Children incarcerated at Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola prison have been locked in windowless cells for nearly 24 hours a day without air conditioning as heat indexes in the area reach up to 133 degrees.
The youth, almost all of whom are Black, are being detained in the former death row building of the nation’s largest adult maximum security prison, according to the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) of Louisiana. One child also described being maced and thrown against the wall by staff in court filings.
In an emergency filing submitted to the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Louisiana on Monday, the ACLU and other legal groups asked the court to move the kids out of the unit immediately and cease transfers of children to adult carceral institutions.
“As predicted, the state’s unprecedented decision to hold children in abusive conditions inside Angola’s former death row building has resulted in almost a year of devastating effects,” Nora Ahmed, legal director of the ACLU […]
The Angola unit has been infamous for decades. The fact that children are placed there is abusive, and torture. What does this tell us about ourselves, and what does this communicate to the rest of the world? Note that this was done under a Democratic administration.