Please Help Us Stop Kids From Being Sent To The World’s Deadliest Adult Prison

Dear Governor John Bel Edwards, Please withdraw your plan to send children to the Angola prison. If you proceed with this unprecedented plan, you’ll be the first governor in modern American history to place children adjudicated delinquent on the grounds of a maximum-security adult prison — and not just any maximum-security prison. Angola is a former slave plantation and the largest prison in the country. No amount of cosmetic change will erase the fact that Angola is haunted by and remains the site of human rights abuses and racial subjugation: enslavement, convict leasing, white guards lording over incarcerated Black people. Under your plan, kids will pass through gates topped by razor wire and be housed in single-cells of Angola’s former death row. You want to put children who have not been convicted of any crime in the same cells that once held the condemned. Pursuing this plan would make Louisiana the first in the nation for the wrong reason, and it would make Louisiana a national pariah. You have another choice. You can invest in Louisiana’s young people. You can put Louisiana back on the right track to be a national leader in juvenile justice — as it once was when it closed the notorious Tallulah Correctional Center for Youth — by investing in rehabilitation, treatment and care. Governor Edwards, abandon the plan to place kids in Angola’s former death row. Instead, invest in community-based programs and interventions that protect youth, provide them the skills they need to get back on track, and improve public safety. Children are capable of growth and redemption. You can be the governor who invested in Louisiana’s young people, and made Louisiana the first in the nation for the right reasons. Sincerely, Choose humanity

Kids shouldn’t be sent to this prison.

this is a frightening and disgusting situation for children. It couldn't be a worse 'solution' to 'safety' for the communities that aew suffereng and the children themselves.

It is amazing to me that things have gone so far that we are actually having to petition you to stop this horrible plan. Common sense and any sense of responsibility to humanity should have stopped this at its inception. Please, please do not send these boys to a place that will extinguish any possibility of treatment and rehabilitation. I am sick at heart just thinking of them there. Please do the right thing by these boys!

Fatima Al qadiri

Incarcerating children in death row cells absolutely removes any chance or hope of a bright future for these kids, their families, communities, and the state. Nuture and provide the tools to allow these young people to become productive members of society, rather than a drain on tax-payers. Please reconsider.

Stop this please!

All humans deserve humane, safe, rational treatment. Especially young folk. There is clearly a wicked, bigoted, corrupt, & downright stupid spirit in some areas of government in some states that are masked with some practical reasons, but we see right through you. There is NO legitimate reason for sending these kids to Angola prison. Period. Let us lift up all bipoc people and everyone historically oppressed, may they be no more and may we all have compassion.

Children do not belong in prison. They need a therapeutic environment where they learn how to care for themselves and others.

No person let alone a child should ever be housed in these conditions.

To Gov. Edwards: Please halt this profoundly wrong move to put kids into Angola. It is so wrong. Thank you.

I petition for no kids to Angola. It is not the solution and will not help anyone.

No kids in Angola

Outrageous inhumane incarceration. We can do better for young people struggling with serious mental health conditions.

This is a terrible, terrible plan. These children should not be anywhere near this prison much less housed in the former death row facility. Shame on the Governor!!

Do not implement this horrifying policy. At the very least, know how it looks to the rest of the country and the world.

It is unconscionable that we would even think about sending juvenile offenders to Angola Prison.

Literal children don't belong in prison with dangerous adults.

I am thankful for GBH for informing us - Thank you

Moving kids to an adult prison is wrong on so many levels. I hope that you can see what a detriment this action would have on the youth of Louisiana.