Reports from New Orleans: The Power of Youth and Family Advocates

From JPPL

This post was written by Nancy Martin, facilitator of YTFG’s Multiple Pathways to

Graduation Work Group and consultant to youth-serving organizations. The following is a summary of a discussion held in New Orleans during the YTFG meeting in a joint session of the Juvenile Justice Work Group and MPG.

Over the past decade, Louisiana’s juvenile justice system has undergone a transformation – closing dangerous institutions, expanding community-based alternatives, and reducing the number of incarcerated youth from 2,000 to fewer than 600. The orientation has moved from one of locking up/punitive to educating/restorative. Advocacy groups have played an important role in these reforms, in particular by engaging youth and families in the work. Panelists highlighted current juvenile justice initiatives, including efforts to address the school-to-prison pipeline, and discussed strategies for effectively partnering with system-involved LGBTQ youth and families to advance reform. Speakers included Dana Kaplan (Executive Director, Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana), Gina Womack (Executive Director, Families and Friends of Louisiana’s Incarcerated Children), and Wesley Ware (Executive Director, BreakOUT!).


The Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana (JJPL) was founded 17 years ago in response to a violent juvenile justice system. Community engagement has been crucial to successful reforms in Louisiana because earlier, no one cared that juvenile detention facilities were brutal. Community engagement helped to create a political environment in which the governor and legislators were willing to pass juvenile justice reform legislation.

Because nearly all of the public schools in New Orleans are charter schools, there is no central accountability for schools and it is hard to work on professional development for teachers on discipline issues. Youth advocates have pushed for a decrease in suspensions and expulsion, even calling for a moratorium on suspensions. Advocates have also focused on building a system that coordinates care across agencies. Twenty-seven percent of youth in detention in Orleans Parish were arrested for something at school. There is a structural issue of underfunding education options. If all out-of-school youth came back to school, there would not be the funds needed to educate them.

The Youth Empowerment Project and BreakOUT! both grew out of JJPL in response to a need for quality providers of services.

Additional Resources:

• Trash to Triumph: Juvenile Detention in New Orleans Five Years After Katrina
• What's Really Up Doc? A Call for Reform of the Office of Juvenile Justice
• Locked Up and Locked Out: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender Youth in Louisiana's Juvenile Justice System
• BreakOUT! Proposed Anti-Discrimination Policy

Anti-Discrimination/ LGBT Policy of the New Orleans Youth Study Center