Report falls short defending justice changes

Sometimes you should cut your losses and make the best of it, as Louisiana’s Pelican Institute is discovering on its backing of Democrat Gov. John Bel Edwards’ criminal justice changes.

After a period of some stagnation, in the past few years Pelican has proven itself valuable in articulating a conservative agenda tailored to the state. But it went out on a limb when it threw its support behind Edwards’ alterations that shortened sentences for some convicts and reduced punishments for some nonviolent crimes. This followed the lead of some conservatives who based their support on allegedly “smart” ways of tackling crime that would save money.

The problem was the Edwards’ modifications lent themselves more to saving money and following political fashion than creating a well-designed attempt to ensure such adjustments didn’t present opportunities for reduced criminal deterrence. The Edwards Administration knows this and, among other reactions, spent much of the latest annual report on the changes trying to convince readers of cost savings supposedly caused by these.

It failed, because it left out the facts that decreases in incarceration came mainly from demographic trends, and also contributing was more “progressive” prosecuting and adjudication in some jurisdictions, meaning fewer felony cases referred and lighter sentencing involving less or no jail time – in part induced by the changes. It also neglected to mention that not having more convicts imprisoned, mainly by not having to send as many to local jails, ended up prompting a hike in the per diem paid to sheriffs to compensate them for their fixed costs to enable them to continue taking state prisoners when necessary, meaning that cost to taxpayers actually increased.

That report didn’t address whether the changes impacted the crime rate, which anecdotal evidence suggested was on the rise that could be linked to the increased leniency of the alterations. A number of law enforcement officials, all they way up to gubernatorial candidate Republican Atty. Gen. Jeff Landry, have cast aspersions on the modifications as a contributor to increased crime. In particular, they noted weakening of mandatory juvenile charging and sentencing had increasingly become a problem, but other aspects also had become troublesome such as raising the felony threshold, which induces more crime by reducing the deterrence value and may have triggered a rash of “petty” smash-and-grab thefts as noted by law enforcement across the state.

Realizing the tide was turning ever more against its position, Pelican responded last month with an attempt to dispel the idea that the changes had led to greater crime commission. This document tried to counter by pointing out that property crimes are decreasing in the state, admitting the violent crime surge but that this was observed nationally as well, and noting that rate of increase was lower than in some southern states.

However, it suffered from the same defects as the state’s report, beginning with its blunt and undifferentiated overview of national trends that also ignores the impact of a declining male population of age 19 to 34, the engine of criminal activity, in 2016 through 2020. In Louisiana, that proportion dropped from 21.9 to 20.4 percent, while nationally it went from 21.4 to 20.8 percent (the legal changes started kicking in during 2017, and 2021 isn’t included because changes in crime data collection have to date left a number of gaps in 2021 data).

Alone, this would have triggered a decrease crime, but didn’t for the violent kind. In fact, nationally over this period violent crime commission per 100,000 barely budged upwards, from 397.5 to 398.5. Meanwhile, in Louisiana it soared from 565 to 639.4. The Pelican report disingenuously tries to explain away the Louisiana increase as part of a national phenomenon unrelated to the changes when in fact national numbers basically didn’t move compared to a 13 percent increase in Louisiana.

The report also misleads on this account when it states that “Violent crime rates in Louisiana remained relatively constant from 2014 through 2019, with a sharp increase in 2020,” implying that 2020 was an outlier if wanting to tie that to the changes. Of course, including 2014 and 2015 are irrelevant since the 2016 is the pretest year and 2017 and after are the posttest observations, but setting that aside the 2016-19 period did see a small decrease in Louisiana to 559.7, or about 1 percent. But the problem is in the same interval the U.S. rate fell to 380.8 or a nearly 5 percent decrease – once in again, in isolation of everything else, suggesting the alterations are to blame for greater variations in violent crime in an outcome negative direction in Louisiana.

Keep in mind as well as the proportion of the cohort most prone to crime fell much quicker in Louisiana than nationally, going from being higher to lower. This would suggest that changes in violent crime should have been more favorable in the state than nation, but the opposite occurred. Again, in the period few states made changes like Louisiana, yet national statistics were more favorable that Louisiana’s, implying the changes had a negative impact.

Nor can the report’s resort to cherry-picked regional statistics and time periods save its attempted conclusion. In fact, what data it does present tends to undermine its assertions. It claims “Louisiana’s violent crime spike is lower than other states and mirrors regional trends,” but that again measures from a 2014 baseline. Properly using 2016 as the baseline, in reality among the states listed in the report only Arkansas had an increase larger than Louisiana’s (a stunning 21.2 percent), while all of Florida, Georgia, Mississippi, Oklahoma, and Texas had much smaller increases (or, in the case of Florida, a 12 percent decrease) with none other higher than 3.4 percent.

Finally, while property crime in the state did decrease from 3,297.2 to 2,884.4 or 14 percent in the 2016-20 period, nationally it fell 2,451.6 to 1,958.2 or 25.2 percent. In other words, this kind of crime fell less in Louisiana where the changes were made than nationally where almost none of the constituent parts of those statistics enacted similar changes.

The Pelican report is long on assertions but short on valid conclusions supporting those, given the data aren’t on its side. In no way do the data support its view that “a massive body of evidence demonstrat[es] that recent Louisiana reforms are not the culprit” to increased crime. Rather, the effort represents a crude attempt to distract from evidence – which does need more data and analysis for a more definitive determination – that shows that Edwards’ criminal justice initiative, isolated from all other factors, has done nothing to make Louisiana safer and likely has retarded the positive impact of other factors. Pelican may wish to reevaluate its erroneous position on the issue and quit before it falls further behind.