Louisiana: The State We're In; 1003

It looks great and good. Have a nice day. Funding for the production of Louisiana, the state were in, is provided in part by the Ziggler Foundation of Jennings, and Gulf State Utilities, helping Louisiana bridge the gap to our energy future. Governor Edwin Edwards ordered state agencies to cut their spending by 10 percent, and a look at some of the problems crippling the state's correction system. I'm Robin Hinton, those stories, and more tonight on Louisiana, the state were in. Hello, everyone, and welcome to another edition of Louisiana, the state were in.

Also tonight, correspondent Linda Rhodes has a report on the state's juvenile justice system, but first to look at the people and events that have shaped the headlines this week. This story occurred Monday when Governor Edwin Edwards issued an executive order telling state agencies to cut 10 percent off their annual spending. Given the situation where the legislature has left me with the problem of resolving this thing, and facing a $255 million budget shortfall, that the fair thing for me to do is that which I now announce I will do and intend to do within the next hour, and that may as I'm going to order a 10 percent across the board cut of all budgetary units and agencies, with the exceptions that the Office of Corrections, the Office of Collection

of Revenue, and the judiciary will be exempted for obvious reasons. And the following agencies will be cut only 5 percent, minimum foundation which is the money we give to our school children, higher education, the vortex system, and special schools. I do that because I think that we have an extra concern for the educational priorities in Louisiana and wish that I did not have to cut them at all. All department heads have until next Friday to submit plans to the Commissioner of Administration on how they will carry out the budget reduction. Each agency head will have the responsibility of determining how to best levy the cuts within his or her own department. I have asked them to do so with a minimum of layoffs, with a minimum of impact upon existing state employees, and with a minimum of impact on public services that are essential to the people of this state.

How Speaker John Alario had this reaction to the Governor's Order? Well, I had hoped the cuts wouldn't be as drastic as with the Governor's proposing. We had talked about a 3 percent across the board, wait until we had the first quarters figures in, and then sit together. Obviously he's taking a different approach. How badly do you think this is going to impact the state? Oh, it will be devastating in quite a few areas. I don't think education can take, in some instances, 5 percent additional cuts in higher education and some other areas. I'm glad to see his exempted minimum foundation, but there will be some areas in the state that will be drastically hurt. Meantime, Republican legislators have put together their own plan for dealing with the state's fiscal lows. Our initial program involves some $250 million for reductions, very specifically cited, and just in case we get more bad news down the line of still more revenue shortfalls, we've also cited an additional $90 million of cuts that could be implemented only if necessary as time progresses. It's a lot simpler to say, well, heck, let's just cut everything 10 percent across the board.

That way you don't have to think about anything. It's mindless. It's a simple way to do things, but it's also the worst way to do it and the most damaging way to do it. Now, Scott said the Republican plan includes suspension of prevailing wage, which he says would create an annual savings of $27 to $40 million, an elimination of the governor's discretionary fund, which would create an annual savings of some $25 million. Meantime Governor Ett were spent nearly an hour and a half this week before an East Baton Rouge Parish grand jury, the panel that is looking into the pardon-bried scandal in which state representative Joe Delpett and pardon-bore chairman Howard Marcellus have been indicted. Edward said that he didn't have any problems with any of the questions asked by the jury, but state law prevented him from saying anything more about his testimony. The grand jury was looking into allegations that Edward warned Marcellus about the state police investigation. Rollins' environmental services in Baton Rouge was fined $15,000 for stinking up the air back on August 5, 1985. Assistant Secretary of Environmental Quality John Curry, who served as hearing officer of the Rollins case, said the hazardous waste company won't have to pay the fine if it

performs a community service. Henry said he fined Rollins $5,000 for an air pollution violation and $10,000 for improperly maintaining its equipment. He also said that the pollution fine is more than twice the average and that nobody has ever been fined for failing to maintain equipment. Rollins is opted to perform the community service. As expected, U.S. Representative Buddy Romer announced this week that he is a candidate for Governor in 1987. The Bojour City Congressman bought two minutes of time on every commercial television station in the state to launch his campaign. In his statement, Romer said that Louisiana needs a plan, leadership, and a winning attitude. He added that there is no plan for the state for the next year, much less, the next 10 years. Right now, the only other announced candidates for the 87 gubernatorial race or former Congressman's speedy along and Baton Rouge insurance man, Bushbaum. Our cover story tonight deals with prison overcrowding. Louisiana has one of the worst prison overcrowding problems in the nation, and there are two basic reasons why.

