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.”