Lawmaker Wants State to Buy Shuttered Jena Youth Prison

By DOUG SIMPSON, Associated Press Writer

3/28/02

A state senator wants Louisiana to buy the closed Jena juvenile prison, but reform advocates say the state already has too many teen-agers behind bars. Noble Ellington, D-Winnsboro, said he wants to move teen prisoners now held at a facility in Tallulah, in Madison Parish, to Jena, which has been closed since 1998. Ellington raised the issue as prison reform advocates prepared to testify at a Senate committee hearing Wednesday that Louisiana incarcerates more of its juveniles than any other state. Ellington said it would probably cost about $15 million to buy the prison from an arm of Wackenhut Corp. The plan is meant to create jobs in rural LaSalle Parish, he said.

"I just happen to have an empty facility sitting in my district and about 300 jobs lost when they closed it. That's what we're looking at: It's all about putting people to work," he said.

Ellington said he also believes the state would save $2 million per year by owning its juvenile prison. The prison at Tallulah is owned by a private company. The company also ran the prison but the state took over operations in 1999 amid complaints of abuse of inmates. Ellington said he would likely raise the issue during the Legislature's regular session, beginning April 29.

The state shut the Jena prison down in May 2000, after a series of Justice Department reports about violence among inmates and guards.

Ellington said he expected some opposition to his plan, most likely from Sen. Charles Jones, D-Monroe, whose district includes Tallulah. Ellington said he would try to figure a way that the Jena facility can reopen and the Tallulah facility also remain open, possibly with adult inmates. Jones was unavailable for comment Tuesday.

A study by two LSU economists found that the Tallulah facility employs 376 people and indirectly created another 297 jobs elsewhere in Madison Parish. A reopened Jena prison would mean 396 jobs at the facility and another 290 jobs in LaSalle Parish, the study found.

The study, completed in January by economics professors Robert J. Newman and M. Dek Terrell, was paid for by the state Department of Corrections, Terrell said Tim Roche, deputy director of the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, said Louisiana has likely surpassed South Dakota as the state with the highest percentage of its youths incarcerated. In testimony prepared for the Senate Judiciary B Committee on Wednesday, Roche said juveniles rarely reform when imprisoned.

Roche recommended in his testimony that Louisiana should move away from incarceration as punishment for juvenile crime, particularly for nonviolent juveniles. He wrote that facilities based near the youths' families are far more effective than putting teen-agers in jail.

"In addition to limiting the unnecessary exposure of youth to correctional settings, high quality community-based services are typically available at a fraction of the cost" of a prison-type system, he said.

David Utter, executive director of the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana, which represents inmates, said reopening the Jena prison would be a move in the wrong direction. "It would be very unfortunate for the state to fall back on that old tired and disproven idea that prisons are about jobs and economics. They're about people - kids in this case," Utter said. "They're about reforming and salvaging young lives, and prisons are the least effective way to do that."