One, we lock up more people for capital than any other state. Take a look at these numbers and you'll see how Louisiana compares to the average nationwide. And we rank number one in incarceration rate. Louisiana has more prisoners backed up in local facilities because of overcrowding than any other state. The immediate crisis with the state's prisons began back in July when the Department of Corrections closed its doors to new inmates. We found ourselves in a position of having more employees on the payroll than we had money to pay them with for the remainder of the year. In order to get the budget back into balance, we had to reduce number of inmates that we had in our custody, which meant we didn't take any more inmates in. But that has created a backlog of prisoners in parish jails at local sheriffs or running out of room for their prisoners. Since July 1st, the number of state prisoners in parish jails has risen from 3,000-8 to more than 3,700.

All the inmates that we didn't normally take off, a little better than 500, into an already crowded jail situation. The last count that I had that there were approximately 3,700 prisoners in the parish jail which belonged to the Department of Corrections, the crisis began on July 1st and is still going on in that we are using a significant number of beds at the parish level that sheriffs no longer have available to them to use the police their communities with. The latest state figures show 31 parishes with five or fewer vacancies in their parish jails and 14 parishes with no vacancies at all. We're running about 1,610 Department of Corrections prisoners, so we are having some problems. We have prisoners in tents and we have also utilizing a Korean War bombshell for some women while we're repairing a building I take and move into, they can move back into.

In any veterinary parish, we had 98 state prisoners on July 9th when they stopped taking prisoners. Today we have 141 state prisoners in Nigeria. The parish jail, I think I can safely speak for all sheriffs. We're overcrowded, we can exceed our limit, but we have a sworn duty to protect the public. We'll do the best that we possibly can. In addition to the problems that prison overcrowding is causing local sheriffs, it is also straining the state's ability to protect public safety, and it is expensive. It costs the state $28.50 per inmate per day to hold a person in a state institution. And the last 10 years, the Department of Corrections budget has increased nearly 580 percent from $25 million back in fiscal year 74-75 to over 169 million in 84-85. Finally, the state interim emergency board approved a $6 million spending request for the Department of Corrections.

Money that would allow the Department to pay sheriffs for state prisoners through December. This sort of takes the edge off of the jail situation. If that passes, if the legislature votes affirmatively by a vote of two-thirds, we will accelerate our expenditures in effect spending money that we don't have based on the fact that the legislature authorized it and based on the assumption that everybody has that legislature will come into session at a later date and refund the Department of Corrections. The legislature voted down a similar request a couple of months ago. What if that occurs with this latest request? This would mean that we won't be able to take anyone else in and we won't be able to lock up the people who are arrested in East Baton Rouge Parish by the law enforcement people and the judges will have to place them back on the street, you know, on self or reconnaissance or something like that. There was some good news for the Department of Corrections this week, well, kind of.

It was exempted from the governor's 10 percent across the board cut. It's sad day in the state that corrections is funded and education is not. However, for those of us that have been around for a while and have been making these sort of predictions, it's the only course that you can take. We matter of public safety. You just can't have criminals on street that you have to lock them up. And the way our criminal justice situation is in this state, the only way that we have chosen to punish people is to put them in prison. The current crisis is bad, very bad. But state correction officials say the problems with our prisons can't be corrected, with help from the legislature, and a change in public attitudes. We need to change some attitudes and we need to change some concepts people have as it relates to punishment that there are some other very, very effective ways of punishing people at

a considerably less cost than locking everybody up in prison. When we had plenty of oil money, there was no problem. The legislature was willing to appropriate the money. They were happy to make sentences longer. They were happy to eliminate probation and parole as a viable alternative to incarceration. They were happy to do away with good time. But now that oil doesn't sell for $30 barrel, we need to reassess what we're doing. The governor has a prison overcrowding policy task course looking at the problems. A task force composed of judges, sheriffs, district attorneys, and corrections experts. During the last regular session of the legislature, the task force was successful in establishing a state commission on law enforcement, a state agency to be the central coordinating agency for adult and juvenile correctional growth. What we're trying to do is bring some sort of planning process to the correctional system both on the state and local level.

This particular act will give the commission on law enforcement the powers to make projections on population. And more importantly, we have built a computerized model of the criminal justice system. Whereby in the next session, anyone who presents any kind of major change to a sentencing act, this computerized model will project what it will do to the correctional system, the criminal justice system. It will tell us how many probation and parole officers will need in the future. It will tell us how many more prisons that I have to be built, how many more jail spaces. Now this is a first for Louisiana, it's an important step in the direction that we think we need to move in the area of planning and research and evaluation. One recommendation that the task force has proposed to deal with prison overcrowding is a more efficient but effective punishment for low risk nonviolent offenders through the increased use of probation. A measure that requires greater supervision and sanctions for probation violation. Governor has talked recently about House arrest.

