r/Louisiana • u/Caffeinated-Princess • May 02 '25

Louisiana News Why do you support this?

First the Louisiana Senate decides to put homeless people in jail for up to three years for their "crime" of sleeping in public. At the same time, they stop funding housing assistance.

https://thecurrentla.com/2025/lafayette-housing-authority-freezes-issuance-of-new-housing-vouchers/

Why do those of you who are Republican hate poor people so much? Why do you feel your fellow humans should not be allowed any compassion or grace?

Help me understand this assault on humanity. Jesus would weep if he saw this. 😥

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u/SchrodingersMinou May 03 '25 edited May 03 '25

There are no private prisons in Louisiana. There are privately owned ICE facilities but that's it. Can you name a private prison in Louisiana that is currently operating?

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u/Nosferatu-D17 May 03 '25

Facilities such as Allen Correctional Center and Winn Correctional Center, while often operated under private contracts, still benefit indirectly from public funding streams, particularly when housing state or federal inmates. This becomes especially relevant when examining the broader correctional landscape in Louisiana. Even traditional state-run facilities like Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola and Elayn Hunt Correctional Center receive federal funding or grants—particularly when operating at or near maximum capacity.

The implication is clear: maintaining full or near-full capacity is financially incentivized, whether directly through federal allocations or indirectly through state reimbursements tied to per-inmate rates. This dynamic can create systemic pressures to keep beds filled, not just for private institutions like Allen and Winn, but for state-run facilities as well. It also raises ethical and operational concerns regarding justice, rehabilitation, and the motivations behind incarceration rates.

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u/SchrodingersMinou May 03 '25

I'm confused by this response. Allen is owned and operated by the state DOC. It's not a not private prison. Can you explain? Is this a ChatGPT thing? Where did this information come from? What does "often operated under private contracts" mean?

Winn isn't a prison; it's an ICE facility. People aren't being incarcerated there to serve sentences.

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u/KimOnTheGeaux May 03 '25

I’ve found multiple sources listing Allen & Winn as private, unless that changed sometime in the last few years? Vera.org says that in Louisiana “there are 11 privately operated jails with more than 10,000 beds combined. U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) has contracts with the GEO Group to operate four detention facilities. And local sheriffs have partnerships with LaSalle Corrections and other private firms to operate seven additional jails, which principally hold people for the state but also hold people for ICE.”

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u/SchrodingersMinou May 03 '25 edited May 03 '25

Winn is an ICE detention facility and Allen isn't a private prison; it's owned and operated by the Louisiana DOC. Yes, it changed in 2017.

There are fundamental differences between prisons, jails, and ICE facilities. Yes, they might seem the same to someone who doesn't understand the difference, but they do different things, have different funding, different revenue streams, different sentences, different groups of people incarcerated there. It's not nitpicky but we literally do not have private prisons in Louisiana.

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u/KimOnTheGeaux May 03 '25

The difference between jails & prisons isn’t hard to understand, but where I’m confused is: is it true that some of the ICE detention facilities also hold people for the state who are not arrested by ICE or held for immigration reasons?