BATON ROUGE - The East Baton Rouge Parish Juvenile Detention and Jail Task Force on Tuesday presented its initial designs for new juvenile detention facilities, plans that Councilman Darryl Hurst said have the expressed goal of making incarcerated juveniles "better when they leave than when they got there."

"We need a great courthouse, we need a great area for families, we need a great area to rehabilitate juveniles," the District 5 councilman said.

The task force said that the plan is still looking for a location and that the proposal would then take 12 to 14 months to finalize the design that would house 80 juveniles and 40 17-year-olds. The facility will also be home to 1,500 beds for adult inmates, with room for expansion. According to a schematic for the unfinalized project drawn by Grace Hebert Curtis Architects, the facility will also feature courts, visitation centers, and a courtyard motel. 

The task force will meet in the next few weeks to discuss costs. 

The new facility would ideally have areas for both pre- and post-trial actions for incarcerated juveniles, Hurst said. Hurst says he wants to leverage taxpayer dollars so that they can make the most out of one facility. 

Part of this means finding a new location for the juvenile detention center, which is currently located at 8333 Veterans Memorial Boulevard. The facility, along with a adult facility, is right near the airport, something Hurst says does not do an amazing job at "inviting people to a healthy Baton Rouge." 

Hurst said part of the plan is to work with the Baton Rouge Metropolitan Airport to redevelop the current lot the juvenile detention center sits on to better fit the area around the travel hub. 

The new facility will also address the growing problem of mental health in the capital region.

"Look at what happened with Kyren Lacy," Hurst said, referencing the former LSU football player taking his own life.

The rest of the task force said that the priority for the new facility should go beyond housing conditions. 

"It's really important for myself and other community advocates to be part of the task force as well as the process so the juveniles that are currently being detained, and also the adults that are currently being detained, have effective, not just conditions to be housed in but also adequate programing, as well as a comprehensive way for the court system to be able to participate in the judicial process for the individuals who are pre-trial," Executive Director of the Justice and Accountability Center of Louisiana Sherie Thomas said.

In the multi-year process of developing the plan for the new facility, the task force visited multiple other facilities to see what the East Baton Rouge Parish facility could look like. 

"What we're looking to do is to create more of a rehabilitative, corrective atmosphere for the individuals," Thomas said. "Individuals literally had an opportunity to reenter into society with corrective behavior as well as be rehabilitated."

One of the examples the task force used was a facility in Calcasieu Parish, which they said has adequate amenities for both the staff and the incarcerated inmates. Therapy, an abundance of natural light and ample programs to help reintegrate the juveniles back into society, a partner at Grace Hebert Curtis Architects Alex Deshotels said. Deshotels said that his firm has designed several comparable facilities. 

"How do we make sure that we provide space that we expand on that in the future; it's an imminent need but a growing need," Deshotels said about addressing mental health in his design.

WBRZ previously reported that the East Baton Rouge Parish Juvenile Detention Center was "a very depressing building" and officials have been working to resolve these issues.