Southern Poverty Law Center projects affected by Katrina

[theHandpuppet]

I'm not sure how we could help but here's a heads up!

http://www.splcenter.org/news/item.jsp?aid=128

September 6, 2005 | MONTGOMERY, Ala. -- The Center's headquarters here escaped significant damage and inconvenience when Hurricane Katrina blew through on August 29, but several of its legal initiatives and clients were profoundly affected.

The New Orleans office of the Center-funded Juvenile Justice Project of Louisiana (JJPL) is intact and dry, but its staff is traumatized and now scattered across the country. Several have lost their homes. And the fate of their juvenile clients, largely from poor areas that have been totally devastated, weighs heavily on them.

Some JJPL staff in Lake Charles and Houston are going shelter to shelter, trying to locate parents with whom they worked on juvenile justice issues and connect them with their families.

"We're also concerned about some of our young clients who are due to be released from juvenile facilities in Baton Rouge and now have no homes to go to," said JJPL director David Utter. JJPL staff are working to place these children with other families, he said. Otherwise, they will be forced to remain incarcerated, even though their sentence is completed....

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