Louisiana is the world's prison capital

[greenforest32]

Louisiana is the world's prison capital. The state imprisons more of its people, per head, than any of its U.S. counterparts. First among Americans means first in the world. Louisiana's incarceration rate is nearly triple Iran's, seven times China's and 10 times Germany's.

The hidden engine behind the state's well-oiled prison machine is cold, hard cash. A majority of Louisiana inmates are housed in for-profit facilities, which must be supplied with a constant influx of human beings or a $182 million industry will go bankrupt.

Several homegrown private prison companies command a slice of the market. But in a uniquely Louisiana twist, most prison entrepreneurs are rural sheriffs, who hold tremendous sway in remote parishes like Madison, Avoyelles, East Carroll and Concordia. A good portion of Louisiana law enforcement is financed with dollars legally skimmed off the top of prison operations.

If the inmate count dips, sheriffs bleed money. Their constituents lose jobs. The prison lobby ensures this does not happen by thwarting nearly every reform that could result in fewer people behind bars.

Meanwhile, inmates subsist in bare-bones conditions with few programs to give them a better shot at becoming productive citizens. Each inmate is worth $24.39 a day in state money, and sheriffs trade them like horses, unloading a few extras on a colleague who has openings. A prison system that leased its convicts as plantation labor in the 1800s has come full circle and is again a nexus for profit.

In the past two decades, Louisiana's prison population has doubled, costing taxpayers billions while New Orleans continues to lead the nation in homicides.

In the early 1990s, when the incarceration rate was half what it is now, Louisiana was at a crossroads. Under a federal court order to reduce overcrowding, the state had two choices: Lock up fewer people or build more prisons.

It achieved the latter, not with new state prisons -- there was no money for that -- but by encouraging sheriffs to foot the construction bills in return for future profits. The financial incentives were so sweet, and the corrections jobs so sought after, that new prisons sprouted up all over rural Louisiana.

The national prison population was expanding at a rapid clip. Louisiana's grew even faster. There was no need to rein in the growth by keeping sentencing laws in line with those of other states or by putting minor offenders in alternative programs. The new sheriffs' beds were ready and waiting. Overcrowding became a thing of the past, even as the inmate population multiplied rapidly.

"If the sheriffs hadn't built those extra spaces, we'd either have to go to the Legislature and say, 'Give us more money,' or we'd have to reduce the sentences, make it easier to get parole and commutation -- and get rid of people who shouldn't be here," said Richard Crane, former general counsel for the Louisiana Department of Corrections.

Read more at http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2012/05/louisiana_is_the_worlds_prison.html

[For Oklahoma]

Undecided on the issue.

[ModerateCoward]

Undecided on the issue.

Which Mitt?

[shua]

The high prison population was the impetus for the move to contracting prisons, not the other way around.   What the arrangement seems to do is to make there be more of an incentive for communities to have prisons. What's going on here can't really be called "private" because you are just moving the prison operation from the state level to the sheriffs, and the money being made is solely a matter of skimming the top off state funds.

[IDS Legislator Alfred F. Jones]

Horrible idea. Remember Cash for Kids?

[I left.]

As the idiots say: Don't do the crime, if you can't do the time. This is America, everyone gets what they deserve.

[Vazdul (Formerly Chairman of the Communist Party of Ontario)]

For-profit? Who picks up the tab?

[Ghyl Tarvoke]

Does it really need spelling out why that is an awful, awful system?

[politicus]

There are a few things the government shouldn't privatize under any circumstances: law enforcement, the military, environmental protection agencies and the prison system.
But I agree this system is not fully privatized, but it still gives the wrong incentives.

[InsaneTrollLogic]

Is this a throwback to slavery? That's all I have to ask about this.

[RIP Robert H Bork]

Horrible idea.

There are certain things that I don't support privatizing, including law enforcement and corrections. Basically what politicus said.

[So the Heroes Fall]

Well at least we're second from the bottom, though that's still not good numbers.

[Jbrase]

The city I attend college in may beg to differ with the claim that Louisiana is the "prison capital"

I'm not saying we are the prison capital, I'm just saying that Huntsville has 9 prisons and Texas's Death Row is a 5 minute walk from class.