Nick Chrastil

Emails show that state officials considered creating a shelter in a barge moored in Industrial Canal — and that prominent local developers knew about the shelter long before some city officials.

The leader of the governor’s temporary shelter says they are fully staffed and genuinely ready to move people into permanent housing. But it is several miles from the Superdome and is seen by critics as a way to warehouse homeless people away from Super Bowl crowds.

Local governments request more than $500 million to build regional and local juvenile-detention facilities — and to repair and construct some adult jails.

Invoices show that Jackson charged OJJ nearly $2 million dollars over the past year to house juveniles in the jail, despite grave allegations of abuse and mistreatment.

A proposed Biden-administration regulation change could bar the state from using federal dollars for child-protective investigations, controversial crisis pregnancy centers, and reduce the amount to pre-K.

A year ago, when Jackson Parish opened its new, unlicensed juvenile jail, kids complained of extended stints of solitary confinement, along with extensive abuse and violations. A DCFS inspection supported those claims, but the agency gave the jail a license anyway.

In July, a new state law put all Louisiana pretrial juvenile detention centers under the umbrella of the state Office of Juvenile Justice. Soon after, the agency filed an ‘emergency order’ approving the use of ‘chemical agents’ in those facilities. 

A panel of Fifth Circuit judges found that the explanations of two security-district officers who stopped three young Black men searching for an ailing dog lacked the specifics needed for a legal stop.

Though a judge ruled that the DOC must improve the brutal conditions that Angola's Farm Line labors under, so far not much has changed.

In-depth news and investigations for New Orleans