Louisiana Voice

Controversy seems to follow Burl Cain around like misfortune followed Joe Btfsplk, that sorrowful, hapless character from the old Li’l Abner comic strip.

Joe Btfsplk

When Cain retired as warden of the Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, he did so under a cloud. His retirement came a month after an INVESTIGATIVE REPORT by the Baton Rouge/New Orleans Advocate that examined real estate deals, favorable treatment of certain prisoners, nepotism and questionable business relationships.

A STATE AUDIT cited a laundry list of irregularities, including:

• Failure of prison employees to take leave while working on Cain’s personal residence;
• Lodging and meals provided to members of Cain’s family;
• Prison labor refurbished iron gates from Cain’s personal residence;
• Public funds were used to purchase appliances and household furnishes for Cain’s residence;
• Angola prison rodeo revenue not deposited in state treasury or included in Department of Corrections budget;
• Rodeo concession sales revenues not deposited;
• Personal purchases and cash withdrawals made from Angola Employee Recreation Fund.

All the foregoing would be ancient history, of course, since the audit was issued in January 2017, nearly a decade ago.

Except, that is, for the fact that Cain, after his 2016 retirement, was named Commissioner of the Mississippi Department of Corrections in 2020, and controversy followed him from Baton Rouge to Jackson.

If one goes only by the MDOC’s WEB PAGE, Cain comes across as a benevolent correctional spiritual reformer who was the answer to the needs of the department. The reality, as it is in most cases, is somewhat different.

The Mississippi HOUSE CORRECTIONS COMMITTEE has taken up a series of legislative bills that address claims of denial of medical treatment, tens of millions of taxpayer funds in mysterious bank accounts that have “no accountability,” and rising fees from a prison farm program.

Cain was hired for the job by Mississippi GOV. TATE REEVES who said at the time, “I have absolute full confidence in Burl Cain’s ability to change the culture at the Department of Corrections. I have absolute confidence he will do so in a manner to make Mississippians proud. I have zero reservations about appointing him.”

Since he uttered those optimistic words, more than 300 people have died in Mississippi’s prisons with at least 50 of those being attributed to homicide, suicide and drug overdoses.

That cloud over Joe Btfsplk’s just doesn’t seem to go away.

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Andy Borowitz is a writer who has a unique gift of taking just about any subject and writing a brief parody.

A reader sent me a great Borowitz headline today: “Olympic Update: Trump wins gold in downhill Presidency.”

A political cartoonist apparently was likewise inspired:

As such things often do, it got me to thinking. Why not expand on that theme and allow a few other notables to participate in the Political Olympics? Accordingly, here are a few to consider:

Ass-kissing Sycophantic Luge: John Kennedy and Mike Johnson are the early favorites for the Gold and Silver, respectively, with Jeff Landry expected to do no better than the Bronze. Bill Cassidy commits costly foul early in the competition and never really gets back in the race. Clay Higgins gets lost on the way to starting line.

Ice Skating over Dead Bodies Double Axel: Kristi Noem is a slam-dunk for the Gold, with a scramble for the Silver between Greg Bovino, Elon Musk and Kash Patel.

Opponent Attack Ad Freestyle: Bill Cassidy, for his catchy attempted knockdown of Julia Letlow, captures the Gold–his only runaway win in the Olympics.

Cold-hearted, Contemptable Stare-Down: Stephen Miller and Melania Trump in a dead-heat for the Gold. Kristi Noem would have been a pick for the Bronze, but she had entered the Puppy Shoot which is being held simultaneous to the Stare-Down.

What Am I Doing Here Shuffle: Karoline Leavitt, Tulsi Gabbard and Pam Bondi duke it out for the Gold with JD Vance clinging to an outside shot at the Bronze—a bronzed sofa, that is.

Making America Sick Open: Robert F. Kennedy, of course, wins the Gold, followed by Ralph Abraham for the Silver and Sen. Bill Cassidy picking up that coveted Bronz.

Along for the Ride Freeload: Donnie, Jr., Eric, Ivanka and Jared Kushner vie for the Gold. There is no Silver or Bronze.

Grifting: Can anyone even compete with Cankle Ankles for the Gold to match the gaudy décor of the Oval Office, his FIFA Peace Award or the Bronze to match his spatula-applied makeup?

