Treating Inmates as Commodities in Louisiana Is a Local Government Ethics Problem

Louisiana Incarcerated is an investigative series that ran recently in the New Orleans Times-Picayune. It is a story rooted in an extremely poor ethics environment that, despite vaunted ethics reforms (that many, including me, have criticized), does not seem to have changed.

The series has introduced into popular culture the term "honey hole," one sheriff's description of the cells in his prison, which is the sheriff's biggest revenue generator.

The words "revenue" and "prisoner" should not be spoken in the same sentence, as we saw in Luzerne County, PA and as could be seen for decades in the prison plantations of many U.S. states. It is no accident that Louisiana has, by far, a higher incarceration rate than any other state. When it is in the direct financial interest of local government officials to have more people incarcerated, there will probably be more people incarcerated. That's why the subheadline of the series is "Sheriffs and politicians have financial incentives to keep people locked up."

I believe that the public trust in government being run for the public rather than for officials' private interests is enough to justify a comprehensive, independent ethics program. But for those who need a stronger justification, and for whom such things as millions of dollars in savings relating to procurement is insufficient, here as in Luzerne County is the most horrible price possible of a poor ethics environment:  the incarceration of individuals who do not belong in prison, the ruining of lives in the short term and often the long.

This is not solely a government ethics problem, but it would likely not have occurred without making sheriffs' and others' financial interests in opposition to the interest of those who come into the criminal justice system. Take this paragraph from one of the investigative articles:

Like hotels, prisons operating on per-diem payments must stay near 100 percent occupancy to survive. The political pressure to keep beds full is a contributing factor to the state's world-leading incarceration rate. No other state comes close to Louisiana's 53 percent rate of state inmates in local prisons, and few lobbies in Louisiana are as powerful as the sheriffs association.

The per-diem funding process is flawed, but it is not the result of poor judgment. It is the result of local government officials' lobbying. Not only do these per-diem rates lead to over-incarceration. They also mean that, in order to profit from the inmates, sheriffs provide very little in the way of educational and vocational programs. Not to mention food.

It also means that any attempt to close a prison is opposed by the sheriffs association and even by each community, which has an interest in the money and jobs the prison generates, and little in the inmates, who are mostly from elsewhere, due to a thriving statewide market in inmates.

Here's a frightening description of the prison program from a column by Jarvis DeBerry about how to solve the problem:

The state's sheriffs are treating inmates as chattel. ... An inmate can be sent to another prison not because the facility is the best fit but as a gesture of collegiality.

Collegiality. That is, good feeling between officials, bad feeling by officials toward citizens. This is the essence of a poor ethics environment. It means that everyone inside government is working together to make life miserable for citizens. Preferential treatment is the norm, but it is not directed toward family members, business associates, or major contributors, it is directed toward one's colleagues, at the expense of citizens.

Treating people as commodities is the worst thing possible. And thousands of people not only accepted this worst thing, but contributed to it. And hundreds of thousands of people put the economic value of the system to their community above the effect it had on inmates. Any ethics reform that did not deal with this situation was not only ineffective to the point of meaninglessness, but also deeply dishonest.

Louisiana is effectively a state without empathy. How does a community gain empathy?

Robert Wechsler
Director of Research-Retired, City Ethics

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