The legislature in this last session authorized an intensive incarceration and early parole program. We have started an intensive supervision program in our division and probation and parole. The problem is that we're about five years too late and starting some of these programs. Someday and to some hopefully soon, Louisiana will have three new prisons. Last winter, the State Bond Commission approved a request by the governor to sell $175 million worth of bonds for three new ones, but it felt says new prisons won't solve the overcrowding problem. The answer is to reevaluate the criminal justice system. You need to forget about the people who are in prison not literally, but those people are in prison probably need to be there. They have violated the law, they have earned the right to be in prison. So we need to look at those people who are being arrested for the first time and concentrate on them.

And there are a lot of things that can be done to incapacitate people from committing crimes without locking them up, but at the same time keeping the streets safe. With me now is Linda Rhodes and Linda, you've been taking a look at the juvenile justice system here in Louisiana. Rob, people who work with the adult population in corrections are realizing they need to make some changes in the way they work with younger offenders. Because if they don't, they're going to have a built in problem with overcrowding. Kids now in juvenile justice are going to grow up, and many will find themselves in adult prisons. State budget problems are not. Corrections people say now is the time for change. In fact, since something is needed anyway, this is the ideal time for a new focus, a new direction. Zach Zachary lives here with his wife, nine-month-old daughter, and eight other boys. He and Abby are house parents in a New Orleans group home. The judge sent the boys here because they needed more help than simple probation. A lot of kids come here and they've been feeling a pose, and they feel like you're just

another person to try and tell them what to do, you know. But the thing that I think works for us most is that we have personal time with it because we live here. They get to see us and they see our lives, and we're not just something to leave in eight hours, you know. Zach says most of the boys refuse to accept authority when they come because there's been little in their homes. He and Abby work to show them the positive side of authority. You see the change in their school behavior, they learn that they can't go school, get good grades, and they want to live in a nice house one day, and they want to be able to support their families. They're going to do the right way. They're not stealing to make a living or trying to get over in the body. Joe has been at the home a month and a half. He has just started to train as an auto mechanic at VOTEC school. Already he is changing. Are you along with my parents a little better since maybe? How do you mean? I don't know, I get out of time. Troy came a year ago because he says he stole and fought with other kids in the neighborhood.

Here he's learned new social skills, learning how to own, not fight and nothing, be friend. My friends with other people is out the group home, and when I make a mistake tell them, tell them that I made it or something like that. Gerald who came only three weeks ago is still adjusting to his new schedule. Up at 6.30, the boys dress and then do house work before school. I ain't that, I ain't never had to do that at home. Is it good practice, though? That's good. In Louisiana, the courts have three ways to deal with a troubled child. Judges can leave a child in his home on probation, send him to a group home or incarcerate him. By law, the judge must place the child in a least restrictive setting, but state officials say the reality has been incarceration. 615 boys and girls are living in group homes here in Louisiana.

Many others are put on probation. The rest come here to the wire enclosed world of LTI. These boys are awaiting placement in one of the four Louisiana training institutes around the state. Most were convicted of violent crimes, the only kind of offender the state now accepts. Judge Andy Gallagher says the others fill up local detention centers, waiting for an opening that will never come. We have him staying sometimes as long as 30, 60 days and some children, we have gone ahead and parole from our detention facility because we don't feel that we can get him in LTI. State officials say the ruling philosophy of locking away juvenile delinquents has taught a lot of kids how to live in institutions. The system is now full of children who will likely crowd into adult prisons later on. Louisiana cannot continue its age, old, prejudice toward locking offenders up and throwing away the key.

It is not working, it is not solving our crime problems, and it is the most expensive of any of the alternatives in corrections philosophy. Besides the problem of Louisiana's philosophy, this state like most others is experiencing what some call the baby boom echo. Baby boomers children are now entering the juvenile justice system at a time when spaces filled to the maximum and resources are at a minimum. We just aren't many alternatives. I think we need a broader range of options. I feel like we have enough beds in juvenile corrections that a bed space is not our problem. What we don't have is alternatives. In short, nearly nothing between probation and incarceration. Don Sessions runs this juvenile diagnostic and reception center where kids wait to be placed in LTI. I would say probably off-handed after being here for a number of years, at least 30 or 40 percent of the offenders that come to juvenile corrections.

Alternative means if they were available could be utilized. He demonstrates the needs for alternatives with this tiny t-shirt. Sessions says the real crime is that children this small are sent to LTI. Linda Irwin runs youth alternatives incorporated, a not-for-profit group home. We have many too many young people in the juvenile justice system locked up and secure facilities who could be effectively treated and effectively served in the community without locking them up. Irwin in session say more intensive probation could work for many kids after school supervision, family counseling, and independent living programs to help kids make the transition to adulthood. A range of services beginning before kids become teenagers who get into trouble. What we have now is major gaps in what we have in services for the language. In the long run, psychologists and social workers say alternatives would be better not only for the kids, but they'd be more cost-effective as well.

