Louisiana Voice

For those who like to play with figures and numbers, here are some interesting data about spending priorities for the State of Louisiana.

In 1970, there were approximately 83,200 individuals incarcerated in Louisiana prisons. The state’s budgeted expenditure for caring for those 5,200 prisoners was $26 million.

Fast forward to 2026 and the Louisiana House of Representatives has ALREADY PASSED, by a vote of 104-0, a BUDGET calling for the expenditure of $902,333,848 (that’s $902.3 million and change) to care for what is now a prison population of 257,200, highest incarceration rate in the world. It now awaits Senate consideration.

When you put the pencil to it, you see that the prison population has increased by a quarter-million people, or 488 percent, while the budget for maintaining our prisons has increased an eye-popping 3,371 percent.

At the same time, the state’s POPULATION has grown from 3.64 million in 1970 to about 4.99 million today, a growth rate of 36.9 percent which lags far, far behind the growth rate of our prison population.

With $100 in 1970 now worth about $800, according to the Consumer Price Index, it’s kinda difficult to comprehend how in 1970, the cost of caring for those 5,200 prisoners came to about $5,000 per prisoner per year while in 2026 the cost of upkeep for 257,200 prisoners, while jumping 3,371 percent overall, equates to only about $3,508.30 per person per year.

“Private, for-profit prison corporations are a multibillion-dollar industry,” noted former law enforcement officer Murphy Painter in a report way back in 2002. “Other companies reap hundreds of millions of dollars annually by providing health care, phones, food, and other services in correctional facilities. Many small towns and rural communities, their traditional industries in decline, lobby for new prisons in their areas. Such forces are working actively to increase the number of citizens being locked up. Private prison companies contribute to a policy group called the American Legislative Exchange Council that has helped draft tougher sentencing laws in dozens of states, and the California Prison Guards Union doles out millions every election to tough-on-crime candidates.”

So, how did Louisiana become the prison capital of the civilized world (by virtue of the U.S. having the highest incarceration rate of any country and Louisiana having the highest in the U.S.)?

Well, it probably goes back to the 1988 presidential campaign and George H.W. Bush’s famous “revolving door” campaign ad about Willie Horton and became a hot topic for any Repugnantcan seeking political office from that point forward.

It was an easy campaign issue to exploit and quickly led to all kinds of new laws and penalties for non-violent crimes which has now led the gret stet of Loozeraner and its tough-on-crime governor and legislature to the verge of passing one of the most inhumane laws imaginable.

HOUSE BILL 211 by Rep. Debbie (Silly-O) Villio (R-Kenner) would impose criminal penalties on individuals for the ghastly crime of being homeless.

Rep. Debbie Villio (R-Kenner)

The proposed law “creates the crime of unauthorized camping on public property and provides that this crime is the intentional use of any tent, shelter, or bedding constructed or arranged for the purpose of or in such a way to permit overnight use on public property that is not a designated campground.”

I’m not too sure how many “designated campgrounds” can be found in urban areas like New Orleans or Baton Rouge or what means of transportation the homeless can be expected to use to get there, but yet, here we are.

On a first conviction, a fine of not more than $500 and imprisonment for not more than six months, or both, may be imposed.

A second conviction gets even more severe with these threats to society: a fine of not more than $1,000 and imprisonment with or without hard labor for not less than one year, not more than two years.

Now, I respectfully ask the obvious question: if a person is homeless and likely physically or mentally disabled, where is he going to come up with $500 or $1,000 for such a fine? He’s homeless for a reason in most cases and that is usually because he is unqualified for a job because of the aforementioned disability.

Not my problem, say Louisiana’s Repugnantcan legislators: Seventy of them voted in favor of the bill to only 28 who voted no. Seven took a walk. Want their names? Click HERE to see how every member of the House voted.

This despicable bill goes along with that quote from the late comedian Brother Dave Gardner that I cited a while back in another post: “If a man’s down, kick him. If he survives it, he has a chance to rise above it.” That truly seems to be the attitude of these 70 legislators. To solve the problem of high prison costs, lets’s just lock up more people to care for and to feed. We can always cut health care, education and early childhood development.

Sure, homelessness is a problem and it’s growing. When we send young men off to war and then ignore them when they come home. when people like Ronald Reagan all the way down to Bobby Jindal shutter the doors of mental health facilities, when foster children “age out” when they turn 18 and have nowhere to turn, when as many as 3.3 million children are victims of sex or labor trafficking at any given time, you have homelessness. And that’s not even counting the addicts who desperately need help. And punishment on top of misfortune is not help by anyone’s definition.

We do not need more laws to incarcerate even more people, despite what the executives of the myriad private prisons popping up across the horizon claim.

First of all, I see absolutely no reason whatsoever for the existence of a private prison. They exist only to reap money from caging human beings. That is unquestionably wrong. Prisons should never have been allowed to become a profit-making enterprise. That is not their purpose. When profits are factored in, care and rehabilitation are quickly factored out. The lower the maintenance cost, the better the bottom line.

“More than half of the nation is one crisis away from homelessness.” According to the U.S. Interagency Council on Homelessness.

That’s been said many ways, but in the end, the meaning is always the same.

It might be good advice to Villio and her 69 colleagues to take heed of that admonition and proceed accordingly.