Criminal justice reforms didn’t cause Louisiana’s crime spike, study says
19th December 2022 · 0 Comments
By Wesley Muller
Contributing Writer
(lailluminator.com) — Louisi-ana’s recent criminal justice reforms, which significantly reduced prison populations, are not the cause of the recent spike in violent crime, according to a new report from the Pelican Institute.
The Pelican Institute for Public Policy, a right-leaning organization, released a report last Wednesday that analyzes crime numbers and incarceration rates in an effort to inform the debate over criminal justice policy.
The report reached four main conclusions about the recent crime spike across the state:
• Property crime is decreasing
• Increases in violent crime were a nationwide event that impacted almost every state
• Louisiana had lower increases in violent crime than other southern states
• Increases in violent crime are not correlated with criminal justice reforms or decreased incarceration rates
“These conclusions support a massive body of evidence demonstrating that recent Louisiana reforms are not the culprit and that smart criminal justice reforms, if implemented well, will lead to increased public safety in Louisiana,” the report stated.
Louisiana’s overall crime rate has been trending downward since 2019. Property crime rates have fallen 30% over the past 20 years, and violent crime rates have remained relatively constant from 2014 through 2019 with a sharp increase in 2020, driven primarily by increases in murder and aggravated assault, the study said.
Despite Louisiana’s new criminal justice reforms, which some have blamed as the cause of the crime spike, violent crime has increased in seven other southern states. Although Louisiana’s baseline rate is higher than many comparison states, the report highlighted, “Louisiana’s violent crime spike is lower than other states and mirrors regional trends.”
The 2020 increase in murders was not unique to Louisiana as murder rates jumped nearly 30 percent nationwide that year. The report noted the murder spike as a national phenomenon not linked to anything specific in Louisiana.
According to a 2022 report from the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections, the state’s prison population has fallen 24 percent since 2016 due solely to the reduced incarceration of nonviolent offenders. The state cut its incarceration rate for nonviolent offenders in half from 2016 to 2021. Over that same period, the incarceration rate of violent offenders increased slightly.
The Pelican Institute noted incarceration rates are not indicators of public safety because the 10 states with the largest declines in prison populations over the past 20 years saw crime rates decrease. Property crime fell in all 10 states, and violent crime fell in all but one state, Texas.
Statistically, the changes in incarceration rates cannot be causally linked to changes in crime rates. But, the report said, the data does suggest that “reducing incarceration and reducing crime can be carried out independently.”
“Louisiana’s recent criminal justice reforms refocused prison beds and resources where they’re most needed — on violent criminals, not those committing nonviolent offenses,” the report said.
The Pelican Institute included recommendations to reduce crime and increase public safety: Properly fund the police; focus law enforcement time and resources on preventing and solving the most serious crimes; and continue to enact smart-on-crime policies that increase public safety and reduce the revolving door in and out of prison.
“Public safety reform is too important not to get right,” Pelican Institute CEO Daniel Erspamer said in a press release. “Decisions should be grounded in facts and data, and reforms should reflect proven policy that increases public safety, reduces crime, and makes the best use of scarce tax-payer dollars. To do that, we must first have the facts.”
The study relied on data from the FBI’s annual estimates from 2014 to 2020 and noted that 185 of Louisiana’s 317 law enforcement agencies reported complete data that were included in the analysis. It did not include data from the FBI’s National Incident-Based Reporting System for 2021 because only 19 percent of Louisiana’s law enforcement agencies submitted a full 12 months of data to the FBI last year.
This article originally published in the December 19, 2022 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
