BATON ROUGE — The Office of State Inspector General concluded that the Ware Youth Center, the Red River Parish youth detention center with inmates from across the state, to be "a safe and secure environment suitable to house juveniles who have entered Louisiana’s juvenile justice system" in a report released Thursday.

"During nine different visits to Ware, OIG investigators observed clean, safe and secure facilities and professional staff. Over the past three years, as part of its oversight responsibilities, OIG has physically visited every secure care facility operated by OJJ in the State of Louisiana," the reports conclusions read. "The Ware campus compares favorably to those other facilities."

The OIG report found that 68% of suicide attempts between 2018 and 2022 involved the same 10 inmates. More than half of the escapes involved the same five inmates.

The five highest offending juveniles were involved in an average of 42 incidents each, with this group being responsible for 33% of reported incidents. There was reportedly a marked increase in reported incidents in 2020 and 2021, which coincides with the time that nine of the highest-offending juveniles arrived at Ware.

The report was issued by the Office of the Governor in response to an October 2022 New York Times investigation that alleged "repeated abuses, overlooked complaints and a surge in suicide attempts" at Ware. The Times reported that there were at least 64 suicide attempts at Ware in 2019 and 2020, a rate higher than at any other juvenile facility in the state.

The Advocate previously reported about the poor conditions and understaffing of the facility in 2018. 

Local juvenile detention facilities do not fair much better, with WBRZ reporting last month that the East Baton Rouge Juvenile Detention Center does not have running water and working toilets in some of its cell blocks.

The OIG report can be read in its entirety here.