In June 2017, the Louisiana Legislature passed, and Governor John Bel Edwards signed into law, a package of ten Justice Reinvestment bills.
Prior to the passage of the Justice Reinvestment Initiative (JRI)1 legislation, Louisiana was leading the nation in imprisonment, with a rate nearly double the national average. The state was also sending people to prison for nonviolent offenses at 1.5 to 3 times the rate of other Southern states with similar crime rates. The policy choices that led to this situation were costing the state nearly $700 million annually on corrections, but one in three inmates released from prison returned there within three years.
Following lessons learned from successful criminal justice reform efforts in other Southern states as well as the best available research, Louisiana developed a comprehensive, data-driven and bipartisan plan designed to steer people convicted of less serious crimes away from prison, strengthen alternatives to incarceration, reduce prison terms for those who can be safely supervised in the community, and remove barriers to successful reentry.
This is the Executive Summary for the first annual report to the Legislature from the Department of Public Safety & Corrections (DPS&C) and the Louisiana Commission on Law Enforcement (LCLE) on results stemming from the Justice Reinvestment legislation. Additional data and information about implementation and reinvestment are included in the full report.