Solitary Confinement of Juveniles in Louisiana Called Child Abuse
Louisiana legislators are considering a bill to strictly limit the use of solitary for young people, after hearing vivid testimony of its impact on those who have experienced the punishment.
Landwebs
Louisiana legislators are considering a bill to strictly limit the use of solitary for young people, after hearing vivid testimony of its impact on those who have experienced punishment that one expert called child abuse, reports NBC News. The head of the juvenile justice office, Bill Sommers, publicly acknowledged to lawmakers for the first time that he was not satisfied with how one facility in particular was being run, the Acadiana Center for Youth at St. Martinville, and expressed support for the proposed legislation limiting solitary in all his facilities.
The new bill would make it illegal for the agency to use solitary confinement for young people for more than eight hours at a time and require the state’s juvenile justice agency to better track the use of isolation in its facilities and notify parents when their children are placed in solitary. In Louisiana, current state policy allows a maximum of 12 hours of isolation in most cases, and seven days for “highly disruptive” behavior. Those policies are nonbinding and don’t have the force of law, and even those limits stop short of what experts recommend. Most experts suggest that isolation should be used only until a young person calms down and is not a physical threat to themselves or others.
