Tag Archive for Louisiana

| February 22, 2013
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Justice Reinvestment in Louisiana

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, at campaign e...

Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, at campaign event for presidential candidate John McCain in Kenner, Louisiana. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Something has to change in Louisiana, and if Bobby Jindal lives up to his latest press release it just might. It seems that some extensive changes may be coming to Louisiana’s justice system, particularly as pertains to juveniles.

First, for context, it should be established that my home state leads the planet in incarceration, with inmate populations doubling over the period between 1991 and 2012. Amnesty International reports the current number of incarcerated to be right around 40,500 which makes Louisiana’s incarceration rate the highest in the world.

An Amnesty International statement from 2008 spelled it out, and population numbers have done nothing but rise since then.

“…As of December 31, 2007, nearly 2.3 million persons were incarcerated in US prisons and jails, giving the United States the largest incarcerated population in the world. Within the US, Louisiana has the highest rate of incarceration, nearly five times that of the lowest state, Maine.”

State Governor Piyush “Bobby” Jindal has frequently come under fire for his aggressive privatization of Louisiana’s jails and prisons so it is surprising to see his latest stance on fixing a juvenile system that is rightly and frequently termed horrific. It is a stance that we here at HE espouse, and it is our hope that it gets implemented.

So, what changes are in the offing, and what response are they getting in Louisiana? The Advocate reports:

Several lawmakers, who often differ with Jindal, praised his proposals, including state Rep. Patricia Smith and state Sen. Sharon Broome, both Baton Rouge Democrats.

‘I want to thank the governor for putting treatment as a priority,’ Smith said.

Others who endorsed the changes included Debra DePrato, director at the Institute for Public Health and Justice at the LSU Health Sciences Center, and Dana Kaplan, executive director of the Juvenile Justice Project.

The plans will be included in bills submitted to the Legislature, which begins its regular session on April 8.

Jindal wants to:

  • Expand what he called Louisiana’s highly successful drug courts beyond the current 48 programs statewide.
  • Release certain non-sex, non-violent drug offenders into treatment rather than continued incarceration.
  • Revamp a state program that he said has strayed from its mission of aiding at-risk youths.

So, in an instance that I find shocking, Louisiana politicians are getting behind the right course despite differences in party affiliation. Blue Dogs, Dixiecrats, conservatives and liberals in this most contentious of states are unifying on this subject. As a native, trust me when I say that if it can happen here it can happen anywhere in the US.

The bills to enact these changes will hit the floor in early April, so it is a little early for cheering, but just the attempt is a major step forward. Louisiana is infamous for its draconian and primitive approach to incarceration, inspired by the gaols of the French no doubt. To see a more fact-based and rehabilitation-oriented mindset become part of the process is amazing.

The part of Jindal’s plan aimed directly at juvenile justice concerns a program called FINS – Families in Need of Services. Described as a “pre-delinquency intervention” program, it was originally designed to connect with services for at-risk youth in an attempt to keep them out of the court and prison system.

According to the Juvenile Justice Implementation System, more than 11,000 youngsters between the ages of 10 and 17 were referred to them in 2010. These referrals are made by parents, teachers or law enforcement and can be for anything from truancy or running away on one end of the spectrum to criminal behavior, drug, alcohol or firearm possession on the other. The fact that these referrals are often abused makes more sense when you know that the letter of the law includes being “ungovernable” as a valid reason for them.

NOLA.com reports.

 

‘FINS has strayed from its mission of addressing the root causes of non-delinquent behavior, instead advancing at-risk youth through the traditional court system and further into the juvenile justice system,’ the press release said. ‘The result has been a higher juvenile incarceration rate, not less criminal behavior.’

State Rep. Patricia Haynes Smith, D-Baton Rouge, said she was ‘pleased’ with the proposal, adding, ‘We have what we call a “cradle-to-prison-pipeline.” Trying to catch juveniles before they enter into the prison system is tantamount to being able to reduce the adult prison population.’

This is big. I don’t just say that as a New Orleans native either. If Louisiana politicians can come together across party lines to enact programs like that here, then there is hope for bipartisan collaboration in other areas of the country. As our own political class is slowly realizing, it is vastly more expensive to do nothing!

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Category: Criminal Justice, It's More Expensive to Do Nothing, Prison, Prison Reform | Tags: , , , , , , , ,
| January 28, 2013
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The Missouri Miracle

Seal of Missouri.

Seal of Missouri. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Robert Winters, of Kaplan University‘s School of Criminal Justice, has a great piece of work posted on Corrections.com in which he gives voice to the idea that it is more expensive to do nothing about our juvenile justice system. As you might imagine we were terrifically pleased to see one of our main arguments being used.

