Part II: New Orleans works to get juvenile justice system moving again after Katrina.

Publication: New Orleans CityBusiness

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COPYRIGHT 2006 Dolan Media Newswires

Byline: Richard A. Webster

Editor's note: The final installment in a two-part series on how the city and state processed hundreds of juveniles incarcerated in the New Orleans area during Hurricane Katrina. This week focuses on how the devastated Orleans Parish Juvenile Court tried to ensure juvenile inmates weren't trapped in legal limbo post-Katrina.Word began to spread in late September that more than 6,000 adult inmates evacuated from Orleans Parish Prison after Hurricane Katrina were languishing in a devastated justice system.Thousands sat in jails scattered across the state having never been formally charged with a crime. They had no legal representation, no scheduled court date and no idea when they would be released. Judges, lawyers and activists throughout the United States condemned the situation as a disaster. Before it was all over, some people arrested for minor traffic violations had spent more than three months in maximum-security facilities, including Angola State Penitentiary.Derwyn Bunton, associate director of the Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana, a New...

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