Louisiana lawmakers want information on girls prison leadership, contract

by Julie O’Donoghue, Louisiana Illuminator
February 20, 2025

Louisiana senators are pressing state officials for information about the leadership of a controversial juvenile justice facility the state is using as its youth girls prison again. 

Ware Youth Center in Red River Parish was the focus of a New York Times investigative report in 2022 that alleged widespread abuse of girls held at the facility. 

At a legislative hearing Tuesday, Sen. Katrina Jackson-Andrews, D-Monroe, told state juvenile justice officials to report back to her about who sits on the Ware Youth Center Authority, the state-created entity that is supposed to oversee the youth prison.

Jackson said she wants to make sure the people supervising Ware when the alleged abuse occurred are not still in charge.

“Are we paying the same people who mistreated children?” Jackson-Andrews asked at a Senate Select Committee on Women and Children hearing. “Are the same people – the same entity – who mistreated children still making a profit from our state?” she asked. 

Jason Starnes, undersecretary of the state Office of Juvenile Justice, told the committee he has no reservations about the safety of Ware.

“I can assure you we would not have entered into a contract” if there were worries about abuse at the facility, he said.

The Office of Juvenile Justice put eight of the 21 incarcerated girls in its custody at Ware in December after canceling the facility’s contract to hold minors two years ago. At the time, juvenile justice leaders said they couldn’t afford to pay Ware the money it demanded. 

The state’s financial arrangement with Ware has been resurrected by Kenny Loftin, Gov. Jeff Landry’s new head of Office of Juvenile Justice and Ware’s former longtime director. 

Loftin was not accused of any wrongdoing at Ware in The New York Times article, but some of the alleged abuse detailed in the story overlapped with the time he was in charge of the facility. 

He has previously said the investigative report was full of lies and false statements.

Yet public details of the Ware Youth Center Authority are scarce. The facility doesn’t mention it at all on its website or list the members who sit on the board. No one at the facility could be reached Wednesday to answer questions about the authority. 

The Office of Juvenile Justice did not respond to requests Wednesday for more details about the Ware contract or information about its appointees to the Ware authority. 

Set up through state law in 1986, the Ware Youth Center Authority is supposed to include state appointees and representatives from Claiborne, DeSoto, Natchitoches, Red River, Sabine and Webster parishes.

Judges overseeing juvenile cases from those parishes appoint three members; sheriffs and police chiefs from the parishes name four members; the six parish governments involved receive one seat each; and the local district attorneys receive one seat each.

The remaining three seats are supposed to be filled by the assistant secretary of the Office of Juvenile Justice, a job in the state Department of Public Safety and Corrections that doesn’t technically exist any more. Over a decade ago, it was replaced with the deputy secretary position Loftin now holds.

Ware received a state contract in December to provide 24 beds for incarcerated girls, paying the facility more than $500 per day per bed for the next three years, Starnes told the Senate committee Wednesday. That would be over $182,500 per bed per year.

Ware will be paid for all 24 beds whether they are occupied or not. It is currently receiving full payment even though 13 of the state’s 21 imprisoned girls are still being housed at a St. Martinville jail, Starnes said. 

The girls are currently held at St. Martinville because Ware doesn’t have enough staff on site to fully run its program. Starnes said he hopes to move all the girls to Ware in the next few weeks.

Though Ware has received negative media attention, a few legislators were anxious to see the transfer from the St. Martinville jail to Ware occur as soon as possible.

“St. Martin[ville] bothers me. It’s out in the middle of nowhere, and it looks like a prison,” said Sen. Regina Barrow, D-Baton Rouge.

Sen. Beth Mizell, R-Franklinton, said she had reservations about Ware after reading The New York Times story, but a visit to see its incarcerated girls program proved to be “uplifting.”

Mizell said she believes the facility has turned a corner since the alleged abuse would have occurred years ago, and she had major concerns about the St. Martinville jail when she toured it. 

“That was like a Dickens novel. It was bad,” Mizell said of St. Martinville. 

Starnes said the plan is to eventually close the St. Martinville jail after the girls are all transferred to Ware.

Louisiana Illuminator is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Louisiana Illuminator maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Greg LaRose for questions: info@lailluminator.com.

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