Louisiana won’t move incarcerated youth back to Angola – at least no sooner than January – Louisiana Illuminator

Louisiana doesn’t plan to move incarcerated youth back to the state penitentiary at Angola over the next month while Gov. John Bel Edwards remains in office, but officials didn’t rule out a transfer once Gov.-elect Jeff Landry is sworn-in Jan. 8.

“I have been instructed that under the current [Edwards] administration, we have no intention of going back to Angola,” Curtis Nelson, the head of Louisiana’s Office of Juvenile Justice, said in a legislative hearing Wednesday. 

A federal court order that forced the state to pull incarcerated youth from Angola over civil rights violations expired earlier this month, allowing officials to put young people in custody back at the adult prison if desired. 

But the situation has also grown more complicated. Louisiana’s prison system recently moved adult incarcerated women into the same Angola building where incarcerated youth had been held. 

Nelson said it’s possible women and youth could share the facility. It’s big enough to allow for the legally-required separation among the adult women and the male youths, but there are no current plans to do so.

A new facility at the Swanson Center for Youth in Monroe should also eliminate the need to Angola’s juvenile justice housing. It’s supposed to be more secure than other state juvenile facilities currently operating. 

“Once the new Swanson is built, you don’t need to go back to Angola,” Nelson said.

In 2022, Edwards said he only opened the Angola site in order to take care of a group of incarcerated youth that were destroying property, attacking staff and escaping from other facilities. At the time, the governor said the Angola building would help control the young people.

Children’s advocates criticized the decision immediately, saying an adult prison facility was no place for the rehabilitative programming the juvenile justice system is supposed to provide. Civil rights attorneys filed a federal lawsuit against the state shortly after the plans were made public. 

Though Nelson said he doesn’t need the Angola juvenile justice site anymore, he also defended its use.

“I know Angola is controversial,” he said. “But our incidents declined greatly — the attacks on staff, the attacks on youth — our numbers went down [when young people were moved to Angola].” 

Louisiana also continues to fight the civil rights attorneys who have challenged housing young people at Angola. As recently as last week, the state was appealing the federal court ruling that forced Nelson to shutdown the facility in the first place.