Shayla (age 5), Kayla (age 6), Layla (age 7), Markaydon (age 10), Sariahh (age 11), Khedarrion (age 6), and Braylon (age 5).
Authorities say the suspect and father of the victims, Shamar Elkins, was the only person who fired shots that led to the juveniles’ deaths.
Authorities noted that Elkins stole a vehicle near West 79th Street after he shot the victims. He was pursued by patrol officers into Bossier Parish, where they discharged their weapons and fatally shot him on Brompton Lane. Louisiana State Police will take over the investigation involving the officers.
Shreveport Mayor Tom Arceneaux expressed his thoughts on the matter, saying, “We have a hurting community. We have hurting families. We have hurting police officers, coroner’s personnel, fire department, sheriff people, and this affects the entire community. We all mourn with these families. I ask, it’s a Sunday morning. I ask all of you who are, who are listening, who might be able to. Pray at your services this morning for not just this family, for all the victims, for the victims who are at the hospital, and for the Cedar Grove community and for the community at large.”
Attorney General Liz Murrill also commented on the tragic shooting, stating, “Multiple law enforcement agencies are investigating this tragic situation. We do not yet know all the details, but I am deeply saddened by the senseless loss of life. I’m praying for the victims and their family members in the wake of this devastating violence.”
According to the Director of Strategy and Communications, Mary Nash-Wood, two of the children attended Summer Grove, and at least four attended Linwood Charter School.
The police have not determined a motive. More updates will be provided as the information becomes available.
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