by Douglas Ankney

It has been said that the definition of insanity is to repeat the same actions again and again while expecting a different result. Spouting old hat “tough on crime” rhetoric got Jeff Landry elected as Governor of Louisiana. Together with his Republican friends, they immediately proceeded to enact changes to the criminal legal system that are returning the Pelican State to its troubled past.

After calling a special session of the Louisiana legislature in 2024, Landry and friends promptly enacted laws with the primary purpose of “making sure people with criminal convictions spend more time in state prisons.” 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 legislative measure now limits people from having their prison stay fully reduced for the time they spend sitting in jail awaiting adjudication of their charges.

But perhaps the most consequential shift was when 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.” (Under Landry’s tenure as governor, the parole board has freed 185 prisoners compared with 858 in the last two years of his predecessor’s leadership.) And Landry and friends are responsible for the abolition of parole for anyone convicted of a crime in Louisiana after August 1, 2024.

While 17 other states have abolished parole, Louisiana is the first to do so in 24 years. As projected by critics of the new sentencing process, both the state’s prison population and the associated costs of housing them has steadily increased. The number of incarcerated persons at the Louisiana State Prison (commonly known as Angola) has risen by 426 since 2024.

According to a report released on January 27, 2026 from the Louisiana Illuminator, Angola’s incarcerated population stood at 4,258, not counting the detainees held in a federal immigration detention camp that opened on the prison grounds in 2025. Another 688 people were awaiting to be incarcerated at Angola once building repairs are completed. These additional prisoners will necessitate the hiring of 150 additional staff.

In January 2026, Landry and friends’ budget proposal included an $82-million increase to corrections over last year—rising from $ 716.5 million to $798.2 million—with $17.5 million earmarked for Angola alone. Gary Westcott, Louisiana Director of Public Safety and Corrections, said that “some” of the increase in spending “can be attributed to criminal sentencing changes Landry and the Louisiana legislature have imposed.”

In an interview, Westcott said “many of the 688 additional people at Angola are expected to already be a part of the state prisoner 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 prisoners to be moved from parish lockups into state facilities because they lack space to house them.”

But the Louisiana prison system is buckling already with an unbearable load. Angola has struggled for several years with understaffing. Located in a remote location (the prison entrance is at the end of a 20-mile dirt road) makes it difficult to convince anyone to work there. Westcott said “much of the $82 million increase in proposed prison spending is needed to cover rising medical costs.” People incarcerated in state facilities do not qualify for federal health services through Medicare or Medicaid, so it is up to the states to pay for all medical services, including expensive treatments for cancer.

Westcott attempts to keep medical costs down by using medical furloughs for terminally ill prisoners. As Secretary of Corrections, he may release prisoners expected to die within 60 days. He supports current legislation that seeks to expand furloughs to prisoners expected to die within 120 days. But terminally ill prisoners are only a tiny fraction of the prison population.

And as the age of prisoners rises, so too does the cost of providing health care while incarcerating them. “The cost will only continue to go up as more people are sentenced under the new, tougher guidelines,” said former Gretna state Representative Joe Marino (I), who chaired the Louisiana House Committee on Criminal Justice and spoke out against Landry’s changes when the legislature debated them.

“The new sentencing changes went into effect in August 2024, meaning that, for now, most people in Louisiana prisons are still serving time under the older, but 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 with the Louisiana Illuminator. “I would suggest that this increase is the tip of the iceberg that is coming.”

For those prisoners who remain eligible for parole, Landry and friends tightened reins to such an extent the reins have become a noose. Among the many changes, the prisoner must now “be deemed a low risk of reoffending through a computerized scoring system, which does not take into account prisoners’ efforts to rehabilitate themselves and was not intended to be used to make individual parole decisions.”

Louisiana is the only state to automatically ban people from the parole process based on a computerized scoring method. And for those fortunate few to receive a parole hearing, the noose tightens tighter. Landry appointed five of the seven members of the current parole board. Generally, panels of three members consider each case but five-member panels are required when a prisoner was convicted of a violent crime against a police officer and in some cases involving life sentences.

When considering whether to grant parole, Landry has said parole board members “should prioritize the recommendations from crime victims and law enforcement.” But how are the hearings actually playing out? At a recent hearing, Jessie Soileau begged for the release of her son, Ray. He was serving a 14-year sentence for punching her in the eye and then fighting police when they arrested him. She explained to the parole board that, as she has only one leg and suffers from multiple health issues, she needed Ray’s help. “I try to do the best that I can alone, but I can’t do it by myself,” she said. “Ray is the one that helps me out.”

Then Ray Soileau told the parole board that he was off of his medication the day of his arrest and promised he wouldn’t get into trouble anymore. “I learned my lesson,” he said, “to obey my mother and to obey the laws of the system.” Then Caleb Semien, the assistant chief of police over the officers who arrested Ray Soileau spoke. He had known Ray for 24 years and agreed he should be freed. Semien said Ray had attended church faithfully during his incarceration and told the board that Ray “is just an all-around good guy.”

The recommendations of the victim and law enforcement wasn’t enough. The board voted 4 to 1 in favor, killing Ray’s chance. The lone dissenter, Carolyn Stapleton, had worked for 20 years in victims’ services in law enforcement and had been appointed to the parole board by Landry. Formerly, Ray could have re-applied for parole in a year. But under the changes wrought by Landry and Friends, he won’t be eligible for parole again until another five years have passed.

And prior to the amendments of Landry and friends, the four votes in favor of parole would have been sufficient to grant parole to Ray. Now, instead of only a necessary majority, a grant of parole requires a unanimous vote of the panel. Another parole board member appointed by Landry is Steve Prator, a former police chief and sheriff in northern Louisiana. Among the board members, he and Stapleton are the least likely to grant parole. During the tenure of former Governor John Bel Edwards (D), Prator voiced his objections to Edwards’ criminal justice reforms. Prator argued against parole because it would result in the release of the “good” prisoners who prisons depended on to “wash cars, change oil in our cars, to cook in the kitchen, to do all that, where we save money.”

Civil rights attorneys and prison reform advocates point out the obvious: Landry’s “tough on crime” changes are a return to the failed policies of the past that “did not make a dent in the state’s high crime rates” but at the same time produced “violent, overcrowded prisons.”

“Tough on crime does not work,” said Pearl Wise, a former parole board member appointed by Edwards and who served from 2016 until 2023. “All it produces is mass incarceration, which costs us more than rehabilitating the individual and making them taxpayers, not tax burdens.”

National corrections policy expert James Austin estimates the state’s prison population “will nearly double in six years,” rising from about 28,000 to 55,800 because of the recent policy changes. So far, under Landry, the prison population has increased by around 1,700. But it is not known if this trend is permanent due to lack of data.  

Sources: ProPublica, Louisiana Illuminator

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