Louisiana Leads the Nation and the World in Lock Up Prisons and Jails: Expensive -- Not Keeping Communities Safer

Louisiana Leads the Nation and the World in Lock Up
Prison and Jails: Expensive – Not Keeping Communities Safer

• Louisiana Leads the Nation in Imprisonment: The Bureau of Justice Statistics has shown that Louisiana has the highest rate of imprisonment in the United States. (814 per 100,000). Louisiana's incarceration rate is 67% higher than the national rate (486 per 100,000). Louisiana incarceration rate has grown 285% in the last twenty years. According to the International Center for Prison Studies, Louisiana‘s rate of imprisonment is higher than the 3/5 th (58%) of the countries in the world, who all have rates below 150 per 100,000.

• Louisiana’s prison and jail population has doubled in two decades – nearly half of all prisoners are held in local jails. The U.S. Justice Department’s Bureau of Justice Statistics has shown that, there are 45,400 people incarcerated in Louisiana (36,745 under the supervision of the prison system, and approximately 9,000 in, and under the supervision of jails ). Sixteen thousand prisoners in Louisiana are held in local jails. The number of people incarcerated in the state has more than doubled in the last twenty years. With a population of 4.5 million, Louisiana has more people imprisoned than countries with millions more people, like Canada (30 million people, 31,000 people incarcerated), or Argentina (36 million people, 38,000 incarcerated).

• Louisiana spending on corrections crowds out Higher Education spending. In many states, higher education funds compete with corrections funds for the general fund portion of state budgets. According to the National Association of State Budget Officers , corrections spending in Louisiana stood at 729 million in 2004, 619 million of which came from general funds. Louisiana prison spending consumes 9.5% of state general fund dollars, which is higher than most other states, and 15% of state general funds are spent on higher education.   The Justice Policy Institute has shown that, over the last two decades, general fund spending on corrections in Louisiana grew at twice the rate of general fund spending on higher education.

• Growth in Policing and Correctional Employment has Dwarfed Higher Education and Public Welfare Job Growth. During the twenty year period that saw the bulk of Louisiana’s growing use of imprisonment (1980 to 2000), research by two Princeton academics has shown than state employment in policing and corrections has grown at higher rates than employment in higher education or public welfare (which includes employment in state facilities for the elderly, the differently-abled, veterans or poor people). In Louisiana, policing and correctional employment grew at 4 times the rate of jobs in higher education (413% versus 93%), and 9 times the rate of jobs in public welfare (413% versus 44%), and 1.7 times the rate of all state sector job categories (413% versus 244%).

• The growing use of imprisonment in Louisiana has not been borne equally. Human Rights Watch has shown that, in Louisiana, African Americans are incarcerated at nearly 6 times (421 per 100,000 versus 2,475 per 100,000) the rate of whites, and Hispanics are incarcerated at 4 times (421 per 100,000 versus 1,736 per 100,000) the rate of whites.  

• Women are the fastest growing segment of Louisiana’s prison population. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, women represent one of the fastest growing segments of Louisiana’s prison population. In 1980, there were 303 women in prison in Louisiana. In 2004, there were 2,405 women in prison in Louisiana—a growth rate of 693%, three times higher than the overall growth rate over.

• The increased use of incarceration in Louisiana has not necessarily made the state any safer. Researchers have shown that less than a quarter of the crime drop in the 1990s can be attributed to prison expansion. Neighboring Alabama provides a good contrast: According to the Sentencing Project, Louisiana increased its prison population at rate 84% higher than that of Alabama (59% versus 32%) from 1991 to 1998. During that time, Alabama’s violent crime rate fell at twice the rate of Louisiana's (39% versus 18%), and Alabama had bigger drops in total crime, and property crime than Louisiana.

Harrison, Paige. Sentenced female prisoners under State or Federal jurisdiction. (2000). Beck, Allen and Harrison, Paige. Prisoners in 2003. (November, 2004). Washington, DC: Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics.

Counties often make money off the state by selling their beds to house state prisoners, and Louisiana leads the nation in housing its state prison population in local jails. According to the latest prisoners survey from the Bureau of Justice Statistics, there were 36,745 people under the jurisdiction of the state department of corrections, and of them, the latest figures showed that 16,549 (45%) were held in local jails. The national average of the proportion of state prisoners held in local jails was 5%.

Probation and Parole in the United States (2001) and Total Number of Persons Under Local, State or Federal Correctional Supervision, (2000), Bureau of Justice Statistics. Figures for 2001 are a Bureau of Justice Statistics estimate; International figures are from Walmsley, Roy. World Prisoner Population List, 2004. (2005) London, UK: International Centre for Prison Studies, Kings College, London.

State Expenditure Report, 2003 (2004). Washington, DC: National Association of State Budget Officers.
Ziedenberg, Jason and Schiraldi, Vincent. Cellblocks or Classrooms: The Funding of Higher Education and Corrections and Its Impact on African American Men (2002). Washington, DC: The Justice Policy Institute.
Change in Full-Time equivalent employment from Western, Bruce and Guetzkow, Josh. (August 2002) Punitive Policy and Neoliberalism in the U.S. Labor Market. Presented at annual meeting of the American Sociological Association. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University.
Human Rights Watch (2002), Table 1, available at www.hrw.org/backgrounder/usa/race. Note: Figures calculated on the basis of U.S. Census Bureau data from Census 2000 on state residents and incarcerated populations.
Harrison, Paige. Sentenced female prisoners under State or Federal jurisdiction. (2000). Beck, Allen and Harrison, Paige. Prisoners in 2003. (November, 2004). Washington, DC: Office of Justice Programs, Bureau of Justice Statistics.
Spelling, William (2000).  The Limited Importance of Prison Expansion. In The American Crime Drop , ed. Blumstein, Alfred and Wallman, Joel. Boston: Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Gainsborough, Jenni and Mauer, Marc. Diminishing Returns: Crime and Incarceration in the 1990s. (2000) Washington, DC: The Sentencing Project.