Orleans Parish Prison was like a small, grim city before Hurricane Katrina, when 7,000 inmates were locked up on a regular basis. By the time Mayor Mitch Landrieu took office in 2010, five years after the disaster, the number of prisoners had fallen to about 3,400. Since then, the city has cut the inmate population by more than 50 percent to roughly 1,600. The City Council set a limit on how large the rebuilt jail could be post-Katrina and approved ordinances to allow police to give summonses for some nonviolent offenses, among other policy changes. The reduction has been impressive, but New Orleans is still locking people up at a rate that is almost twice the national average. Mayor...
↧