Governor John Bel Edwards will hold a series of events this week to mark the five-year anniversary of bipartisan criminal justice reforms becoming law. The governor’s communications director Lauren Leist says the state’s recidivism rate has fallen 26% in the last five years.
“You’re not giving people the tools that they need to succeed when they are out of prison then they are going to just end up right back in prison,” said Leist.
The landmark legislation reduced the state’s prison population and over 100-million dollars was reinvested into crime prevention and anti-recidivism programs. Leist says today the governor will visit an organization that helps domestic violence victims and he has more events planned later this week.
“He’s going to be meeting with various non-profit groups as well as people who have directly benefited from re-investment,” said Leist.
Ten criminal justice reform bills were approved during the 2017 regular session and Leist says many of those bills went into effect five years ago on November 1st.
“It took a lot of different people coming together around a common goal, because we knew the status quo was not working, so now five years later, we want to highlight the way these reforms and the re-investments have made a difference,” said Leist.
But there are some Republican lawmakers who say the criminal justice reforms passed in 2017 were too soft on crime and have led to a rise in violent crime.
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