Over the last five years, Louisiana’s juvenile justice system has been in the midst of a significant transformation. Reform efforts have occurred in spite of the fiscal, operational, and human challenges posed by the devastating impact of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005. Much of the recent work since 2006 has been supported by Louisiana’s selection by the MacArthur Foundation to participate in the Models for Change – Systems Reform in Juvenile Justice initiative, which aims to accelerate the pace of juvenile justice reform in targeted states and help them become successful models that can be emulated elsewhere. Importantly, the reforms themselves are a direct result of, and credit to, local and state leaders who are committed to shifting from an adult oriented model to a juvenile justice model premised on rehabilitation.
Although the recent reform efforts have been impressive, there remain key areas for improvement as well as the question of how to sustain – and build upon – the positive work to date. Recognizing the need for a path forward, the Louisiana Legislature passed House Concurrent Resolution No. 120 in June 2011, requiring the state’s Juvenile Justice Reform Act Implementation Commission (JJIC) to submit a report to the legislature in January 2013 that would assess the current state of the juvenile justice system, evaluate improvements made over the preceding five years, and issue recommendations for a five-year plan for reform. To meet this mandate, the JJIC requested that the Institute for Public Health and Justice (IPHJ), the home of the Louisiana Models for Change effort, initiate and develop the report.
In the fall of 2011, IPHJ reached out to two members of the Models for Change national resource bank, the Vera Institute of Justice and the National Center for Juvenile Justice, for assistance in developing this report, via support from the MacArthur Foundation. Working in collaboration with JJIC members and other state and local officials, it was agreed that the report would focus on four critical areas that have received attention over the past five years (2007 to 2011) and that are key to system-wide change.