More effective, less expensive: an admittedly counterintuitive mantra until you actually examine the numbers. Then it suddenly becomes clear that this is exactly the case. Prof. Winters explains how things have turned around since the 1980s, when recidivism was high and rehabilitation rare. (Back to the Future – Corrections.com)

What replaced that broken system came to be known as the “Missouri Miracle.” Traditional facilities were replaced by 32 small housing units (with populations typically ranging from 10 to 30) that are not only located across the state so that juvenile offenders can remain close to home, but also bear little resemblance to a prison. They are more like a group home, staffed by highly-trained personnel who use an approach that emphasizes therapy and rehabilitation over punishment. The staff-offender ratio is very low as well.

Though it might seem that a less stringent security environment—these facilities do not even have fences—would be an invitation to escape, that has not been the case in Missouri. On average there are less than 50 per year. The state does operate eight isolation rooms for juvenile offenders and still has a traditional prison for offenders under age 17, but the isolation rooms have been only rarely used and the prison has contained less than five inmates for most years of the new program.

What qualified the “Missouri Miracle” as a miracle? Recidivism into the juvenile program is now under 8%. The rate of adult conviction of former juvenile offenders now hovers between 7% and 8% for a five-year period after concluding the program. New York’s juvenile system, by contrast, has an 89% male recidivism rate. In Illinois it was 50% in 2006-09, up from 33% in 1996-99. Roughly half of Missouri offenders return to school successfully, and another third earn high school diplomas or a GED while in the program. Compared to Missouri’s 91% education rate, the national average is 46%.

It might be reasonable to assume that such commendable results come at a high price, but in fact the opposite is true. New York’s cost is $210,000 per juvenile for a nearly 90% failure rate. The national average is around $100,000. The Missouri Miracle, on the other hands, costs about $50,000 per child annually.

This is no big secret. All you have to do is look at the numbers. In this age of rhetoric, seeing actual facts used to to state the case is a joy to behold. Even better is the fact that Winters points to several other similar programs that have been kicking off around the country.

The District of Columbia started to use the Missouri Model in 2009 with mixed results. The first facility based on it cut its recidivism rate in half. Unfortunately there was also a tragic incident where a middle-school principal was killed by several juveniles who were serving under the new program.

Here in my home state of Louisiana, which has always deserved a horrible reputation when it comes to corrections, we saw the Bridge City facility open in 2007. Again based on the Missouri Model, it serves male youth offenders aged 10 to 20 serving sentences ranging from six to 24 months. Since opening it has achieved a recidivism rates of 10 %.

Other jurisdictions are finally starting to experiment with the Missouri Model, including New Mexico and San Jose, California. We have faith that the model’s success can be replicated in widely divergent areas of the country, and each time it shows gains in another community the evidence becomes more impossible to ignore. This is the sane way to both fix the system and reduce the budget needed to do so at the same time.

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Category: Criminal Justice, Juvenile Justice | Tags: , , , , , , ,
| May 14, 2012
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Where is the world’s prison capital? Would you believe Louisiana?

Cell at Camp HUnfortunately I find it all too easy to believe. As long time readers are aware, I’m the member of the team who is not in San Diego. I’m located in my home town of New Orleans, a city as rich in culture as it is in tragedy.

Cindy Chang of the New Orleans Times-Picayune showed us just how bad things have become in her cover story yesterday.

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.

I’ve often written about creeping privatization in our justice system, and with good reason. How can actual justice be involved when the bottom line is to fill as many beds as possible? It’s basic common sense that the two are incompatible, and the latter is ethically questionable.

Even worse is the fact that this approach is funneling money away from programs that do work. Chang continues:

More money spent on locking up an ever-growing number of prisoners means less money for the very institutions that could help young people stay out of trouble, giving rise to a vicious cycle. Louisiana spends about $663 million a year to feed, house, secure and provide medical care to 40,000 inmates. Nearly a third of that money — $182 million — goes to for-profit prisons, whether run by sheriffs or private companies.

‘Clearly, the more that Louisiana invests in large-scale incarceration, the less money is available for everything from preschools to community policing that could help to reduce the prison population,’ said Marc Mauer, executive director of The Sentencing Project, a national criminal justice reform group. ‘You almost institutionalize the high rate of incarceration, and it’s even harder to get out of that situation.’

It pains me to see my hope at the forefront of such a misguided and disastrous trend, especially in these recent years after Hurricane Katrina and the levee failure. We now lock up more human beings than any place else in the world, and yet we still have one of the highest rates of violent and property crime in the entire United States. It’s just not working.

If you want a look at what the rest of the nation will look like if we do not reverse this trend of privatization, read Ms. Chang’s article. It is an extensive and disturbing piece of reporting that will send chills down your spine. I’d also recommend Charles Mondonado’s article in Gambit Weekly – Privatizing Louisiana’s Prisons.

There is a truly frightening future being forged, and I am sitting on it’s leading edge. Please take a look at what is happening down here. Educate yourself before this model becomes the norm.

It is far more expensive to do nothing.

Category: Criminal Justice, Humane Exposures, Prison | Tags: , , ,