Rep. Debbie Villio. (Greg LaRose/Louisiana Illuminator)
Around 70 mental health professionals and educators in Louisiana have signed a letter urging state lawmakers to vote against a proposed constitutional amendment that could send more young teenagers to adult prisons.
“[W]e are greatly concerned that young people would be denied age-appropriate, constitutionally protected services and interventions should this legislation pass,” reads the letter signed by social workers, therapists and counselors from around the state.
“Furthermore, there is preventative work that can be done in our schools and communities such as increasing access to mental and behavioral healthcare, creating more recreational and career development opportunities and ensuring that the basic needs of all children in Louisiana are being met,” the letter said.
During a special legislative session focused on tax policy, state lawmakers are considering Senate Bill 2. It would lift limitations on the types of crimes for which people under the age of 17 can be sentenced as if they are adults. It would allow lawmakers to pass new laws to send 14- , 15- and 16-year-olds to adult prison for a wider set of crimes without having to seek statewide voter approval.
“There is no [U.S.] constitutional right to be tried in juvenile court,” said Rep. Debbie Villio, R- Kenner, who is sponsoring the legislation with Sen. Heather Cloud, R-Turkey Creek.
The proposal is moving quickly through the legislative process. Louisiana senators approved it last week, and the Louisiana House Committee on the Administration of Criminal Justice voted 7-3 in favor of it Monday.
Even if lawmakers advance the bill, voters still have to pass the proposal on a statewide ballot next March or November before it becomes law.
Landry has endorsed the tough-on-crime measure along with the Louisiana District Attorneys Association and Louisiana Sheriffs Association, though the sheriffs only came out in favor of it Monday.
Villio, a former prosecutor, said current state constitutional restrictions are preventing district attorneys from charging younger teenagers as adults for serious crimes such as human trafficking, carjacking and drive-by shootings.
Criminal defense attorneys and children’s advocates disagree with that assessment, saying current law provides flexibility for prosecutors to treat youth as adults for the violent crimes Villio has mentioned.
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A minor involved in human trafficking could be charged as if he is an adult with kidnapping, a carjacking could be handled like the adult version of armed robbery, and a drive-by shooting could be charged as an attempted murder, even with the current constitutional restrictions in place, according to defense lawyers.
For example, all four underage youth involved in the 2022 carjacking and murder of 74-year-old Linda Frickey in New Orleans were tried and convicted as adults earlier this year.
Cloud and Villio’s constitutional amendment also wouldn’t limit the prosecution of younger teenagers as adults to just the most violent of offenses. It would also allow, for the first time in 50 years, minors who are 14, 15 and 16 years old to be charged as adults for “any crimes,” if lawmakers passed legislation to do so.
Tony Clayton, district attorney for Iberville, Pointe Coupee and West Baton Rouge parishes, pushed back against concerns about the legislation being too expensive, saying the purpose of the bill wasn’t to charge teenagers as adults for nonviolent crimes.
“I’m not going to lock up all juveniles,” Clayton said at Monday’s House committee hearing on the bill. “We have to trust prosecutors to do it fairly.”
Yet Clayton also acknowledged that prosecutors would have a much easier time adding any crime to the list of offenses for which teenagers can be charged as adults if the amendment is approved.
“As time progresses and we need more crimes, we can just come to you and not have to go to the vote of the people,” he told.
Rep. Alonzo Knox, D-New Orleans, voted against the bill and questioned why district attorneys wouldn’t have brought a slightly different constitutional amendment – one that adds specific crimes to the existing list of those that can be used to charge children as adults.
If that had been proposed, then there would be no question about whether children would be charged as adults for nonviolent offenses in the future, he said.
“Why not do a bill to add these [violent crimes] to the current list? Why take the power away from the voter?” Knox said.
Villio responded that lawmakers – not the voters directly – have the authority over juvenile justice issues because legislators are the “voice of the people.”
Besides Clayton and East Baton Rouge District Attorney Hillar Moore, no one has testified in favor of the legislation during the two public hearings on the bills. Dozens of people have shown up to the Capitol in person to oppose it, however.
“Public safety isn’t about caging children,” said the Rev. Alexis Anderson, a member of the East Baton Rouge Prison Reform Coalition.
Yet Rep. Tony Bacala, R-Gonzales, suggested some young people might be more suitable for adult prison because they can’t be rehabilitated. For example, he said children who aren’t held by their parents and family members as babies fail to develop the appropriate level of empathy.
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“Some of these kids are already lost at 2 years old. I want to make that point. Everybody realizes it,” Bacala said.
Samantha King, a New Orleans social worker who works with children and organized the letter campaign on behalf of mental health professionals, disagreed with Bacala. She has worked mostly in schools but also helped youth in a juvenile detention center.
King said Louisiana needs to invest more in mental health services as a crime prevention measure to help its children deal with trauma they have experienced. Most schools have too few counselors who are stretched thin with a wide range of responsibilities, such as dealing with truancy and children who are homeless.
“This blanket legislation is going to harm way more children than it will help,” King said in an interview. “We need to be focused on expanding access to mental health services in schools and communities.”
Bruce Reilly, deputy director of Voice of the Experienced, responded to Bacala’s assessment by referencing his own story of rehabilitation.
Reilly was convicted of murdering a college professor at age 20 and served 12 years in prison in Rhode Island before moving to Louisiana and graduating from Tulane University’s law school. He has since become one of the state’s leading advocates for incarcerated and formerly incarcerated people, appearing before the Legislature regularly to testify.
“I was one of those kids that didn’t get hugged,” said Reilly, who was born into foster care. “People said I was un-rehabilitative for sure.”