How Louisiana Is Eliminating Parole, Most Early Releases

Calvin Alexander thought he had done everything the Louisiana parole board asked to earn an early release from prison. He took anger management classes, learned a trade and enrolled in drug treatment. His disciplinary record was clean. Alexander, more than midway through a 20-year prison sentence on drug charges, was making preparations for what he hoped would be his new life, planning to life with his daughter in New Orleans. Two months before a hearing, officials sent Alexander a letter informing him he was no longer eligible for parole. A computerized scoring system adopted by the state Department of Public Safety and Corrections deemed the nearly blind 70-year-old, who uses a wheelchair, a moderate risk of reoffending if he is released. Under a new law, that meant he and thousands of other prisoners with moderate or high risk ratings cannot plead their cases before the board. About 13,000 people — nearly half the prison population — have such risk ratings, although not all of them are eligible for parole, report ProPublica and Verite.

Alexander said he felt “betrayed” upon learning his hearing had been canceled. “People in jail have … lost hope in being able to do anything to reduce their time,” he said. The law that changed Alexander’s prospects was passed by Louisiana Republicans last year reflecting Gov. Jeff Landry’s tough-on-crime agenda to make it more difficult for prisoners to be released. While campaigning for governor, Landry, a former police officer and sheriff’s deputy who served as Louisiana attorney general, championed a crackdown on rewarding well-behaved prisoners with parole. Landry said early release, which until now has been typically assumed when judges hand down sentences, is a slap in the face to crime victims. “The revolving door is insulting,” Landry said as he kicked off a special legislative session on crime during which he blamed the state’s high violent crime rate on lenient sentences and “misguided post-conviction programs” that fail to rehabilitate prisoners. The Legislature eliminated parole for nearly everyone imprisoned for crimes committed after Aug. 1, making Louisiana the 17th state in a half century to abolish parole and the first in 24 years to do so. For the vast majority of prisoners who were already behind bars, like Alexander, another law put an algorithm in charge of determining whether they have a shot at early release; only prisoners rated low risk qualify for parole.

That decision makes Louisiana the only state to use risk scores automatically to rule out large portions of a prison population from being considered for parole, according to criminal justice experts.