I thought it was important to speak with Louisiana State Representative Joe Marino this week, as there’s a lot of talk about the number of bills that came through the legislature claiming to have eroded criminal justice reform. Representative Marino is one of just two members in the legislature that identify as independent, so he isn’t beholden to party lines. He’s also chairman of the Criminal Justice Administration.
What do you think actually happened in the latest legislative session regarding criminal justice reform?
My fellow legislators point to the rise in juvenile crime, the rise in violent crime and carjackings, only to make the blanket statement that criminal justice reform isn’t working. We need to save our jail space for those who need to be incarcerated and look for alternatives for nonviolent offenders. A lot of critics are just saying in general that criminal justice reform isn’t working, but none are pointing to any particular provisions.
When you talk about alternatives to incarcerations, are you satisfied that we proactively engaged in offering those alternatives? Are you comfortable that we are actually judging their effectiveness and making sure that we're looking for evidence-based outcomes in the evaluation of these alternatives?
The legislature is committed to doing it. I'm not confident that we're there yet on providing enough types of services. When you incarcerate someone, you create a substantial shockwave of things that can go wrong for that person… if you're sentenced to a state-run facility, you have a lot of different options that are available to you. The state doesn’t offer the same number of programs to non-violent offenders, which is a mistake in my opinion. About half of Louisiana's prison population are in state facilities and the rest are in parish jails just being warehoused… the juvenile system really needs some attention. Right now there's such a staffing shortage at these juvenile correction centers that they're taking people from probation and parole offices to work in those facilities,
We imploded the incarceration side of the juvenile system before we ever put one alternative program in place. The state has never caught up. If you look at forward-leaning states, you find it is actually a state-run system in every county.
Senate bill 323 is a proposal to establish a tiered juvenile corrections system, which would separate young offenders, and they can earn more freedoms as they move forward. Some of these juvenile offenders need to be in a more restrictive environment and some not so much. I think that’s one of the first pieces of legislation that I've seen in a long time that actually addresses the shortcomings of these facilities.
