{"id":47758,"date":"2012-06-06T11:30:06","date_gmt":"2012-06-06T16:30:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/?p=47758"},"modified":"2013-11-08T04:19:22","modified_gmt":"2013-11-08T09:19:22","slug":"imprisonment-in-louisiana-profit-driven-system-makes-it-1st-in-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/2012\/06\/06\/imprisonment-in-louisiana-profit-driven-system-makes-it-1st-in-the-world\/","title":{"rendered":"Imprisonment in Louisiana: “First in the World”"},"content":{"rendered":"

A new 8-part Times Picayune<\/em> series<\/a> on the prison industry in\u00a0Louisiana\u00a0starts off with these foreboding sentences<\/a>:<\/p>\n

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 five times Iran’s,\u00a013 times China’s and\u00a020 times Germany’s.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

\"\"<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

One out of every 86 Louisianans is in prison.<\/p>\n

The motivation is money. \u00a0 Most prisoners in Louisiana are in for-profit prisons. \u00a0The state spends $663 million a year on imprisonment;\u00a0$182 million of that goes to for-profit correctional companies or contracted local sheriffs. \u00a0Many small towns depend on the prisons to fund their law enforcement.<\/p>\n

Burk Foster, a criminologist who’s been studying Louisiana prisons, explains:<\/p>\n

They don’t want to see the prison system get smaller or the number of people in custody reduced, even though the crime rate is down, because the good old boys are all linked together in the punishment network, which is good for them financially and politically.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

State Rep. Joseph Lopinto (R-Metairie) agrees:<\/p>\n

The bottom line is, if locking everybody up and throwing away the key works, then we should have the lowest crime rate in the United States. We don’t. So then you have to really look at your policies. In my opinion, it’s strictly a fiscal issue.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Those who benefit from the prison industry have pushed through some of the severest sentencing laws in the country and aggressively resist reform<\/a>. \u00a0“Few lobbies in Louisiana,” writes<\/a> reporter Cindy Chang,\u00a0“are as powerful as the sheriffs association.” \u00a0As a result, Louisiana’s sentencing laws are out-of-step with the rest of the country:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

All life sentences are, automatically, without any chance of parole and more than one in ten Louisiana prisoners are serving life sentences (the majority of lifers were convicted before age 30):<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Harsh where other states are lenient, and harsh where other states are harsh,\u00a0Louisiana has “a much higher percentage behind bars for [non-violent] drug offenses.” \u00a0In 2009, 82% of the\u00a017,223 new admissions to Louisiana prisons were convicted of non-violent felonies.<\/p>\n

Tomorrow I’ll follow up with a post on why there are so many for-profit prisons in Louisiana and how it’s affected the lives of prisoners both during and after incarceration<\/a>.<\/p>\nLisa Wade, PhD<\/a> is an Associate Professor at Tulane University. She is the author of <\/em>American Hookup<\/a>, a book about college sexual culture; a textbook about gender<\/a>; and a forthcoming introductory text: <\/em>Terrible Magnificent Sociology<\/a>.\u00a0You can follow her on Twitter<\/a> and Instagram<\/a>.<\/em><\/span>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A new 8-part Times Picayune series on the prison industry in\u00a0Louisiana\u00a0starts off with these foreboding sentences: 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 five times Iran’s,\u00a013 times China’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[2056,36,260],"class_list":["post-47758","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-crimelaw","tag-economics","tag-international-comparisons"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47758","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47758"}],"version-history":[{"count":13,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47758\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":58345,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47758\/revisions\/58345"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47758"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47758"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/socimages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47758"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}