Edwards signed criminal justice reform legislation in June of 2017. The state’s prison population currently sits at approximately 32,000. We are in a virtual tie with Oklahoma as the incarceration capital of the United States. The state’s prison population reached an all-time high of 40,170 in 2012.
At the end of 2017, Louisiana had a violent crime rate of 566 such crimes per 100,000, according to the FBI. In 2018, the first full year of criminal justice reform, the state’s violent crime rate dropped slightly to 557 per 100,000. That makes Louisiana the 47th most violent state in the nation.
Unfortunately, our 30-continuous years of holding the title of the state with the highest murder rate per capita went unchallenged in 2018.
Read more: Dan Fagan: Thanks to so-called Louisiana justice reform, bad criminals get our early
