Public safety & Criminal Justice
Better Louisiana believes that the state should create an effective criminal justice system that focuses prison space on those who pose a public safety threat and uses evidence-based practices to reduce crime and recidivism.
Our Recommendations:
- Support initiatives of sheriffs and police departments that focus on data-driven policing to identify group and gang-related violent crime and community hot-spots, in collaboration with state and federal agencies.
- Create a statewide strategy for addressing evidence-related challenges related to DNA backlogs as well as accessing and analyzing cell phone data.
- Develop solutions to address the statewide law enforcement workforce shortages.
- Invest in preventative measures through near term and long term solutions to crime through education, including early childhood education and solutions to truancy and attendance, especially in schools closest to violent hot-spots.
- Support policy reforms to address blight to help communities secure properties in violent neighborhoods and put them back into commerce.
- Support policies aimed at using prison space for those who pose a public safety threat and strengthening our systems of community supervision.
- Expand drug courts with targeted programs aimed at keeping people out of prison and offering them needed treatment services.
- Avoid undermining well-researched reform efforts because of hearsay, politics and fear of crime. Focus on research-based work that uses proven ideas from other states.
- Create a prison-to-workforce pipeline in specific industries (such as construction and agriculture) that connects offenders with skills training needed by that sector and works with employers facing labor shortages to encourage them to hire people exiting prison.
- Fund the state’s courts and public defenders without counterproductive fees and fines on offenders that create a perverse structure inhibiting successful reentry into society.
- Evaluate the district criminal courts statewide to determine and measure their effectiveness, especially the “revolving door” where the same individuals get re-arrested.
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