Eight years ago, the political stars aligned in Louisiana, paving the way for radical criminal legal reform. The state had its first Democratic governor in over two decades, its first African American chief justice in state Supreme Court history, and a legislative body applying a laser focus to the state's growing budget deficit.
At the time, Louisiana had a $700 million corrections budget, sky high recidivism rates, and one of the highest crime rates in the nation, with no public safety returns for its exorbitant spending. To save money while improving public safety, the state government applied what is called a "justice reinvestment model."
The idea was revolutionary and effective: take money that had been wasted on over-incarcerating people who committed nonviolent crimes and reinvest it toward programs that are actually proven to decrease crime. The state saved nearly $153 million and invested these savings into programs that were dramatically reducing recidivism, meaning that people who left prison did not continue to commit crimes once released.
Our political stars are now misaligned. Last month, newly installed Governor Jeff Landry called a special session to address "public safety." He successfully undid all these meaningful reforms. These changes will not make us safer—it will just make an ineffective system more costly. In fact, the governor, supposedly a proponent of fiscal conservatism, will not say how much his changes will cost the taxpayers, but estimates project over $10 million a year.
Louisiana has historically led the nation in per capita incarceration, locking up more of its citizens than any other state in the nation, twice the national average. This is no doubt explained in part by the prominent role New Orleans played in the slave trade. As civil rights advocate Michelle Alexander pointed out in her groundbreaking book, The New Jim Crow, "Rather than rely on race, we use our criminal justice system to label people of color 'criminals' and then engage in all the practices we supposedly left behind."
Taking a different approach has tremendous benefits. After the reforms in Louisiana, the savings from the prison system were reinvested into nonprofit organizations doing re-entry work. These are groups like the Parole Project, who host resume writing and job-seeking workshops, teach banking literacy and credit building, and help recently incarcerated individuals enroll in Medicaid and Medicare. Or groups like the United Way of Southeast Louisiana, who saw 100 percent of participants in their Louisiana Prisoner Reentry Initiative in Jefferson Parish not recidivate after one year. These are groups doing the work of healing and rehabilitation instead of further trauma and punishment.
We know that harsh sentences do not deter crime. What we know does work is educational, vocational, and social support. Since the reforms, we've shown just that. The year before these reinvestments started, 15 percent of people returned to prison after a year. In 2020, that number fell to 11 percent, over a quarter decrease. It's stayed below 15 percent ever since.
During the COVID-19 pandemic, a period of intense uncertainty and economic anxiety, crime rates rose everywhere. Louisiana was no different. In the years after lockdowns eased and schools went back into session, crime has since fallen. Tough-on-crime lawmakers, in Louisiana and around the country, have chosen to ignore these facts and instead return to cruel and ineffective ways.
A cascade of hardline bills eliminating parole eligibility, eviscerating good time, lowering the age of majority for youth to be prosecuted as adults, and instituting harsh mandatory minimums, have been rushed through the state legislature. I worry what is happening in Louisiana will quickly spread elsewhere. Proponents of these bills say they put victims first and increase safety. In actuality, all they will do is cost taxpayers millions, make no one safer, and further generational traumas, particularly upon people of color, caused by the criminal legal system.