It’s difficult to improve on Borowitz, but those are my selections. You may have a few of your own to add to the list.

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A couple of news stories released three weeks apart and taken separately, were cause for concern but not necessarily catastrophic. Taken together, however, they are just that.

At best, the two stories serve as an example of the seeming cluelessness of bureaucracy; at worst, they reveal the total lack of empathy for other human beings, people the Department of Homeland Security and ICE consider somehow less than human.

The first story, dated Jan. 20 of this year, carried the headline by POPULAR INFORMATION, “ICE has stopped paying for detainee medical treatment.” HEALTH LAW POLICY’Sheadline was similar: “Denying Medical Care to ICE Detainees: Treating Their Needs as Optional.” Even CBS NEWS, which has more or less acquiesced to Donald Trump’s attempts to silence news critics, managed to sneak in its own headline, albeit a day later than the others: “ICE stopped paying for detainee medical care as population surged, Ossoff investigation finds widespread neglect.”

Okay, that’s bad enough, right? Denying medical care is itself sick. Parents have gone to jail for withholding medical care from children.

But then, on Feb. 10, TRUTHOUT followed with this headline: “Illness is Rampant Among Children Trapped in ICE’s Massive Jail in Texas.”

Taken with the sudden reemergence of a measles outbreak among children as a result of Robert Kennedy’s insane vaccination policy and with the tripling of the rate of incarceration of children by ICE, we are flirting with disaster in case people like Trump and Kristi Noem give a damn. The spread of measles and flu do not recognize the boundaries of prison walls.

Thom Hartmann, in his book The Last American President, says roughly 1.5 to 4 percent of the general population makes up a subset who “lack the neurological or psychological ability to experience empathy.” These people, whom he described as being clinically described as sociopaths or psychopaths, account for roughly one-third of our prison populations, commit about 90 percent of the country’s violent crimes and—more significantly, account for about 21 percent of all corporate CEOs.

At first blush, it would appear that most, if not all, of the CEOs of private prisons contracted to DHS and the top brass at ICE and DHS might fall within that description. The man presently occupying the Oval Office certainly does The fact is, those who operate the private prisons just don’t seem to care about anything other than cramming as many people as possible into their facilities. That’s because they’re paid on the basis of the number of occupied beds. Empty beds mean no compensation. So, let’s fill those beds and if medical care can be withheld, the prison’s bottom line improves and stockholders are happy.

And detainees, for the most part, are out of sight, out of mind. And if ICE, DHS and prison CEOs don’t have to be held accountable for their care, and as long as the 73,000 detainees (that number figures to increase substantially as even more detainee centers are opened) remain silent and invisible to the outside world, who cares, right?

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I suppose the lesson might be that you just don’t mess with a quiet librarian who has the gumption to stand for what she believes and to fight like hell for her principles.

Mike Lunsford should probably crawl off in a corner somewhere now and lick his wounds.

In a unanimous 7-0 decision the LOUISIANA SUPREME COUT denied an application for a Writ of Certiorari by Lunsford and his crusading Citizens for a New Louisiana.

Simply put, that means Livingston Parish school librarian Amanda Jones won a major battle in her ongoing lawsuit against Lunsford, Citizens for a New Louisiana and Livingston Parish resident Ryan Thames.

The state high court’s decision affirms a December 2024 decision by the FIRST CIRCUIT COURT OF APPEAL that had overturned a lower court’s decision to throw out Jones’s defamation lawsuit in which she sought only $1 in damages and an apology after she claimed she was accused in an extensive social media campaign of promoting “erotic and pornographic material to children and teaching them to perform sexual acts.”

The three defendants filed a motion to strike her petition, a motion granted by the trial court, which also ordered Jones to pay attorney fees of $12,500 to Lunsford and Citizens for a New Louisiana and $13,000 for Thames’s attorney fees.

She appealed that decision but the appeals court in January 2024 said her appeal was not filed timely. After losing that appeal, she took writs to the State Supreme Court which on Dec. 27, 2024, vacated the court of appeal decision and directed the lower court to take up the case again.

Lunsford, Thames and Louisiana Citizens for a Better Louisiana then filed their own Writ of Certiorari application to the Supreme Court.

A Writ of Certiorari orders a lower court to forward all documents in a case it has heard to the higher court for review. While this is most commonly used by the U.S. Supreme Court, other courts, such as the U.S. Court of Appeals, state supreme courts, and state courts of appeal may issue such a writ.

