In recent months, Baton Rouge officials have been asking residents what they'd want from a new prison and juvenile detention facility if one or both were to be constructed.

Community suggestions range from prioritization of mental health services and renaming the facility to creating a jail focused on rehabilitation.

The meetings come as the sheriff, mayor-president and the prison's warden all increasingly take the view that East Baton Rouge Parish needs new detention facilities.

Partnering with Mayor-President Sharon Weston Broome's office and the EBR Jail Taskforce, Grace Hebert Curtis Architects have been holding public meetings to hear what features residents believe would be crucial for a new facility to have, which will guide any efforts going forward.

"As we go through this, we've got those guiding principles that were set. That's kind of like our North Star," said architect Jimmy Hebert.

The firm has designed other Louisiana facilities, like the Lafourche Parish Correctional Complex, the Livingston Parish Detention Center and the new Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women. The firm says all all the facilities are designed with modern, reform-based incarceration principles in mind.

Exterior of the Baton Rouge Juvenile Detention Center. Photos taken Friday Feb. 22, 2019, in Baton Rouge, La.

Newer facilities like these look quite a bit different from the state's older detention centers, like the East Baton Rouge Juvenile Detention Center and the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison, built in the 1950s and 1960s.

While both facilities are meant to be short-term, pre-trial facilities, it's still important for each to be capable of serving inmates housed there, as reform lessens chances of re-offense after release, said Juvenile Court Judge Gail Grover.

This is becoming increasingly difficult to accomplish as the juvenile facility and the local jail continue to decay.

Grover said the parish needs a better way to help young people in legal trouble get their lives back on track.

"They're sitting in our detention facility, and if you don't address those needs there ... if they are put on probation, then we've lost days to help them be successful on probation," she said.

Monday's meeting at the Jones Creek Library was the last of the regular listening sessions over the past couple months.

The city-parish has not yet determined whether efforts will be made to build a new juvenile center or jail, nor has any cost been estimated for doing so. The recent "listening sessions" have been used to purely determine if the community thinks there is a need, and if so, what do residents want from the new facilities.

The mayor's office said a number of options would be available to fund construction like public-private partnerships, grants, bond sales and taxes.

"Part of what goes into deciding how to fund the facility is going to be what comes out of these meetings," said Julie Baxter Payer, the mayor's chief of staff. "We have to know what the community wants, and then we come to determining how much does the community want to invest ... Does the community think we need it in the facility?"

A planning session open to the public featuring the findings from these recent meetings will be held at 10 a.m. on Dec. 9 at Grace Hebert Curtis' office, located at 501 Government Street.