A state audit has criticized the Louisiana Department of Corrections for its failure to adequately monitor programs for state prisoners housed in local facilities.
The audit, performed the Louisiana Legislative Auditor, was for Fiscal Year 2009. It also noted that that while the number of offenders supervised by probation and parole officers increased over the past five fiscal years, the number of probation and parole officers decreased, creating even more of an average caseload that was already higher than nationally recommended standards.
While the audit acknowledged that the Department of Corrections currently saves more than $32 million annually by providing incarceration alternatives, additional cost savings could be realized by using electronic monitoring as an alternative to incarceration for non-violent, non-sexual offenders.
At $42.75 per day, Louisiana has the fourth lowest cost per day for housing offenders during Fiscal Year 2009 among the states in the Southern Legislative Conference, the audit report said. That could be because 19,651 prisoners are housed in local facilities at a cost to the state of $24.39, a savings of $18.36 per day per prisoner, or 42.9 per cent. That comes to a total savings of more than $360,000 per day.
The downside to the savings, the audit said, is that local jails and not the Department of Corrections make the determination whether an offender is placed in a state correctional facility or in a local jail. Moreover, the department has no program in place to evaluate the rehabilitation programs offered to its offenders housed in local jails. Nor does the department monitor the progress of offenders in such local programs.
The audit report further said the department, by analyzing recidivism rates by local jails, could better determine which local jails with which to have offender housing agreements.
“Louisiana may be incarcerating offenders longer than necessary based on a grant program that no longer provides the department money and has had no analysis of success,” the audit report said.
That grant program, the Violent Offender Incarceration and Truth-in-Sentencing Incentive Formula Grant Program, was initiated in 1996 and provided states with funding to build or expand correctional facilities or jails.
To be eligible for the grant, a state had to pass laws requiring those convicted of certain violent crimes to serve no less than 85 percent of the imposed sentence. Before implementation of the grant, Louisiana law required violent offenders to serve at least 75 percent of the sentence imposed before becoming eligible for parole.
In fiscal years 1996 to 1998, Louisiana received $37.8 million from the grant but from fiscal years 2008 to 2009, that amount dropped precipitously to only $739,290. During FY 2010, Louisiana received no money from the grant. “As a result, Louisiana may be incarcerating offenders longer than necessary without receiving any associated benefit,” the report said.
Local housing of state adult offenders accounted for a cost of $181.9 million, or 27.3 percent of the Department of Corrections total budget of $665.9 million.
Louisiana Voice 
I think this is one of those articles where the headline belies the story. If you read it carefully, there are more positives than negatives here. Budget cuts have forced probation and parole caseloads up. Cost savings, local politics and economics have driven the number of state prisoners housed at the local level up. It is unfortunate the grant cited required a change in state laws because state laws are largely the reason for the other problems, too. Although it has been downplayed or gone unreported, the department of corrections has been one of the few state departments to take a straight up stance in making budget reductions. Rather than whine about it, they have bitten the bullet and done what they could to become more efficient. As the cuts continue, effectiveness will suffer. I have wondered why the department has not more dramatically increased the use of electronic monitoring, including pushing hard for legislation authorizing its broader use. Home incarceration is a very cost-effective alternative and, properly managed, would work for a significant number of people currently in prison as well as those currently being supervised by P & P officers.
Other than you at Louisiana Voice, is anyone looking at the incarceration rates and reasons in Louisiana?
The legislator’s pandering to the narrow-minded knee-jerk reaction of the ignorant (and often racist) electorate to “Lock ’em up and throw away the key” is not just morally wrong, but is economically bankrupting the state. To a legislator, education and health care are only secondarily important when compared to punishemnt.
I wonder what’s worse for the state; college grad students taking a few recreational hits of weed or 25% of all students failing to graduate from high school?
If using the biblical observation that where a man puts his gold there also he puts his heart, Louisiana legislator’s put TAXPAYER’S gold where their vengeful hearts are.
See Melinda Deslatte’s “Louisiana Spotlight” column on the commentary page of today’s (1/17/2011) Baton Rouge ADVOCATE. It does a good job of concisely pinpointing Louisiana’s corrections problems.
I remember going down to the legislature to speak for the incarcerated, mainly of them Lifers. I even talked about the prison budget and how if lawmakers did not do something, with so many people being incarcerated, the budget was going going to go through the roof. It was approaching or exceeding $500,000,000. This is a half-billion dollars, and to see it continue to grow only meant trouble. I tried to tell them half the black lifers at Angola had committed nothing more than manslaughter offenses, and then they up the sentence from 20 years to 40 years. But no, they wanted to put more black males in prison so that they could get the grants. I pointed out the grants would stop one day, and now you have all these expenses, because of no more grants. A fool should have been able to see that picture. Oh I have a list of many lawmakers all all the country who recieve campaign contributions from the private prison corporations. I blame the politicians for the huge prison problem, and I also blame the public as well, I listened to the politicians; I heard them telling lies, talking about, if we catch them smoking pot, we will “put them in jail and throw away the key.” All I can say is wake up people. Every state in the country has parole eligibility except Louisiana. I guess they want it to live up to its name: Planation, when the Africans were born on the planation that is where they stayed for the rest of their natural life.