Simply put, the Supreme Court decision nullifies the attorney fees assessed against Jones and in fact, attorney fees and court costs will now be owed her by the defendants. She will now have her defamation case proceed to be tried on its merits.

When contacted about the decision, handed down just today (Jan. 10), she had not seen it nor had she discussed it with her attorney.

But if you happen to think THAT LIBRARIAN might be a pushover for the likes of Lunsford, ou may want to readjust your thinking because a pushover she ain’t.

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By bits and pieces, we’re learning a little more about those new DETENTION CENTERS ICE is proposing, including a couple in Hammond and Port Allen.

We’ve even managed to score photographs of one of the warehouses being proposed for use. That warehouse is a cozy 250,000-square-foot facility (with 50,000-square-feet available for lease, according to online information) at 2070 Commercial Drive in Port Allen.

It sits on a 13.6-acre lot convenient to I-10 that previously housed Conn’s HomePlus. It is CURRENTLY LISTED by Saurage Rotenberg Commercial Real Estate, whose info sheet says it is available for a cool $6.50 per square foot per year, or a little more than half-a-buck per month. Either way, it’s a pretty good commission for some lucky agent–from taxpayer dollars.

Online property listing photos of 2070 Commercial Drive in Port Allen.

It would be one of the smaller facilities, capable of housing only about 500 detainees as opposed to the facility planned for HAMMOND with a capacity of about 9,000 human souls.

As yet, there is scant information about the location of the center being proposed for Hammond. It’s not clear, for example, if an existing building is to be used or if new construction is planned. If the former, then the Hammond Industrial Park would seem to be the most logical location, though it is located adjacent to a children’s sports park. If new construction, an area near the Hammond Airport, just down the road from the industrial park, might be more suitable.

But with the feds, saying a facility will be located in Hammond means it could be anywhere in Tangipahoa or even across the parish line in Livingston Parish. We won’t know until more information is released.

Of course, not everyone is thrilled about having a prison located next door. Nor are the local authorities even notified necessarily. Hammond Mayor Pete Panepinto, for example, said the report of the ICE facility was news to him, that he had not been informed of any such plans.

In fact, DHS Secretary Kristi Noem said she will consider other sites after Mississippi Republican Sen. Roger Wicker voiced his opposition to a new facility in Byhalia, Mississippi because, in Noem’s words, the “strain” housing 8500 inmates on a town of 1300 would cause. Noem said the facility, which apparently had already been selected, should be used for economic development.

Economic development, like beauty, most probably lie in the eyes of the beholder.

Private prison companies like GEO, CoreCivic and LaSalle would probably look upon the opening of a new facility in which to cage detainees as a good example of economic development. After all, ICE’s expansion under Trump has been virtually UNRESTRAINED AND UNACCOUNTABLE, thanks for an eye-popping $45 billion in funding for ICE detention just during his second term as the increase in the use of “at large” arrests has increased by 600 percent.

CoreCivic reported TOTAL REVENUE of $538.2 million just during the company’s second quarter of 2025. That represented a 10 percent increase over the same period in 2023. GEO Group, ICE’s largest contractor meanwhile reported second quarter revenue of $636.2 million, a 9 percent increase overt the same period in the previous year. In case you’re not adept at math, that’s nearly $1.2 billion just for those two companies.

More than 70,000 people are presently being detained by ICE with plans by Trump to double that number to about 135,000 detention beds by 2029. To encourage him to do so, the leading for-profit prison companies CONTRIBUTED about half-a-million dollars to Republican members of Congress while chipping in chump change of $37,000 for Democrats between 2021 and 2025. Private prison firms contributed more than a million dollars to Trump’s reelection.

A 2022 report indicated that private contracted but unused private prison space in Louisiana COST TAXPAYERS $8 million per month, so it’s easy to see why it is economically advantageous to have every prison bed occupied.

The way it works is the more bodies there are in the beds, the more the private companies get paid. The more they get paid, the more they contributed to political campaigns. The more contributed to political campaigns, the greater incentive by politicians to keep the beds filled.

And the money wheel keeps on turning.

But here’s the kicker: empty or filled, of the three—taxpayers, politicians and private prison contractors—only one loses money.

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