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'No affinity for rehabilitation:' Prison reform advocate criticizes state correctional centers
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BATON ROUGE - The resignation of Louisiana's prisons chief amid recent WBRZ Investigative Unit reports on the Elayn Hunt Correctional Center have sparked conversation about what's really going on inside state prisons.
Founding member of the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison Reform Coalition Rev. Alexis Anderson says that the alleged problems going on in the facility are widespread.
"Elayn Hunt is not the only facility. You can probably have the same conversation about any facility," she says.
This comes after a DOC employee and an inmate in the facility contacted WBRZ Investigative Unit about alleged drug trafficking and unsanitary living conditions. Anderson believes that people should look at all correctional centers instead of just Hunt's.
"Those facilities are often overbuilt to accommodate not the public safety needs of the community, but as a profiteering center," she says.
She says that Gov. Landry's new criminal laws, such as trying 17-year-olds as adults and taking away parole, will only overcrowd prisons and could make corruption worse.
"The governor has no affinity for rehabilitation. There is nothing about these facilities that have the capacity to do that," she says.
She also says the same issues going on outside of the centers are also happening inside and both need to addressed properly.
"They're not manufacturing drugs in the facility. Those drugs are being brought in. By not addressing that issue, you may be turning a community into a trafficking facility for drugs," she says.
WBRZ reached out to the governor's office for comment after hours. This is a developing story.
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