Cease constructing prisons and begin investing in youngsters: the confirmed roadmap that Louisiana has ignored for 25 years
Each time the Louisiana legislature goes into session, I take into consideration the dad and mom who first walked by way of the doorways of our group 25 years in the past, in search of assist for his or her youngsters.
They got here to us as a result of their youngsters had been being suspended, arrested, or locked up. They had been scared. They had been ashamed. And so they felt alone.
The extra I talked to them, the clearer it grew to become: the issue wasn’t their parenting. The issue was a system designed to punish youngsters as an alternative of supporting them. From dad and mom whose youngsters had been positioned in safe care by a juvenile court docket decide, we heard tales of an acutely violent lockup known as the Tallulah Correctional Heart for Youth.
Twenty‑5 years later, I want I may say issues look completely different.
However right here we’re once more in 2026, watching lawmakers debate payments that solely tinker with the identical behemoth of a system that has been failing our kids for generations. We’re as soon as once more seeing new youth justice proposals that tackle procedures, experiences, and oversight at finest, and at worst, try and deal with youngsters extra like adults.
What’s at all times lacking is the one factor our youngsters really need: care.
This is similar unhappy story I’ve watched over the past two and a half a long time, the place Louisiana continues to wrestle as a result of we proceed to put money into our fears, as an alternative of the long run we need to see for our kids.
We maintain pouring cash right into a failed and damaged youth jail system whereas youngsters go with out psychological well being care and with out supportive colleges, and whereas their households wrestle to pay their payments. We ignore the evidence-based approaches and the specialists who inform us the actual answer is prevention and rehabilitation, not punishment.
As a mom of three Black youngsters and two grandsons, I do know what it appears like to listen to these tales from dad and mom and notice, “This may very well be me.” I’ve stated it many instances.
I didn’t come to this work as a result of I had some grand calling. I got here as a result of I wanted a job. I stayed as a result of as soon as I heard what households had been up in opposition to—youngsters crushed, ignored, and written off—I couldn’t stroll away.
And in spite of everything this time, what I’ve discovered is straightforward: households are highly effective. When dad and mom perceive the system and are available collectively, they’ll change issues. Early on, our households helped shut Tallulah, one of the vital notoriously abusive youth prisons within the nation. We labored to assist cut back secure-care numbers from 2,000 incarcerated youth within the Nineteen Nineties to lower than 500 by 2006.
In 2003, we helped cross the Juvenile Justice Reform Act— a legislation that was primarily a roadmap to remodeling the youth justice system right into a holistic mannequin of care. However the state by no means carried out it. The Reform Act was a roadmap for our state, grounded in the entire evidence-based options we all know work: group‑based mostly assist, restorative practices, psychological well being care, and conserving youngsters near residence.
However as an alternative of investing in what works, Louisiana retains doing the identical factor again and again: reacting with extra punishment. When one thing goes flawed in a facility, the reply is: construct one other one. When younger folks make errors—errors different youngsters in higher‑resourced communities are allowed to develop out of—the reply is: lock them up. And each time, households pay the worth—and admittedly, so does our group as a complete.
I want lawmakers would come and sit in one in every of our father or mother conferences and listen to what we hear. The worry. The exhaustion. The love. Dad and mom who work two, three jobs making an attempt to maintain their youngsters secure.
Grandmothers elevating youngsters on fastened incomes. Households who’ve been informed in a thousand ways in which their youngster is an issue—when what they really have is a necessity.
The reality is: there may be nothing flawed with our kids. What’s flawed is a state that refuses to see their potential. If Louisiana needs safer communities, the trail is just not extra punishment.
The trail is ensuring youngsters have entry to therapists as an alternative of extra cops. It’s ensuring households have assist earlier than they’re in disaster. It’s ensuring colleges assist youngsters succeed as an alternative of pushing them out. It’s listening to younger folks and believing of their goals.
Our children need what each child needs: to be seen, to be secure, to be allowed to develop up. They need hope. They need alternative. They need somebody to consider they’re greater than the worst factor they’ve ever completed.
As we mark 25 years of FFLIC’s work, I’m pleased with what households have constructed. I’ve watched dad and mom who as soon as felt powerless stroll into the Capitol and demand change. I’ve watched younger folks discover their voices and struggle for a future they deserve. I’ve watched communities come collectively and refuse to simply accept that incarceration is regular.
However I’m additionally drained — bored with watching lawmakers ignore the very roadmap households created for them. Uninterested in watching our kids carry the load of programs that had been by no means designed to assist them.
This session, and each session annually, Louisiana has a alternative. We are able to maintain repeating the identical cycle of blame and punishment — or we will lastly take heed to the analysis and the individuals who have been telling the reality for many years: dad and mom, youth, and households instantly impacted by these programs.
We don’t want extra prisons. We don’t want extra finger‑pointing. We’d like management that believes in our kids as a lot as their households do.
Twenty‑5 years in, I nonetheless consider a greater Louisiana is feasible. However provided that we cease writing off our youngsters and begin constructing a state that lets them develop and thrive.
Gina Womack is government director of FFLIC, Households and Associates of Louisiana’s Incarcerated Kids, a Louisiana nonprofit that’s celebrating 1 / 4 century of preventing for youth justice this yr.
Associated
