Today, the Reason Foundation, in conjunction with the Pelican Institute for Public Policy and the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Center for Effective Justice, has announced the release of “Smart on Sentencing, Smart on Crime: An Argument for Reforming Louisiana’s Determinate Sentencing Laws.” The paper, authored by Lauren Galik and Julian Morris of the Reason Foundation, brings to light Louisiana’s outmoded overreliance on mandatory minimum sentences as a means of criminal deterrence.
Dismayed by the lack of severity of felony sentences and the swiftness with which they were applied, lawmakers in Louisiana passed a swath of determinate sentencing laws ranging from mandatory minimum legislation to habitual offender laws. The former statutorily imposes a “floor” – a minimum length of time a sentence must contain upon the finding of guilt for a specific crime. The latter requires the imposition of a mandatory minimum sentence based on how many felony re-offenses the individual has been found to have committed, the most notorious of which being “Three Strikes” laws.
While superficially an effective deterrent to criminal behavior, determinate sentencing laws wrest control of individual case processing and adjudication from the trained professionals of the criminal justice system and grant it to the legislature. This rote process limits the sentencing options available to the court and fails to take into account individual variation between cases. As such studies have shown that, while harsher sentences are more frequently given and prison populations swell under determinate sentencing schemes, there is no positive effect on public safety for the accompanying increase in cost.
Louisiana has shown the willingness to make sentencing reform a priority. Over the past two years, Louisiana lawmakers passed bills allowing courts to waive mandatory minimum requirements in certain situations, expanding eligibility for parole for nonviolent offenders, and incentivized further use of drug treatment and rehabilitation/vocational programs. With the coming interest this report is likely to generate, we eagerly look forward to the next wave of common sense criminal justice reforms for the state.