On the title track of his 2016 album “4 Your Eyez Only” — and in the documentary he filmed partly in Baton Rouge — J. Cole raps as a dead father writing a letter to the daughter he will never raise. The song indicts a system that chose prison when what was needed was education. It is an eight‑minute elegy — and a policy argument. And it is the song I have not been able to stop hearing since March 8, when 8‑year‑old Davian Nicholas was shot and killed on San Juan Drive while a group of young men turned an argument into a shootout in the same space where children play.
East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff Sid Gautreaux called it a “heartbreaking and senseless tragedy.” He was right. But heartbreak without analysis is just grief on repeat. If we want to understand why Davian is gone, we have to examine what we are building — and what we are refusing to build — in the neighborhoods where our children live.
Here is what we are building: Gov. Jeff Landry’s proposed budget includes an $82 million increase for corrections and inmate housing, an 11% hike that pushes state spending in that category to nearly $800 million. That money would help fund expansion at the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, higher per diem payments to sheriffs and new juvenile detention capacity. More beds. More cages. More capacity to warehouse human beings only after the damage is done.
Here is what we are refusing to build: the community infrastructure that actually keeps children alive…