New Orleans D.A. unveils plan to reduce juvenile crime

By Meghan Holmes
Contributing Writer

On May 16, New Orleans District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro unveiled an eight-point plan to reduce juvenile crime around the city. Cannizzaro used the recent shooting death of 63-year-old Zelda Townsend, allegedly murdered by a 17-year-old during a botched car robbery, as evidence of the city’s “out of control” juvenile crime problem during last Thursday’s speech.

“The question is no longer whether this city is too hard on juvenile offenders. It is whether juvenile offenders are too hard on this city. Mrs. Townsend’s murder leaves no doubt of the answer,” he said.

The DA’s plan includes increased enforcement of truancy and curfew ordinances, tougher restrictions on repeat violent youthful offenders, the possible arrest of parents who do not adequately monitor their children, ending the NOPD’s federal consent decree, expanding the capacity and staff of the city’s juvenile detention center, requesting additional manpower from the state police during the summer, and “putting the public safety needs of New Orleans’ citizens and visitors ahead of outside donors and justice reform groups.”

Local justice reform advocate Gina Womack, executive director of Families and Friends of Louisiana’s Incarcerated Children, took issue with Cannizzaro’s description of juvenile crime as “out of control.” “The characterization from our DA that juvenile crime is out of control is misleading, and more importantly we need to be clear that those committing violent behaviors do not represent the majority of youth in this city,” she said.

New Orleans City Council President Jason Williams also criticized Cannizzaro’s plan to address juvenile crime.

“District Attorney Leon Cannizzaro is not wrong that early intervention is an invaluable deterrent to juvenile crime. But his definition of intervention is jail,” Williams said in a statement released on Friday. “His proposal to arrest and detain all juvenile curfew violations misses the mark. It assumes our options for intervention are as limited as they were twenty years ago. This is simply not the case according to the data produced around youth development, trauma, and the effects of incarceration on the greater community.”

According to data collected by New Orleans’ city council crime analyst, youthful offenders accounted for six percent of violent offenses in 2018. Arrests of juvenile offenders in the city increased every year from 2016 to 2018, but data the NOPD gave to The Advocate suggests that juvenile arrests may decrease this year. As of May 16, police had identified 756 youth subjects in crime reports, compared to 1,247 at this point last year. Ninety six percent of arrested youthful offenders in 2017 were Black.

The DA argues that these numbers do not accurately represent the city’s crime problem. “Police are dissuaded from being proactive, and when they are banned from pursuing teens seen committing criminal acts juvenile crime numbers are suppressed and the true numbers are concealed, he said.

Cannizzaro emphasized parental responsibility as an important part of reducing juvenile crime, suggesting fines and penalties for parents convicted of improper supervision of a minor, an extant but rarely enforced law.

“What does a fine do for poor people?” Womack said. “It ushers them into the prison system and that’s how we try to handle this problem, fueling the prison industrial complex, which is a big business. If I’m poor and struggling and my teenage child is out while I’m at work and I get arrested, I lose my job, I lose my housing, and how is this helpful? This goes against evidence-based practices and isn’t helpful to families.”

Cannizzaro called on the mayor and city council to engage in long term efforts to reduce juvenile crime, including improved mental health and substance abuse programs as well as better access to education and efforts to fight income inequality. None of these measures make up part of his eight-point plan, which he argues must be implemented “without delay” to “provide citizens with the juvenile crime relief our citizens so desperately want and so badly deserve.”

Justice reform advocates call on the city’s government to invest in “evidence-based, community centered alternatives that are centered in restorative practices,” Womack said. “Summer comes the same time every year, and we’ve been having this conversation for years. This is a national phenomenon where children are not connected to services and programs. Why aren’t we creating tons of programs? The schools already know this. It’s frustrating because we are not having data-driven conversations. Where is the data from the district attorney showing that this plan will work?”

This article originally published in the May 20, 2019 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.