Louisiana has been known to have the highest incarceration rate in not only the United States for many years, but has also held the title for the highest incarceration rate in the world.
There have been growing efforts to try and turn that around though. Leaders of prison reform in the region have been former inmates themselves and in working with others, their criminal justice system reforms have recently helped to push the prison population lower.
But they still rank #2 for having the highest incarceration rate in the country. It's now Oklahoma that holds the shameful 1st place title.
Taxpayers are paying a lot to house prisoners, the state spends more on inmates in Louisiana than it does on college students. The cost to house an inmate annually is estimated to be roughly $16,000.
Sheriffs in rural regions of the state that help to house state prisoners in local jails also get paid based on the bed occupancy. So, reducing the population of those jails is going to cost them. To keep them happy and to help them through the CJS overhaul, the government allegedly wants to share the savings with them that they expect to gain from the reform.
They estimate that as much as $200 million or more could be saved from lowering the inmate population.
It might also help the situation if they sought to improve the efficiency of the system to the point of releasing inmates on time. They could start by trying to get down just those basics.
Several inmates from the state have been kept far beyond their expected release date. The state has been caught routinely jailing people sometimes for months or even years longer than they should have been kept behind bars.
it's possible that thousands of people have been affected
It's reported that so far there have been various settlements made over those accidents and it's also alleged that officials have been aware of this problem for years but they have failed to try and rectify the situation.
Prison officials are supposed to make it their duty to see that inmates are promptly released once their sentence expires and to have hundreds or thousands of cases where people have been kept for months or years longer than they should have been, clearly signals that there is an issue.
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