Shipping container detention standards must be included in Louisiana’s Minimum Licensing Standards for Juvenile Detention Facilities, or the practice of housing children in converted “sea cans” must be explicitly prohibited to ensure the safety and well-being of children.
Louisiana United Methodist Children and Family Services is categorically against the use of converted shipping containers for the detention and incarceration of children.
That Louisiana would allow the unregulated use of converted shipping containers for detention, secure care, or prison cells for children seems surreal. Now, the safety and well-being of Louisiana’s children require that Louisiana promulgate Minimum Licensing Standards controlling the use of shipping containers converted into prison cells for children.
When faced with too few beds and subpar facilities, authorities over children often do what they deem necessary in the name of expediency. Expedient authorities may harm children who are held in shipping containers converted, installed, used, and maintained without proper regulatory standards. Louisiana requires Minimum Licensing Standards that address the use of converted shipping containers for the detention and incarceration of Louisiana’s children. Louisiana requires shipping container detention standards before any child is kept in converted shipping containers.
Read Louisiana Lacks Standards to Protect Children Held in Converted Shipping Containers: an Advocacy Paper on Behalf of Louisiana’s Children, released by the Methodist Children’s Homes’ Center for Child Wellbeing.