History

BreakOUT! History

BreakOUT! is a project of the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana (JJPL) which was formed in 1997 with the mission to "transform the juvenile justice system into one that builds on the strengths of young people, families and communities to ensure children are given the greatest opportunities to grow and thrive."

When JJPL first opened its doors in 1997, Louisiana’s juvenile justice system provided virtually no representation for children accused of crimes and then placed them in hyper-violent prisons where they regularly suffered bodily and emotional harm.  The large majority of these children were African-American.  Advocates and attorneys at JJPL regularly visited with incarcerated youth at these facilities and filed a class-action lawsuit along with the Department of Justice against one particularly violent youth prison, Tallulah Correctional Center for Youth, in 1998.  JJPL later also sued the privately-run Jena Correctional Center for Youth, chasing all for-profit industries from the state.

JJPL's "LGBTQ Committee" (2002-2003)

During this time, advocates who visited with youth in notoriously abusive youth prisons across the state began to discuss the experiences of LGBTQ youth in the juvenile justice system.  Initially beginning as a lunch-table conversation among three staff at JJPL in 2002, the LGBTQ Committee was launched in order to look critically at the issue of LGBTQ youth in the system, discuss advocacy efforts to protect the legal rights of incarcerated LGBTQ youth, and to brainstorm larger policy reform goals for LGBTQ youth in the juvenile justice system.

The Committee recognized that the majority of LGBTQ youth they worked with were from poor families and are African-American and/or Latino/a and held that issues of race/ ethnicity, class, gender, gender identity, and sexual orientation were not separable, but in fact often compounded each other, such that poor LGBTQ youth of color were almost invisible in the system, and when visible they were most often brutalized.  Over the next year, the Committee would lay the groundwork for what later became the LGBTQ and HIV/AIDS Youth Project at JJPL.

In addition to developing a Resource Guide for formerly-incarcerated LGBTQ youth in Louisiana (the first of its kind in the state), the Committee also built an infrastructure at JJPL for staff to understand issues regarding LGBTQ youth in the system and gave voice to LGBTQ youth in the Deep South.  Although already officially disbanded before the release, JJPL staff participated in the Model Standards Project, a national, multi-year project developed by Legal Services for Children and the National Center for Lesbian Rights.  The goal of the Model Standards Project was to improve services and outcomes by giving child welfare and juvenile justice agencies accurate, up-to-date information about the best practices for providing competent services to LGBT youth, based on the knowledge and practical experience of experts in the field.  In 2006, the Model Standards grew into the CWLA's Best Practice Guidelines for LGBT Youth in Out-of-Home Care, which was widely distributed across the country and included the voices, experiences, and recommendations of youth incarcerated in Louisiana.

The LGBTQ and HIV/AIDS Youth Project (2006)

Recognizing that there was little capacity to fully grow the project and give it the attention it deserved, the Committee continued to advocate for the legal rights of incarcerated LGBTQ youth at JJPL, but stopped meeting and officially disbanded in 2003, just as the state of Louisiana entered into a wave of juvenile justice reform.  However, in 2006, three years after JJPL and the Department of Justice settled a lawsuit on abusive conditions inside youth prisons in Louisiana, the passage of the Juvenile Justice Reform Act of 2003, or Act 1225, and the election of Governor Blanco on a platform of juvenile justice reform- and one year after Hurricane Katrina devastated the region, JJPL launched the LGBTQ and HIV/ AIDS Youth Project.

The LGBTQ and HIV/ AIDS Youth Project was developed thanks in large part to the work of thee original LGBTQ Committee members at JJPL who recognized the need for the project early on and injected the voices of LGBTQ youth into the national light.  Thanks to funding from the Tides Foundation and a commitment from JJPL staff, the project focused on protecting the rights of incarcerated LGBTQ youth and youth living with HIV/AIDS in secure care facilities in Louisiana. The objectives were to ensure that LGBTQ youth in the juvenile justice system received quality representation in delinquency proceedings, reform the secure care facilities to provide quality services addressing the specific needs of LGBTQ youth or youth living with HIV/AIDS from entry to post-release, and significantly reduce the number of incidents of violence and harassment experienced by LGBTQ youth in secure confinement.

In the first years of the work, the LGBTQ and HIV/ AIDS Youth Project:

  •  Conducted an assessment of the needs of LGBTQ youth in prison by surveying youth incarcerated in Louisiana state prisons, including those who either identified as LGBTQ or were perceived to be LGBTQ by other youth in the facilities, as well as asked heterosexual youth about their perceptions of LGBTQ youth in the facilities;
  • Successfully advocated for close to two dozen incarcerated LGBTQ youth and HIV positive youth (on issues that included securing their early release from the facility, reducing discriminatory disciplinary practices such as punishing children for having long hair, the inappropriate use of lockdown, and the right to confidentiality of HIV status);
  • Conducted trainings for juvenile public defenders, drug court personnel, district attorneys, Families in Need of Services (FINS), Office of Children and Family Services (OCS), juvenile bureau police and other court personnel to increase understanding of LGBTQ youth and reduce their disproportionate contact with law enforcement and the juvenile justice system;
  • Impacted stakeholders at the national level through presentations at conferences for the National Juvenile Justice Network, Annie E. Casey's Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative, MacArthur Models for Change, Community Justice Network for Youth, National Juvenile Defender Center, and more;
  • Released a report on LGBTQ youth in Louisiana state prisons called Locked Up & Out that has served as a platform for greater policy reform.

The Project also helped with the writing of Hidden Justice: Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, and Transgender Youth in Juvenile Courts.  In fact, the LGBTQ and HIV/AIDS Project is profiled on p. 129!

Launch of BreakOUT! (2010)

Recognizing the importance of also working directly with LGBTQ youth who were formerly-incarcerated or otherwise directly impacted by the juvenile justice system, the need to hone in on a smaller geographical location, and the need to expand the lens to take a critical look at other ways LGBTQ youth are criminalized in New Orleans (including the adult criminal justice system and discriminatory policing), JJPL launched BreakOUT! in 2010.  Thanks in large part to the Open Society Institute, individual donors, and community support, BreakOUT! now serves as a youth organizing and leadership development project with its own programming and space specifically for LGBTQ youth in New Orleans.