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From Institute for Southern Studies:

In an in-depth piece in the New Orleans Times-Picayune this weekend, writer Cindy Chang looks at one of the key driving factor behind the world’s lock-up capital: “cold, hard cash.”

In Louisiana, it’s not just big for-profit prison companies — it’s small-town entrepreneurial sheriffs who lock people up to make money:

[I]n a uniquely Louisiana twist, most prison entrepreneurs are rural sheriffs, who hold tremendous sway in remote parishes like Madison, Avoyelles, East Carroll and Concordia. A good portion of Louisiana law enforcement is financed with dollars legally skimmed off the top of prison operations. If the inmate count dips, sheriffs bleed money. Their constituents lose jobs. The prison lobby ensures this does not happen by thwarting nearly every reform that could result in fewer people behind bars. [..] Each inmate is worth $24.39 a day in state money, and sheriffs trade them like horses, unloading a few extras on a colleague who has openings. A prison system that leased its convicts as plantation labor in the 1800s has come full circle and is again a nexus for profit.

The incentive to lock up more people is coupled harsh sentencing laws and a stingy parole system. The result is a network of players in the criminal justice system that have little interest in change:

“You have people who are so invested in maintaining the present system — not just the sheriffs, but judges, prosecutors, other people who have links to it,” said Burk Foster, a former professor at the University of Louisiana-Lafayette and an expert on Louisiana prisons. “They don’t want to see the prison system get smaller or the number of people in custody reduced, even though the crime rate is down, because the good old boys are all linked together in the punishment network, which is good for them financially and politically.”

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