By Steve Sailer
03/07/2024
Earlier (2021) Murder Rates: What’s The Matter With Louisiana?
Not surprisingly, after the huge increase in murders and more general chaos during the George Floyd racial reckoning, various localities, such as San Francisco and Portland, are rolling back their soft on drugs and crime projects.
Also included in that list is the state of Louisiana, although it’s even crazier that Louisiana decided in 2017 to go soft on crime. Unlike San Francisco and Portland, Louisiana has a large number of blacks and a high crime rate. The great historian David Hackett Fischer wrote in 2022:
In 2016 [Louisiana] ranked first for murders among fifty American states, as it had done for twenty-eight years in a row. This tradition of corruption, crime, and violence has spanned three centuries in Louisiana, from its founding flibustiers in 1699 to its new-modeled freebooters in our time.
Not surprisingly, Louisiana is now throwing out its 2017 New Jim Crow nuttiness, much to The New York Times news section’s dismay:
With Sweeping New Laws, Louisiana Embraces Tough-on-Crime Approach
Gov. Jeff Landry is enacting stringent new measures that he says are crucial to address crime; critics say the laws resemble failed policies of the past.
As opposed to the failed policies of the present.
By Rick Rojas
Reporting from Baton Rouge, La.March 6, 2024
In 2017, Louisiana overhauled its criminal justice system with broad bipartisan support, all in an effort to lose the distinction of having the nation’s highest incarceration rate.
As opposed to the nation’s highest murder rate.
Sentences were reduced. Opportunities for parole were expanded. Alternatives to prison were introduced.
But seven years later, the state is sending a very different message: Those days are over.
Lawmakers, urged on by a new Republican governor, rushed through a special session last month to roll back the 2017 changes….
Mr. Landry, who took office in January, and his supporters argue that the new stringent measures are necessary to crack down on violence and crime, which soared in parts of the state during the pandemic. But critics contend that the new laws are variations of flawed past policies and would have the same consequences: punishing people of color disproportionately, obliterating hope and pathways to rehabilitation for prisoners, and foisting a staggering cost onto taxpayers.
“None of these bills are going to do anything to increase public safety or reduce crime in our communities,” said Sarah Omojola, the director of Vera Louisiana, a nonprofit group focused on reducing incarceration and preventing violence. “All these bills do is expand incarceration at a really high cost for Louisianans.” …
He was responding to anxiety over public safety amid a surge in violent crime and other offenses during the coronavirus pandemic, mirroring a national trend. The murder rate soared in New Orleans, reaching levels that had not been seen in decades and was the highest in the nation in 2022. Carjackings were also rampant. The city’s Police Department was depleted of officers and morale.
Over the past year, crime rates have steadied. In New Orleans, murders plummeted in 2023 by some 25 percent compared with the year before, outpacing a nationwide decline.
In other good news, combat deaths in Eastern Europe are down over 90% since the Battles of Stalingrad and Kursk-Orel in 1943.
… Mr. Edwards, the last Democratic governor in the Deep South, exasperated many in his own party with his conservative stances on abortion and gun rights. Still, he notched some victories that had been championed by progressives; the overhaul of the justice system — known as the Louisiana Justice Reinvestment Act — was one of them.
Many states were enacting similar changes. There was widespread agreement at the time that taking a less punitive approach to low-level offenders and treating the causes of crime, like drug addiction, could make the criminal justice system more effective and free up resources that could be directed at pursuing violent offenders.
In Louisiana — long regarded as the “world’s prison capital” — the legislation felt like a monumental achievement.
… Critics said that they had no doubt the new legislation would have deep repercussions, and that it would not address the root reasons behind crime; doing so, they believe, would make communities safer.
“It’s not about being ‘tough on crime,’” Ms. Omojola said. “It’s about getting serious about safety.”
Rick Rojas is a national correspondent covering the American South. He has been a staff reporter for The Times since 2014.
To put Louisiana in perspective:
So, homicide didn’t go up immediately after 2017’s soft-on-crime legislation, but did go up the next time the culture changed in the George Floyd era.
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