Not so fun fact: Louisiana only has one, gigantic maximum security prison, named Angola. The thought of that place scares me and I've never even been to Louisiana.
They dropped off slightly (I think Oklahoma is #1 now) but up until a few years ago Louisiana jailed a higher % of its population than anywhere else on earth, even more than the Middle East or North Korea
Documentaries on Angola kept me out of jail/prison growing up in NOLA/Slidell. Probably a lot of luck as well, if I'm being honest. That place has frightened me my entire life from pre-internet smartphone era 80s to whatever we're in now. The stuff of nightmares.
Louisiana has the highest incarceration rate in the country, almost twice the national average and more than four times the rate of Massachusetts.
And speaking of American freedom, Louisiana imprisons its residents at a rate seven times that of communist China and more than five times Putin's Russia.
Louisiana would be much more liveable if it put those prison funds into education, housing, healthcare, and job training programs. But that wouldn't make private prison CEOs ultra-wealthy on the slave labor of imprisoned American citizens.
Louisiana would be much more liveable if it put those prison funds into education, housing, healthcare, and job training programs.
America is $40 trillion in debt because of social service pending. The amount of debt we've accrued paying for healthcare, education, food, and housing is so much that just the interest payments on the debt is more than the defense budget.
The idea that any region or demographic in America performs poorly because of a lack of financial investment is preposterous. The government spends more than $20K per year on each public school pupil.
Not exactly true -- check out LaSalle Corrections, a for-profit prison company that contracts with local parishes and sheriffs to jail inmates, and also contracts with Department of Corrections to house people sentenced on felonies. It has its own facilities and also manages state assets for profit.
And then there's GEO Group, which has a huge for-profit presence in Louisiana black holing immigrants for ICE.
Either way, my larger point remains about the draconian incarceration rates in Louisiana. When it isn't the private CEOs getting rich, it's the state contracting out prison labor to undercut costs of paying wage workers.
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u/MaestroTobasco Notre Dame • West Virginia 6d ago
Think of how much money the State of Louisiana could have spent on private prisons instead of wasting it on 8-4 football teams.