Senate select committee presses juvenile justice leaders on staffing, group homes and safety despite reported drop in assaults

Senate Select Committee on Women and Children Chairperson Senator Jackson Andrews heard a budget and operations briefing from the Louisiana Office of Juvenile Justice (OJJ) on Jan. 15, during which agency leaders reported year-over-year decreases in recorded assaults but acknowledged ongoing staffing and placement challenges.

The briefing focused on OJJ’s fiscal and operational priorities for the current year, including fleet replacement, contract rates for privately run group homes, and the agency’s work to expand therapeutic programming and improve staffing. “For fiscal year 25, our budget was $172,400,000,” Jason Starnes, undersecretary for Juvenile Justice, told the committee when identifying himself and the agency’s fiscal baseline.

The department provided facility-level security data intended to show progress on safety. Darren Potan, deputy assistant secretary at OJJ, told the committee the agency’s code-of-conduct data show declines between 2023 and 2024 across multiple sites. For example, at the Acadiana Center for Youth (ACY) youth-on-staff incidents fell from 95 to 51, and youth-on-youth incidents at the same facility fell from 132 to 127. Potan summarized the system-wide change as “a 41% decrease in youth on staff assaults and a 20% decrease on youth on youth…