On April 3, LCCR welcomed more than 230 guests to our annual Celebration for Children’s Rights event. Collectively, we raised nearly $90,000 to fund our work with arrested and incarcerated youth in Louisiana. We can think of no better way to spend a beautiful (if slightly humid) spring evening than to come together with so many of our friends and supporters. Thank you for joining us and making this such a wonderful night out!

LCCR is pleased to announce the launch of our new narrative campaign, #ItTakesAVillageNOLA. This campaign coincides with the 20th anniversary of Hurricane Katrina and calls upon New Orleanians to own the responsibility to its youth. It is part of a wider effort to combat the harmful narratives surrounding Black youth and promote alternative, positive narratives that reassert the humanity of young people in our city.

Louisiana’s Office of Juvenile Justice recently banned at-home holiday visits for incarcerated youth. This will keep children from visiting home for Christmas, Thanksgiving, Mardi Gras, and other major holidays.

At LCCR's Celebration for Children's Rights event on April 3, we will be presenting our 2025 Calogero Champion of Justice Award to Dominque Jones-Johnson, Founder & Executive Director of Daughters Beyond Incarceration, for her incredible work uplifting Black girls with parents in prison and developing them into advocates, policymakers, and grassroots activists to forever change lives, systems, and communities for good.

At the close of January, Aaron Clark-Rizzio concluded his 8.5 years of service as LCCR’s Executive Director and (later) Legal Director, leaving behind a legacy of thoughtful, dedicated stewardship of LCCR’s mission. Here we take a moment to reflect back on his impact at LCCR.

Join us on Thursday, April 3rd at our annual benefit event -- the Celebration for Children’s Rights -- as we celebrate our successes and come together to make Louisiana a better place for all children. We will also be presenting our Calogero Champion of Justice Award to Dominque Jones-Johnson, Founder & Executive Director of Daughters Beyond Incarceration, for her incredible work uplifting Black girls with incarcerated parents in our community.

With the recent deaths of French Quarter tour guide Kristie Thibodeaux and 15-year-old Jvoine Elow Jr., New Orleans’ juvenile electronic monitoring program is facing unprecedented scrutiny given its small size. The city is proposing an additional $2 million dollars in spending to expand the program from its current level of ~20 kids to 200, and […]

In Orleans Parish, the eligibility criteria for juvenile Electronic Monitoring (EM) clearly requires a child to have a RAI score of 10-11. Unclear, however, is how these scores are calculated and what they mean for public safety.   But what is an RAI? Risk Assessment Instruments are tools used to assess a defendant’s risk to themselves […]

With the intense controversy and scrutiny over electronic monitoring in New Orleans, we at LCCR decided to investigate ankle monitors, how and why they are used in the juvenile legal system, and how electronic monitoring affects our kids. In this series of three articles, we will: explore EM’s benefits and limitations, examine the role Risk Assessment Instruments play in EM participation, and review EM’s current usage and controversy in New Orleans. 

We first met “Deondre” as an 11th grader arrested for carrying a gun for his own protection. Deondre had been struggling for a while—he wasn’t attending school, feared being robbed or killed in his neighborhood, and was working at a smoothie shop to support himself and his baby son. Here's how LCCR helped.