Louisiana's PREA Initiative: Advancing Systemic Change

The Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) Program provides funding to states, units of local government, and federally recognized Indian tribes to support comprehensive approaches within state, tribal, and local adult and juvenile correctional facilities to prevent, detect, and respond to incidences of sexual victimization. The PREA Program provides funding to eligible applicants for demonstration projects within confinement settings, including adult prisons and jails; juvenile facilities; community corrections facilities; law enforcement lockups and other temporary holding facilities; and tribal detention facilities. Applicants must successfully communicate a comprehensive approach to the prevention, detection, and response to the incidence of sexual abuse and clearly prioritize gaps which are as of yet unaddressed, either programmatically or through changes in policy and procedures, as they relate to implementation of the PREA standards. The goal of this program is to assist local adult and juvenile facilities in implementing prevention, identification, and response mechanisms that will reduce the incidence of sexual abuse in confinement facilities.

Louisiana's Office of Juvenile Justice (OJJ) will utilize their FY14 PREA grant to produce, through the past Culture Toolkit and strategic planning, an additional set of agency-wide solutions that will result in promising practices, which can be shared by all PREA practitioners and used to promote sexual safety; and to become a Trauma-Informed Center. This will be accomplished by: 1) increasing the number of agency-wide leadership events hosted; 2) increasing the number of new leadership topics to address recent agency changes that could de-stabilize PREA progress; 3) complete an initial assessment that will determine the agency's training needs; 4) implement a one-day trauma-informed care training; and 5) implement a series of trainings and technical assistance that adjusts trauma-informed care to fit OJJ's PREA needs.

CA/NCF