Zachary Fitzgerald
Despite the passage of a criminal justice reform package in June, Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry says the state has much more work to do to implement meaningful reforms.
Landry was guest speaker Wednesday during a St. Mary Chamber of Commerce business luncheon at the Petroleum Club of Morgan City.
He encouraged people to pay attention to the criminal justice reform package that the state Legislature passed and Gov. John Bel Edwards signed into law.
On June 15, Edwards signed 10 bills into law intended to overhaul the state’s criminal justice system and try to remove the state’s designation as the “world’s incarceration capital,” The Advocate reported.
The legislation is expected to lower the prison population by 10 percent over the next decade and raise $262 million for the state by no longer housing those inmates, the article said.
“I’m the first person to tell you that we absolutely need to reform our criminal justice system,” Landry said.
But the system is “like a house of cards,” and “criminal justice courts are a mess,” he said.
Many ex-prisoners will get out of jail with no new skills and immediately be eligible for welfare, Landry said.
State officials are trading tax dollars used to house a person in prison to pay for “another social program,” he said.
If ex-prisoners don’t have the necessary skills to get a job, “they’re just going to go right back in jail,” Landry said.
To successfully implement criminal justice reform, state leaders must make sure courts are adequately funded, support drug court programs and invest money “on the front end,” Landry said.
The problem with the system isn’t that the state is putting too many people in prison, and the problem isn’t going to be solved by just reducing the state’s prison population, Landry said.
Ensuring that non-violent offenders or other people exiting prison return to civilian life with a marketable skill should be an important part of reforming the system, Landry said. Louisiana already has a substantial shortage of skilled workers, so companies have to bring in workers from other places to do specialized jobs, he said.
Louisiana Attorney General’s Office personnel worked diligently with sheriffs and district attorneys “to ensure that the governor’s criminal justice package reform was at least responsible,” Landry said.
Landry wanted to make sure officials didn’t make the state’s crime problem even worse, he said.
“I really believe over the course of the next 10 years that the crime problem is just going to get worse and worse and worse unless we make some meaningful reforms and unless we go back (to) instilling the rule of law in this country,’ Landry said.
“If there’s a law on the books, we can’t just ignore it,” he said.
For example, the government shouldn’t allow immigrants who come into the country illegally to stay here, he said.
“That tells our citizens that you can just go about breaking the law,” Landry said.
State leaders need to start instilling in citizens that they have a responsibility to behave properly when interacting with law enforcement officers.
Landry said he will always support officers when they operate within the law, but will treat them as criminals when they break the law.
The attorney general says he is working with “federal partners” to try to make sure that public officials who break the law are brought to justice.
“I think all of those things help to kind of shine up Louisiana’s image and hopefully bring business back into this state,” Landry said.
He hopes the Legislature “will get our fiscal house in order” in a way that doesn’t take more money from taxpayers and puts the state in a position to be an example for other states.