This story was originally published by Louisiana Illuminator
Two years after Gov. Jeff Landry and state lawmakers voted to lengthen dozens of prison sentences for criminal convictions, the governor’s staff says state incarceration expenses are surging.
Landry’s team presented a budget proposal Friday that includes an $82 million year-over-year increase in state funding for its corrections system, which pays for nine prisons as well as the parole and probation system. State spending on Louisiana State Penitentiary, the maximum security prison in Angola, would go up at least $17.5 million alone, according to Landry’s budget presentation.
The change equates to an 11% hike from current state funding in the corrections budget and would bring yearly state general funding spent on those services from $716.5 million to $798.2 million starting July 1.
Gary Westcott, secretary of the Department of Public Safety and Corrections, said some of the increase can be attributed to lengthier prison sentences Landry and the Louisiana Legislature have imposed.
At the beginning of his term in 2024, the governor called a special session for lawmakers to enact tough-on-crime legislation aimed at making sure people with criminal convictions are imprisoned longer. One measure more than doubled the minimum amount of time people were required to stay incarcerated from 35% to 85% of their full prison sentence.
Another law change now prohibits people from having their prison stay reduced for the time they spend sitting in jail before they are convicted or plead guilty. Additionally, Landry and lawmakers abolished almost all access to parole and the number of people being released via parole has dropped to its lowest level in 20 years, according to ProPublica.
Critics of these lengthier sentences expected them to increase the state’s prison population, which appears to be happening. Since Landry has taken office, the number of state inmates in Louisiana has grown by approximately 2,000 people to 30,100 overall, according to statistics on the corrections department’s website.
Angola’s prison population alone has gone up 426 people since 2024, according to the prison system. It now stands at 4,258, not including those being held in the federal immigration detention camp opened on the prison’s grounds last year.
The $17.5 million increase Landry has proposed for Angola’s budget next year includes a planned expansion separate from the immigration detainee camp. The governor wants to put 688 more state inmates on the sprawling 18,000-acre campus following the rehabilitation of older buildings on the grounds. The extra prisoners will require Angola to hire 150 more staff members.
In an interview, Westcott said many of the 688 additional people at Angola are expected to already be part of the state inmate population. They would normally be held as state prisoners in local jails, but those facilities are becoming overcrowded following Landry’s sentencing changes. Sheriffs are asking for state inmates to be moved from parish lockups into state facilities because they lack space to house them, Westcott said.
The prison system has struggled with short staffing at Angola for several years. Its remote location in West Feliciana Parish — the prison entrance is at the end of a 20-mile rural road — makes it difficult to recruit employees to work there.
Westcott said he has asked lawmakers to back a law change during their upcoming spring session that would make it easier for him to rehire retired correctional officers without them having to forfeit retirement benefits. The change should make it easier to staff up at the prison, he said.
Westcott also plans to push for a pay raise for corrections officers, which he said should attract more job applicants.
Beyond Angola, Westcott said much of the $82 million increase in proposed prison spending is needed to cover rising medical costs. Incarcerated people don’t qualify for federal health insurance through Medicaid or Medicare, so state funding must cover all of their medical bills. This includes very expensive treatments for illnesses such as cancer.
Westcott said he is trying to keep health costs down by using medical furloughs for terminally ill prisoners. The corrections secretary can release inmates who are expected to die within 60 days. Once on the outside, they qualify for Medicaid or Medicare, and the prison system is no longer responsible for their medical bills. Most of the expenses shift to the federal government.
Westcott said he plans to support legislation that would expand the period in which a state prisoner could qualify for a medical furlough from three to six months at the end of their life. This could help the state cut down on health care expenses, he said.
But the larger the prison population is — and the older incarcerated people get as they remain behind bars for longer periods of time — the more likely the state is to spend more on prisoner health care, according to critics of Landry’s sentencing changes.
Former Gretna state Rep. Joe Marino, who chaired the Louisiana House Committee on Criminal Justice, spoke out against Landry’s longer prison sentences when the legislature debated them in 2024.
The cost will only continue to go up as more people are sentenced under the new, tougher guidelines, Marino said. The longer sentences went into effect in August 2024, meaning that, for now, most people in Louisiana prisons are still serving time under the older, more lenient system.
“It’s only just begun. You are going to be spending more money on incarcerating people every year going forward,” Marino said in an interview Monday. “I would suggest that this increase is the tip of the iceberg that is coming.”
In 2024, the Legislature agreed to Landry’s tough-on-crime laws without knowing the overall costs of the changes. Lawmakers approved the bills before the legislature’s own staff could complete analyses about their associated expenses.
At the time, legislators said the costs of the sentencing changes were irrelevant because the public wanted harsher consequences for criminals no matter the price.
“Where there is a priority, we will find a way to pay for it,” Rep. Debbie Villio, R-Kenner, a former prosecutor, said during legislative debate over the crime package in 2024.
“I’m not touting this as a fiscally responsible bill, right?” she said that year when arguing for the bill to eliminate most parole.