Alleged ‘harmful conditions’ for youth at Angola

[Bilal Mahmud المكافح المخلص]

The state of Louisiana may have violated the civil rights of dozens of juveniles it has sent to a temporary detention facility

BY: BOBBI-JEAN MISICK, VERITE

at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola over the past nine months, by allegedly subjecting the youths to “harmful conditions,” including solitary confinement, according to the U.S. Department of Justice.

On Friday (July 28), attorneys with the federal agency’s Civil Rights Division submitted a “statement of interest” in an ongoing federal class-action lawsuit against the state over the transfers to a former death row facility at the adult prison, which began last year. Since the transfers began in late October, the Louisiana Office of Juvenile Justice has sent between 70 and 80 of its detainees to Angola.

The Justice Department statement comes after the attorneys representing the juveniles last month filed a motion for preliminary injunction that alleged that teenagers, some as young as 15, were being subjected to solitary confinement and extreme heat and have not been receiving the services that the state is required to provide them, in violation of state and federal law, including their Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment. The motion asked U.S. District Court Judge Shelly Dick, who is presiding over the case in Baton Rouge, to order the state of Louisiana to cease transferring juveniles to Angola, and to move the ones currently incarcerated there.

Justice Department attorneys wrote that they submitted the statement to assist Dick with her analysis of the motion and because the agency is legally responsible for ensuring that the youths’ constitutional rights are upheld.

“If deprived of promised mental health and educational services and if subjected to isolation and other dangerous living conditions, youth in Angola are likely to suffer serious and irreparable harm to their physical and mental health,” the DOJ statement read.

Full article:  Alleged ‘harmful conditions’ for youth at Angola may violate Consti...

[Bilal Mahmud المكافح المخلص]

Kofi Bilal Mahmud Eid AlFitr 1443 A.H.

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