#New orleans youth study center plus#

You know, but we just don't have the bed space, either. Lieutenant JERRY CRITER (New Orleans Police Department): We don't have anywhere near the juveniles arrested that we had before. But Lieutenant Jerry Criter(ph) of the New Orleans Police Department says there's a different explanation. A huge drop Bell attributes to fewer people and the beginnings of reform. PETERSON: New Orleans police have logged around 700 juvenile arrests in the last year. Judge BELL: We determine whether to not this child is appropriate for incarceration, whether he poses a risk to the community, a risk to himself, a risk of re-offending, or a risk of failure to appear before the court. Bell says detention, the most expensive of the punishments, should be used less.

That's why he and other juvenile court judges have set new guidelines for sentencing kids. PETERSON: And with a budget that's been cut 85 percent since the storm, Bell says the court must spend the money it has carefully. I don't see how arresting someone for sitting on their neighbor's step reduces crime. Sitting on their neighbor's steps in a housing development is trespass. Standing still on the sidewalk is obstruction of a public passage. Judge DAVID BELL (Chief, Juvenile Court New Orleans): Playing basketball in a schoolyard is criminal trespass. He says they clogged and broke his court. There were 5,000 juvenile arrests a year before Katrina. Juvenile Court Chief Judge David Bell says that's not an indicator of a healthy system. But kids like Ashley had hearings within weeks after the storm. Many of those men, pictured on CNN in orange jumpsuits, became lost in the legal system. Evacuating with adult prisoners scared her. PETERSON: Even with her 9-month-old baby girl Jayla(ph) on her knee, it's hard to take Ashley for a grownup.

#New orleans youth study center plus#

We ain't eat for five days, and plus I was pregnant. Everybody walking around with no clothes on, it was that hot. She says there the walls began to drip with sweat and the smells rose.ĪSHLEY (Former Detention Center Detainee): Vomit, manure, urine, cigarettes -because they was smoking cigarettes. Katrina took out the power, so Ashley and the other kids were moved to the adult prison.

A year ago, she was a repeat runaway in the city's juvenile detention, the youth study center. She fixes her hair to look older than she is. MOLLY PETERSON: Ashley is a petite girl, 16 and stylish. Reformers say now is a good time to fix some of those longstanding problems. It's another setback for a juvenile justice system that was already on the ropes before Hurricane Katrina. Coming up, weight problems in American schools and on fashion show runways.īRAND: First, in New Orleans, five teenagers remain at large after escaping from the city's only youth detention center over the weekend.