Appropriations Committee discusses Bunkie juvenile detention center

This year’s Louisiana Legislative session was scarcely a day old before the first shots were fired in Avoyelles’ general direction. The target -- whether intentional or by accident -- is the Acadiana Center for Youth in Bunkie. 

 

However, the top administrator of the Office of Juvenile Justice (OJJ) said she is confident the center will open and nothing will be done to jeopardize the project.

 

The House Appropriations Committee heard testimony  April 14 on House Bill 1, which authorizes state spending.  The Legislature is wrestling with a projected $1.6 billion budget deficit.

 

Among those speaking to the committee were people concerned that the new juvenile detention center in Bunkie would be used to increase the number of beds available to incarcerate juveniles. They called for the state to reduce OJJ’s budget by $3.5 million, which would force the department to close beds in older facilities to ensure the funds are available to open the new one.

 

The 72-bed Bunkie center is currently under construction by M.D. Descant Construction Inc. of Bunkie. The detention center will employ 90 to 100 people when opened.

 

The $3.5 million in question would not affect the construction phase of the project. It is the amount designated for staffing, training and initial operating costs when the center opens in early to mid-2016.

 

Rachel Gassert, policy director of the New Orleans-based Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana, said states around the nation usually retain older facilities as newer ones are constructed to enable them to expand their detention capacity. The fear is that Louisiana will fill the new slots in Bunkie rather than allow them to replace slots at older facilities.

 

Theo Shaw, a community advocate with the Southern Poverty Law Center, said the current funding level “can only lead to unnecessary incarceration.” He also called for more attention to funding attorneys for juveniles, saying that many inmates remain in detention centers only because they do not have an attorney to file a motion for the court to reduce their sentence and release them to return home.

 

OJJ secretary Dr. Mary Livers said she is “confident that we will open the Acadiana Center in Bunkie. There was some confusion at the committee meeting, but I am sure we will be able to clear that up.”

 

She said it is important for the public “to understand that these were not representatives speaking. They were representatives of non-profits who want the state to take this $3.5 million out of our budget so they can get some of it. We will have another chance to answer any questions and clear up any misunderstandings the committee members may have.”

 

Livers said the state is “definitely trying to downsize the size of each facility that we operate. We are trying to modernize the facilities so that the environment is conducive to real, meaningful change.” She said the fears expressed by Gassert and Shaw are unfounded.

 

OJJ’s current plan is to reduce the population of its Bridge City facility in Jefferson Parish from 132 to 105 and to move another 44 juveniles from the Swanson center in Monroe to the Bunkie center when it opens, which would leave 100 inmates at the Monroe facility.  That would give Bunkie its 72 inmates.

 

The state has another 72-bed center designed for the Baton Rouge area as it continues its efforts to replace aging facilities designed to punish juveniles for their crimes with modern, therapy-based centers intended to help the youth become productive citizens when they are released.

 

“It is important for everyone to know that if this $3.5 million does not stay in the budget, we would be unable to open the center in Bunkie in May 2016,” Livers said. “We would have a brand new, state-of-the-art facility representing the best chance to turn young lives around just sitting there vacant. And we would still have to maintain the property, pay for utilities, and other costs associated with the facility. It would be penny wise and pound foolish not to allow us to move forward with the reforms to our juvenile justice system that we have envisioned for the past 10 years.”

 

She said the $3.5 million will “enable us to hire staff, train them and have a responsible way to bring this center online. We have to have a transition plan. The one thing we don’t want is to open the center and bring a new staff untrained and unprepared to face 72 street-wise youth.  We have to ensure the safety of the inmates and the safety of our employees, and that requires a transition plan.

 

“Bottom line,” she concluded, “is that without that $3.5 million, we would be unable to open that facility for another 10 months.”

 

The threat to OJJ funding came as a surprise to Bunkie Mayor Mike Robertson. He said that if the center is completed but then not allowed to open, it  would be a blow to  Bunkie’s economy.

 

State Rep. Robert Johnson (D-Marksville) said the presentations to the Appropriations Committee “caught all of us by surprise.”

 

He said he spent the rest of the day after the committee meeting and most of the next day talking to everyone he could think of to get a better handle on whether there is any threat to the Bunkie center.

 

“The first thing I tried to get across was that there are no new beds as a result of the Bunkie center,” Johnson said. “They were wrong on that point.”

 

Johnson said his main concern was that it appeared Shaw’s pitch to take that $3.5 million and use it to fund attorney’s for indigent juveniles “seemed to get some traction. If that happened, it could shut the project down.”

 

He quickly added that he does not believe that will happen.

 

Johnson said he has supported improvements to the juvenile justice system and has been involved in that process as an attorney, and said spending money for juvenile offenders’ attorneys is not the best way to serve those youth.

 

In fact, he said, the facility at Bunkie will “actually prevent these juveniles from becoming adult inmates in a state penitentiary. This will be a rehabilitative facility. It is a model that the rest of the nation will follow, and we will have it in Louisiana.”

 

He said that by the time a juvenile offender is sentenced to a juvenile detention center, “he has done some serious things.” Centers like the one in Bunkie and the ones to follow “are designed to make sure that this kind of offender does not end up in an adult facility.”

 

Johnson said another bit of misinformation during the committee discussions was a claim that the Bunkie staff would be “new” jobs. There are no new positions being created. These are previously approved positions that will be filled by the losses at other facilities. Positions will be transferred from those facilities to the Avoyelles center.

 

The main thing Johnson wants his constituents in Avoyelles to understand is “this was just a committee meeting” and no binding action will come out of it.