Panel wants to fix La. juvenile justice

• By ALLEN M. JOHNSON JR.
• Advocate New Orleans bureau
• Published: Oct 18, 2008 - Page: 13A - UPDATED: 12:05 a.m.

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NEW ORLEANS — After a lengthy panel discussion on juveniles and criminal justice issues in Louisiana on Friday morning, a retired state judge offered a concise proposal for stopping “skyrocketing” crime in Louisiana.

“Send the drunks and the drug addicts to the (social workers) and health-care systems for treatment and let the criminal justice system focus on the criminals — the real bad dudes,” said Judge Calvin Johnson, who retired Jan. 2 as the first black chief judge of New Orleans Criminal District Court.

Johnson, now executive director of the Metropolitan Human Services District, moderated a one-hour forum, hosted by the Children’s Defense Fund at the University of New Orleans Lindy Boggs Conference Center.

Titled “America’s Cradle to Prison Pipeline Summit,” the two-day conference ended Friday.

Organizers called for the “dismantling” of government programs and policies that contribute to the disproportionately high incarceration of poor and minority youths, including inadequate health care, failing schools, and “zero tolerance” school regulations and sentencing practices.

At the forum — dominated by panelists from host city New Orleans — Johnson said he was most troubled by remarks from Opelousas Mayor Donald Ray Cravins Sr.

“In my region, we have the highest number of children under the care, control and custody of the juvenile system,” Cravins, who previously represented the Lafayette area as a state senator, told the audience of about 175 people. “You would think New Orleans, Baton Rouge or Shreveport would be higher.”

Johnson said crime statewide is “sky-rocketing,” and not just in cities — neither Johnson nor Cravins offered any supporting data.

“They have a tremendous crime problem in Iberville Parish, where I grew up,” Johnson continued. “When you get outside the urban areas of Louisiana into these midsize parishes with populations of 40,000 to 50,000 people and you look at their crime rates, you see crime is sky-rocketing statewide — it really is.”

After sentencing thousands of defendants in Orleans Parish during nearly two decades on the bench, Johnson says he has concluded: “There is no relationship between increasing incarceration and reducing crime.”

New Orleans authorities spend a disproportionate amount of time dealing with untreated drug addicts and the mentally ill — while violent predators go free, he said. New strategies are needed.

Cravins, who as a legislator several years ago helped to lead reform movement that closed the problem-plagued youth correctional facility at Tallulah, expressed dismay Friday.

“Today, I think we are witnessing one of the greatest tragedies of our time. We have the highest rate of incarceration in the country and nobody seems concerned about it,” Cravins said.