Gov. Jeff Landry’s administration plans to reopen the Jetson Center for Youth in Baker (pictured above) later this year. The juvenile justice facility was shut down over a decade ago. (Photo by Julie O’Donoghue/Louisiana Illuminator)
In just a matter of months, Gov. Jeff Landry plans to reopen a Baton Rouge-area youth prison shuttered a little over a decade ago with support at the time from Democrats and Republicans.
Landry and state legislators have reshuffled at least $42.4 million over the past week and directed it toward reopening the Jetson Center for Youth in Baker. The governor is also pushing for an additional $12.7 million to add staff to Jetson in his latest budget proposal, though lawmakers haven’t signed off on that money yet.
The funding would allow the Office of Juvenile Justice to put up to 44 youth on Jetson’s campus in a matter of months and to start building a brand new facility with space for up to 72 young people on the site over the next two years.
The idea to reopen Jetson came about during former Gov. John Bel Edwards’ term and is in keeping with Landry’s push to dramatically expand the capacity of the state’s youth prisons and jails.
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In all, lawmakers approved the opening of four new and expanded juvenile justice facilities, including Jetson, this month at Landry’s urging. They will add 264 beds for incarcerated youth across the state over the next two years.
Sheriffs and district attorneys have complained about not having enough places to house young people going through the juvenile court system in Louisiana. Some localities have resorted to sending incarcerated minors to facilities outside of the state.
Yet the push to ramp up juvenile prison and jail capacity comes at a time when crime is declining across the country and in one of the largest cities of the state. New Orleans is reporting a drop in major crimes over the last three years, including double-digit declines in homicides, carjackings and non-fatal shootings since last year.
In spite of that decrease, the number of minors in juvenile prisons continues to rise, according to information from the state.
At the end of 2024, the number of youth in the state’s secure care custody was 8% higher than at year-end 2023 and 16% higher than 2022. Nearly all incarcerated youth in Louisiana are male (91%) and most are Black (79%).
Adding 44 beds at Jetson in the short term could expand the state’s incarcerated youth population by almost 10%. About 480 youth were inthe state system at the end of 2024, according to state data.
Under Landry’s budget, spending on juvenile justice services would also go up by $19.5 million next year, from $172.7 million this year to $197.9 million.
Youth could move to Jetson as early as May. Louisiana is only waiting for incarcerated adult women currently held at Jetson to be moved into a new women’s prison in St. Gabriel, juvenile justice officials said.
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Yet reopening Jetson is be seen by children’s advocates as another shift away from the therapeutic model for children convicted of crimes that the state attempted to implement – but never properly funded – when Gov. Bobby Jindal was governor.
“We want community-based services. We want alternatives to incarceration,” said Antonio Travis, youth organizing manager for Families and Friends of Louisiana’s Incarcerated Children. “Taking kids away from their families is not a winning formula.”
In 2008, the Louisiana Legislature and Jindal agreed to close Jetson permanently in an effort to move away from large, institutional youth prisons toward smaller, more rehabilitative settings. The facility finally shut down in 2014.
When Jindal was in office, people who had been incarcerated at Jetson came forward to describe repeated abuse at the hands of guards, and the facility was widely panned as being too prison-like for children. Buildings at Jetson regularly flooded and the site lines for staff supervision were poor, officials said at the time.
When the women’s prison was hastily moved there in 2016, following massive flooding at their original campus, advocates for incarcerated people complained it still wasn’t suitable for the adult women, given how old some of its mid-20th century buildings are.
The new plan is to build a brand new 72-bed juvenile justice building at Jetson, one that would be 95,000 square feet and eventually cost $68.7 million, according to architectural plans submitted to the state and obtained by the Illuminator through a public records request.
But with the $12.7 million in funding in the next fiscal year, the Landry administration wants to hire approximately 100 people to work in refurbished buildings that were part of the old youth prison.
Juvenile justice officials would also build a new fence to make sure the campus is more secure, Jason Starnes, undersecretary of the Office of Juvenile Justice, said at a hearing last week.
Starnes said the new Jetson will not resemble the old, troubled operation, wherein hundreds of youth were housed on the campus. The new plans for Jetson are to use it as an intake center, where young people are evaluated so they can be sent to another youth prison that lines up with their educational and therapeutic needs.
Legislators who represent communities surrounding Jetson are concerned, however. When the incarcerated youth were housed on those grounds before, they often escaped into nearby neighborhoods.
“There were a lot of breakouts,” said Rep. Barbara Carpenter, D-Baton Rouge, who lives in the surrounding community. “We don’t want to go through that problem again.”
Sen. Regina Barrow, D-Baton Rouge, said three subdivisions have either opened or are under construction near the site, and she worries about people being discouraged from moving in once they hear about the youth prison.
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