Recent editorials from Louisiana newspapers:
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March 1
The Daily Courier of Houma on public defenders:
Louisiana has a shortage of public defenders.
This is more than a shortcoming for state government; it goes to the heart of providing an adequate defense for criminal defendants.
A new study by the American Bar Association suggests that Louisiana has too few indigent defenders, a condition that makes it difficult for our poorest people to receive fair trials.
And the difference is stark.
The ABA estimates that the state would need 1,769 full-time lawyers to provide adequate representation for all of Louisiana’s poor defendants.
It currently has about 360.
That means we have about 20 percent of the lawyers we need to provide counsel for the indigent.
This wasn’t an attempt by the ABA to have the state hire more lawyers.
The methodology was careful and compelling.
The group hired Baton Rouge-based Postlethwaite & Netterville, an accounting firm, to survey criminal defense lawyers to determine the average time an attorney should be expected to spend on each case. It created a different average time for 10 difference kinds of cases. Then, the firm totaled the number of criminal cases handled by the state’s indigent defenders and multiplied that by the average time needed for each case. It then divided by 40-hour-per-week, 52-week years to get the number of full-time lawyers it would take to handle the existing workload.
The results are troubling, to say the least.
It is never politically popular to spend money making sure defendants get fair trials.
But it is a constitutional right that everyone - regardless of economic means - possesses. And if we lack the ability to provide adequate defenses for all defendants, our entire criminal justice system becomes suspect.
Unfortunately, the local indigent defender boards receive their money from the state and from local fines and fees. The money they raise from those two sources comes to a certain amount in each district, and the boards have to pay as many lawyers as they can from the total.
However, the money isn’t nearly enough to pay for the representation that is apparently needed.
Clearly, our state must rethink how it pays for indigent defense, and it must do so at a time when times are tight for state government.
In paying for constitutionally required expenses, though, the state must make indigent defense a priority in the budget. It won’t come up to the total that’s needed in the next budget, but the governor and lawmakers have to recognize that this is a fundamental problem that demands a solution.
Online:
https://www.houmatoday.com/
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Feb. 24
The Daily Advertiser on the state’s budget problems:
Spare us any backslapping.
Pressed to the wall, Louisiana’s elected leadership in special session made do on a $304 million, late Fiscal Year 2017 budget hole by borrowing from the Rainy Day Fund, freezing state jobs and trimming health care. The result: A patched-up budget that will get us to Fiscal Year 2018 budget talks, and Louisiana’s next looming fiscal catastrophe.
What Louisiana’s elected leaders did was crawl back to where the 2016-17 state budget began, with a precariously balanced state budget. We’re supposed to have balanced budgets; it’s the law.
Pushed to the special session’s last moments, the governor and Legislature made do. That gives them six weeks of relief until lawmakers convene again for the 2017 regular session.
Here’s what awaits them April 10: Concerns over a billion dollars in temporary taxes and a forecast for a Fiscal Year 2018 budget that’s a few hundred million out of whack. Same ol’, same ol’.
Year No. 2 of the Edwards quadrennium started off with some heavy breathing, evidence of a continuing political struggle between the Republican-dominated House of Representatives and the executive branch, held by our Democratic governor. It wasn’t long ago that Edwards himself was a member of the lower chamber, well liked and respected across the aisle. What a difference a year makes.
There’s little to suggest that the governor and House will patch things up by session’s launch, no guarantee that the next titanic budget struggle in Baton Rouge will be any easier than this one. With a full session, opposing sides just have more time to quarrel.
But Edwards has offered - lawmakers should listen - to words that make sense: Louisiana’s budget problems are systemic. The Constitution forces the state leaders to revisit, then ravage higher education and health care almost every year to make budget ends meet. Both are unprotected in the Constitution, making them targets to cut.
Edwards told USA Today Network in January that a constitutional convention might provide the only way to fix that lingering, systemic budget problem. He is right.
Legislation for a convention moved through a Senate committee in 2016. The bill called for lawmakers to comprise the convention and address protections on state spending that put higher education and health care funding in harm’s way. Right now, there’s likely too little support for such a convention to happen. So we delay.
But the problem won’t disappear. It will resurface in April, as always.
What’s different this year is we’re traveling deeper into the four-year term for the governor and Legislature, and conventions are less likely as the next election looms. So we ask our elected leaders this: Do they want to fix the recurring problem? If not, will they step aside for new leaders who will try?
Online:
www.theadvertiser.com
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Feb. 23
The Advocate on the state’s high incarceration rate:
A public hearing on Louisiana’s high rate of locking people up did not lack for suggestions to change our status as No. 1 in incarceration.
The “town hall” by the Justice Reinvestment Task Force drew 200 folks, from experts and lawyers to former prisoners who have turned around their lives and are now contributing to society.
Some of the latter called for empathy among the public, as much as specific policy changes. “It’s not just a bucket of water that you just pour out. Every drop is not the same,” said Kerry Myers, who served 27 years in Angola and was released in December. “You have to remember that these people were your neighbors, sons, sisters.”
The task force is one of the big undertakings by the state, but not necessarily because of the policy challenges: Many states, including Texas, have made significant changes in how they prosecute offenders, seeking to imprison fewer people and rehabilitate more.
The tough issues might well be considered political, or at least related to risks vs. rewards. The political advertisement of decades ago about Willie Horton, an inmate released to commit another crime, has made that criminal a byword for mistakes by the system; among politicians of all stripes, it is a cautionary tale about how to gauge the risks of these decisions.
We like many of the ideas advanced, at least for discussion. The fact is that Louisiana’s prison system is costly, state and local. And while some inmates return to society better-educated and fully rehabilitated, many do not and are high risks for arrest for other crimes.
Louisiana’s incarceration rate is the highest in the United States and double the national average. If Louisiana could match the statistics of the second highest, Oklahoma, then the state could save nearly $90 million a year, said state Supreme Court Deputy General Counsel Alanah Hebert, who moderated the event in Baton Rouge.
Groups from across the state have good ideas, including significant changes for how juveniles are treated in the system. But ideas are one thing, and legislation that will pass the Willie Horton test in a political body is something else.
The task force, formed by Gov. John Bel Edwards and legislative leaders, is going to report to the regular session of the Legislature that begins in April. Because of the political risks, we hope to see recommendations that represent a consensus among reformers, prosecutors and law enforcement, liberals and conservatives.
We think there is a consensus that over-incarceration is a problem, and that’s a start. But to pass bills, there will have to be a way to bridge the differing viewpoints of the people who work in different parts of the criminal justice system. Pulling that together is vital to passage of a comprehensive package of prison reform measures.
We would also caution the task force members against promising too much in the way of cost savings up front. If an offender isn’t in jail, he or she might well require a much more effective level of parole or probation oversight than we have now; treating drug offenders for their addictions is also costly.
There are savings down the road, but in the meantime we have to ensure that changes to the system work effectively. That is not a pure reduction in the budget.
Online:
https://www.theadvocate.com
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