The challenge

Louisiana has the highest incarceration rate of any state in the country. Some 70 to 90 percent of jailed youth later spend time in adult prisons. In Louisiana, 1 in 35 African-American boys will make it to college, and 1 out of 7 end up imprisoned or on parole. But with less than 2 percent of Louisiana’s prison budget allocated for rehabilitation, incarcerated youth receive little in the way of help to change their lives. “Conditions of confinement at Louisiana’s juvenile correctional centers for youth have long been deplorable,” says Jefferson Parish Juvenile Court Judge Nancy Amato Konrad. “Most of the secure facilities in the state provide little rehabilitation, education, or even safety from harm.”

Adding to the problem is endemic racism. “I represented a 13-year-old African-American child who received a juvenile life sentence for the same purse-snatching charge for which his white co-defendant was sentenced to probation,” says David Utter, who directs the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana in New Orleans. “Race is the indelible factor in my work.”

Seeds of commitment

Utter can’t help but contrast his upbringing with the backgrounds of those with whom he works. “I understand that, as a white male, I’ve inherited all the privileges that attach to that status in our society,” he says. “I can only seek to utilize my education, experience, and privilege to develop strategies to ... create a different kind of society, where privilege and power are not conferred based on the color of a person’s skin.”

Utter says he became a lawyer to take on the legal troubles of those who could not afford representation. In Utter’s first job after law school in the early 1990s, he sued prison systems in Alabama and Louisiana to compel them “to treat prisoners with basic dignity,” as he puts it. In a “tough on crime” political environment, his reform efforts met with little success.

As a lawyer representing poor people who faced the death penalty, he successfully kept many clients from death but became increasingly frustrated as he heard the “unrelenting story of despair and deprivation” prisoners told him. Those experiences were one reason Utter and two colleagues founded the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana (JJPL) in 1997.

Accomplishments

When the JJPL began, Louisiana incarcerated more children than any other state in America. Since then, Louisiana’s juvenile prison population has dropped from 1,900 to fewer than 500. That change is due in large part to the efforts of Utter and the JJPL.

In 2000, the JJPL filed and won a class-action lawsuit against the privately run Jena Juvenile Justice Center, citing poor management and abysmal conditions. As a result, the state took control of the facility and soon closed it. The JJPL also filed suit against the privately run Tallulah Correctional Center for Youth, another facility that had become notorious for its poor treatment of young offenders. The U.S. Department of Justice joined the legal action, and the settlement of the case in 2000 ultimately closed Tallulah.

Tallulah’s closure was stipulated in Louisiana’s Act 1225, known as the Juvenile Justice Reform Act of 2003. Its passage was a major victory for the JJPL and other juvenile justice reform advocates. Utter cites the death of his client Emmanuel Narcisse at the hands of a juvenile prison guard as a “devastating” event that energized advocates, including Narcisse’s parents, to work for passage of Act 1225. Narcisse’s parents, “more than anything, wanted his death not to be in vain,” Utter says. “His death became the example of all that is wrong with Louisiana’s system.” The legislation provides for placement of juveniles in the least-restrictive setting possible, the creation of a plan for further prison reform, and ways to channel state resources toward early intervention, alternative punishment, and community-based sentencing for juvenile offenders.

Early on, Utter recognized that the families of incarcerated youth often feel as isolated as their sons and daughters. Also, Utter says, “The parents, families, and communities from which these young people come are marginalized and excluded from public debate and decision-making regarding the future of their own children.” In response, the JJPL began meeting with parents, other relatives, guardians, and friends of incarcerated youth. In time, this group became Families and Friends of Louisiana’s Incarcerated Children (FFLIC). Led by parents, FFLIC is now a statewide organization, with chapters in cities throughout Louisiana. In 2001, it was FFLIC members who helped influence the passage of Act 1225.

Leadership style

Utter says he is aware of the stark differences between his position and that of his clients. “My privilege is in some ways a mandate, and I feel it as such,” Utter says. “And I seek to use it in a way that opens the door for others and provides the kind of leadership where the ultimate goal is to take a step back and let those whose voices have not been heard take center stage.”

Utter says he aims for a time when he can step aside as leader of the movement to improve the juvenile justice system in Louisiana. “I wear this title of ‘leader’ with a great deal of self-consciousness and knowledge that if I am doing my job right, it is a temporary position that I will relinquish with joy,” Utter says. “Individual leadership will always have a role in social-justice movements, but if the changes we seek are to be made long-term and sustainable, it is necessary that we as ‘leaders’ develop models for progressive reform that remain community-driven rather than personality-driven.”

The future

In the next few years, the JJPL and the parent-led FFLIC will collaborate to “drive the reform debate based on the best interests of at-risk and delinquent children and their families,” Utter says. He adds that the two organizations’ complementary approaches make them “impossible to ignore.” According to Utter, “with JJPL on the Senate floor and FFLIC on the Capitol steps, our symbiotic relationship creates an effective force for change.” In five years, he writes, “I hope FFLIC and JJPL will be equally powerful advocates and policymakers, continuing to make the juvenile-justice landscape in Louisiana among the best in the nation.”

More about David J. Utter and the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana

“Quite simply, Louisiana’s entire juvenile-justice system is being reformed and, in large part, the reform is due to David Utter’s tireless efforts and his impassioned advocacy.”
- Nancy Amato Konrad, Judge, Juvenile Court, Parish of Jefferson, Louisiana

“The conditions were among the worst for juvenile inmates ever documented. ‘When we sued Tallulah in 1998,’ says David Utter, director of the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana, ‘they were locking kids in their small, dirty, vermin-infested cells for up to twenty-three hours a day -- letting the kids out only to shower. This isolation does tremendous psychological harm to kids.’”
- The Progressive, 2003