John Biamante says by simply redirecting current funds, the state could substantially reduce future problems of overcrowding in adult prisons. Unfortunately, he says the legislature usually only addresses the most pressing problems. The long-term cost effectiveness is that we cannot address it now, then we are going to wish we had five years from now when the problem is even much larger, more complex, you say, and the issues are even more difficult to deal with. The Baby Boomers' Babies promised to be an expensive bunch. Group homes cost $60 a day per child, but the cost of incarceration is higher, and Louisiana puts people into institutions at the highest rate in the country. Without alternatives, the state will dig itself into a deeper hole. Where does the solution begin? Most people say they need concrete proposals that can be turned into legislation. Something is going to happen in the juvenile justice system anyway.

I challenge the group involved in juvenile justice to come up with an alternative before the legislature does. Rob, to give you an idea how much it costs to send one child through LTI for a year. Prison official estimated that he could send a kid to Harvard for nine months, send him to wilderness camp during the summer, and get his mother off assistance if she was on assistance. That's the cost for one year in LTI for one child. Incredible. Good report. Thanks, Linda. We close today's program with a story about a man celebrating 50 years as a great American painter. His name is Jacob Lawrence, and he developed his interest in painting under a WPA, the works progress administration art program, during Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal. Jacob Lawrence grew up in Harlem during the Depression. It was during that time that Lawrence developed his interest in painting. As a result of that depression, the administration at that time, the Roosevelt administration established our centers throughout the country.

And I realize the value of that, even more, in retrospect, it meant that many of us, I would say, kids of my age, 13, 14, 15, were able to go into these centers and receive free instruction and guidance into whatever we were interested in. Harlem was a cultural nucleus of the nation. It was a time known as the Harlem Renaissance. Lawrence met many well-known writers and artists from the period. People he says influenced and encouraged his painting career. Claude McKay, the writer, Augusta Savage, the sculptor. These were all people in the community. She was a sculptor, of course. There was Charles Austin, Henry Bannon, and some people of whom I've forgotten. But I would say there were many people in the community that really helped me encourage me and so on.

The WPA's Federal Art Project was also instrumental to Lawrence's career. He says to him, it was a school in many ways, the interchange with many diverse artists, the opportunity to concentrate on work with all materials provided, and the dignity of having a good job in our times. Lawrence made his mark in the art world before his 21st birthday. His first major series of paintings completed in 1938 dealt with two sought-lover tour, the leader of the Haitian Revolution, a series of paintings that many people said was one of the most important narratives of its time. Doing that period, we had street car, we call them street soapbot speakers. And we also had afternoon clubs, history clubs in school, clubs of various gods, and through teachers in school, and through listening to the various speakers on the street, talk about various heroes, black heroes, and one of the people, one of the persons they mentioned, was two sought-lover tour, and of course I was acquainted, I became acquainted

with two sought-lover tours through many of the black teachers that I had in school. And there was a very dramatic story for me, and I loved the story as most kids would. It represented a symbol of someone who had overthrown oppression, I guess it was a symbol I could relate to and associate with, and it was very dramatic, and I decided to do that in a series form, because I could not tell a story in one painting, that's difficult to do unless you're doing a mural, something of that sort. So that's how that developed. It was through the two sought-lover tour series that Lawrence developed his painting style, expressionistic, the style that he has become famous for. That expresses my feelings about content, about subject, and my first paintings outside of this historical theme, where are my experiences within the Harlem community of my visual

response to things that I would see, and I attempted to put these things down on paper and color, movement, and so on. Lu Stovall is a master printmaker who is long admired Lawrence's works. Stovall says Lawrence's two sought-lover tour series is ideally suited to translation through the sixth screen system, a system that Stovall himself developed. I guess Jake was roughly 20 years my senior. So I would be the benefactor of 20 years of his good works, and so I've had 20 years of advantage over his beginning, and so for me to come with my technology and sense of the medium, sense of the art, and so on. And to do an excellent print for him is an opportunity that's rare, and I really appreciate

it. That's our program for this week. Thanks for watching. Next week, an in-depth report on the Rollins decision, be sure to check it out, and check out the debate this Sunday between Senate candidates Henson, Lauren, John, Bro, here on LPB at 7 p.m. Have a good weekend. Bye-bye. Funding for the production of Louisiana, the state we're in, is provided in part by the Ziggler Foundation of Jennings and Gulf state utilities, helping Louisiana bridge the gap

to our energy future.