Julia O’Donoghue
NOLA Media Group, New Orleans
BATON ROUGE, La. — A committee of the Louisiana Legislature has signed off on spending $20.6 million more to house state prisoners in local parish prisons next fiscal year. No one on the House Committee on the Administration of Criminal Justice objected Wednesday (April 24) to the funding increase in House Bill 551.
The legislation would raise the rate paid to sheriffs to house thousands of state inmates from $24.39 per inmate per day to $28.39. Sheriffs say the current rate doesn’t cover their costs and that they’re essentially subsidizing the state prison system by covering those extra expenses.
The additional $20.6 million is notable, given that lawmakers will be asked for other funding increases: higher education, K-12 schools and a foster care expansion, among them. While the proposal cleared the criminal justice committee with ease, sheriffs acknowledge they will have a harder time in the House Appropriations Committee, which builds the state budget and must take competing interests into account.
Still, local sheriffs are some of the most political influential people in local communities. Legislators facing reelection in the fall are likely to consider their request carefully.
A few local sheriffs attended Wednesday’s criminal justice hearing. Rep. Denise Marcelle, D-Baton Rouge, said she was considering opposing the measure, but then she saw the “warden” for East Baton Rouge Parish and changed her mind.
“Apparently, you want to be re-elected,” Rep. Katrina Jackson, D-Monroe, joked to Marcelle after Marcelle made that statement. Jackson is the sponsor of House Bill 551.
Sheriffs have sought an increase to their state inmate reimbursement rate for years, having last received one in 2008. Over that period, Michael Ranatza, executive director of the Louisiana Sheriffs Association, said the state prison system has gone from spending around $45 per inmate per day to $60. State prisons provide far more to inmates – including substance abuse treatment, behavioral programming and educational classes – than sheriffs can afford to offer.
The increase being sought would not allow sheriffs to offer more rehabilitative services. Ranatza said the additional money would mostly pay for existing staff.
Louisiana is more dependent on sheriffs to house local offenders than any other state. Sheriffs house more than half of Louisiana’s prison population of about 32,000 inmates. Forty-eight states house less than 5 percent of their prisoners in local jails.
The drop in Louisiana’s prison population could contribute to the sheriffs’ request for more funding. Ranatza has confirmed the number of inmates sheriffs are being paid to house has fallen. The count of state prisoners in the custody of sheriffs was 20,000 in 2014. As of last week, the number was 16,900, Ranatza said Wednesday.
Louisiana relinquished its title as the state with the highest U.S. incarceration rate last year, in part because of a package of new laws Gov. John Bel Edwards and the Louisiana Legislature implemented to reduce the number of inmates and cost of incarceration to the state.
Most of the reductions in the state prison population have come out of the groups local sheriffs house. After the criminal justice overhaul was implemented, sheriffs expected to house fewer state prisoners but also anticipated an enrollment increase in their work release programs. The new laws expanded the number of years inmates could participate in work release.
Ranatza said work release programs aren’t operating at capacity. Thomas Bickham, chief financial officer for the state prison system, said last week there is a struggle to find inmates eligible for work release since the criminal justice changes took effect. Good candidates are being released earlier now, he said.
Some sheriffs, particularly in rural North Louisiana, have built massive jails under the assumption that they would be continue to be reimbursed for housing hundreds of state inmates for several years, said Rep. Steve Pylant, R-Winnsboro, the former sheriff of Franklin Parish. Sheriffs now have to pay the debt on those oversized facilities and to keep them current, he said.
“A lot of people don’t realize that those jails that we built back then ... that they have deteriorated over time, and we are having to go back and remodel and keep things upgraded,” he said.
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