How Do You Reduce a Budget? One Bite at a Time
Crime may be declining, but the cost of corrections in Louisiana is not decreasing. More prisoners and longer sentences require more resources and staff to facilitate them. Neither is the cost of operating the judiciary, with an approximate $30 million increase from 2022. Reducing costs and rebuilding taxpayer trust doesn't require a total overhaul. Small, practical steps can yield major impacts, and the lawmakers and law enforcement agencies of Louisiana are already undertaking some of these changes.
Orleans Sheriff Michelle Woodfork has pledged to make the necessary reforms to end the consent decree placed on the Orleans Justice Center, a prison in the Orleans Parish, over a decade ago. The decree mandated federal oversight after poor living conditions, inadequate staffing, and other violations were reported and has resulted in direct and indirect costs to taxpayers, who fund the attorneys, monitors, and operations associated with the decree. Ending the decree would signal both a commitment to fiscal responsibility and ethical incarceration practices. Sheriff Woodfork is working closely with Louisiana Attorney General Liz Murrill to meet federal criteria and exit the decree. Public safety and fiscal responsibility are not incompatible. Improving the conditions of Orleans prison is no small task, but it is a strong step towards creating a corrections system that does not rely on federal oversight and increased taxes to fulfill its role within the justice system.
Data collected over recent years creates a strong argument for the benefits of prison education programs for state budgets. Education can aid in reentry by opening up opportunities for those who have completed their sentence and return to society. Even for those with longer or life sentences, the structure and sense of pride offered through earning a certification, GED, or degree can create a meaningful difference in prison stability and safety. This past legislative session, House Bill 11, now signed into law as Act 28, created a pathway for incarcerated people earning an associate’s degree to get good time credit. This legislation does two things, backed by research: incentivizes reentry preparedness (higher chance of getting a job and lower chance of recommitting a crime) and reduces corrections costs by potentially shortening sentences.
Other actionable changes are available to our state. Pew reported that court text reminders are an accessible method to reduce failures to appear and save state courts time and money. Noting that each missed appearance costs courts on average $15, the report suggests that applying proven techniques to reminder systems already in place can have a major impact. The timing, method, and language of a reminder can be the difference between a missed hearing and a successful appearance. Establishing a standard for effective court text reminders and providing local courts with the necessary resources and education to implement them could have far reaching benefits.
Another under-discussed budget strain is that of fines and fees. Louisiana has hundreds of distinct fines and fees on the books, and efforts to enforce these can be so expensive they cancel out any revenue generated. Earlier this year, Oklahoma passed legislation to study which fines and fees were disproportionately leading to arrests because of failure to pay. Modeling this approach, Louisiana can study the efficacy of these practices to better understand where eliminating them will save valuable taxpayer dollars.
An old saying asks, “How do you eat an elephant?” The answer: “one bite at a time.” The increasing costs of our corrections system and courts can seem to be looming and insurmountable. One-bite fixes, like ending costly federal oversights and tying reduced sentences to reentry-focused effort can chip away at the elephant of a ballooning budget. Beyond this, actionable insights show that simple changes like text reminders and current data about long-held practices can also ease fiscal strain.