About the Data

Jails

Vera compiled data for Louisiana’s jails using information obtained from the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics Census of Jails (2019) and the DPS&C facilities directory, which includes directly operated state prisons as well as the many “local facilities” (jails) the department uses to hold people that have received a state prison sentence. Vera used information from Incarceration Transparency to identify facilities that were not included in the aforementioned sources. Memos on the Incarceration Transparency website (e.g., Claiborne Parish) were helpful to discern the number of facilities in a parish and details about their capacity and operators.

Discrepancies between these lists required follow-up research (e.g., review of government agency websites, news articles, and phone calls to jails) to determine a facility’s current operator, capacity, address, and whether it operates a Transitional Work Program (TWP). For example, some municipal jails were not reported in the Census of Jails but were included in research on the Incarceration Transparency website (e.g., Westlake City Jail). Consequently, Vera contacted every city police department included in a directory published by the Louisiana State Police to discern whether they operated a jail and, if so, the capacity and location of the facility.

Vera counted each facility as distinct if it had its own address. Vera gathered information on the capacity for correctional facilities from the 2021 Status of State and Local Corrections Facilities and Program Report (SSLCFPR), which was prepared by the Louisiana Commission on Law Enforcement and Administration of Criminal Justice. Vera researchers used facility directories on the La Salle Corrections and GEO Group websites to identify the facilities operated by these companies.

Discerning which facilities currently operate a TWP required extensive research because of errors in the DPS&C facility directory and inconsistencies between the department’s most recent reports (the 2021 Catalog of Rehabilitative Programs and the 2021 Status of State and Local Corrections Facilities and Program Report). In instances of conflicting information, Vera researchers called parish sheriffs to confirm whether they operate a TWP program.

Vera estimated the revenue DPS&C paid to local facilities in 2021 by multiplying the number of people held for DPS&C in November 20201, per the DPS&C Report of the Offender Census at Local Correctional Facilities, by the daily rate of $26.39 ($9,632 annually). Vera estimated revenue DPS&C paid to local facilities for people in the TWP by multiplying this population in November 2021 by the daily rate of $11.25 ($4,160 annually). According to the December 10, 2021 DPS&C report to the Joint Legislative Committee on the Budget, $12.25 is paid to contracted TWP providers who fill the available beds first with TWP participants. The other providers are paid a per diem of $16.39 because they do not have a contract with Corrections that guarantees the department will place TWP offenders with their program first. Vera used the lesser of these two rates because the researchers did not know the nature of each contract.

Vera obtained information on the U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) population held in jails from archived copies of the agency’s Detention Statistics because the DPS&C report of the Offender Census at Local Correctional Facilities does not include ICE statistics for the facilities that are operated by GEO Group under contracts with ICE. Vera computed the ICE Average Daily Population for the period December 4, 2021 – December 18, 2021 to estimate the ICE population at approximately the same time as the rest of the jail population for the parish.

Pretrial population

Vera collected 2021 parish-level pretrial jail population data from the DPS&C report of the Offender Census at Local Correctional Facilities. DPS&C supplied these reports in memorandum to the Joint Legislative Committee on the Budget (JLCB) because DPS&C pays local jails to hold more than half the state’s prison population. The report includes the operational capacity of each “local facility” (jail) and provides the number of people the jail holds for DPS&C, the DPS&C Transitional Work Program, U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE), “Federal Offenders” (the U.S. Marshals and Bureau of Prisons), as well as the number of people held “pretrial” and in “Parish” custody (meaning a jail sentence).

Pretrial data for 58 of the 64 parishes is as of November 26, 2021, which Vera obtained from a December 10, 2021, memo to the JLCB. Vera collected data from earlier reports in 2021 for six parishes that did not supply pretrial data in the November report: Allen Parish (April 2021), Cameron Parish (July 2021), Jackson Parish (May 2021), Richland Parish (July 2021), St. Mary Parish (July 2021), and Terrebonne Parish (July 2021). Although Richland and St. Mary reported November 2021 data, the pretrial populations in this report (four and three, respectively) were conspicuously low compared to values in July (21 and 127, respectively), so Vera instead used pretrial data from July 2021.

Nine parishes (Acadia, Beauregard, Caldwell, De Soto, Morehouse, Plaquemines, Pointe Coupee, Sabine, and St. Landry) indicated that their pretrial population was “0” in the data they supplied to DPS&C in all their 2021 reports. This is not plausible given the number of people these same parishes sentenced to prison annually, and this information also conflicts with the pretrial population data these parishes reported in the last Census of Jails (2019) conducted by the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics (BJS). These same parishes, however, reported to DPS&C a sizable number of people held for the “parish” (i.e., jail sentences) that is consistent with the pretrial population they supplied to BJS in 2019. As some jail management data systems do not record an individual person’s sentence status, Vera assumed that these jails indicated all people as “parish” because it would be time consuming to make the distinction between Pretrial and Parish (locally sentenced) in their monthly reports to DPS&C. For these counties, Vera assumed that 90 percent of the people denoted as being in parish custody were actually being held pretrial. Vera made this assumption because 90 percent of people, statewide, held by a local authority are in pretrial status according to the report of the Offender Census at Local Correctional Facilities.

Vera accessed parish-level jail population data for the years prior to 2020 from the BJS Census of Jails, via Vera’s Incarceration Trends dataset. The Census of Jails, unlike the 2021 DPS&C report of the Offender Census at Local Correctional Facilities, does not differentiate people held for ICE and the United States Marshall Service (USMS) from the pretrial population, which jails generally include in their counts of the “unconvicted” (i.e., pretrial) population to BJS. Consequently, differences between the 2021 pretrial population and prior years may be partly on account of this definitional difference in the parishes that hold people for ICE and USMS. Note also that the pretrial population data is a single-day count, which was November 26, 2021, in the DPS&C data and the last weekday in June in the Census of Jails data. Jail populations fluctuate daily and year-over-year differences could be an artifact of measuring the population on a single day.

Prisons

Vera sourced data on the location of state prisons from the DPS&C online facility directory and the Louisiana Commission on Law Enforcement 2021 Status of State and Local Corrections Facilities and Program Report. Vera sourced information on state prison capacity from the BJS Census of State and Federal Adult Correctional Facilities (2019). Vera sourced data on facilities operated by the U.S. Bureau of Prisons from the bureau’s website.

Prison admissions

Vera collected parish-level prison admission data for 2019, 2020, and 2021 from the DPS&C Briefing Book. Vera collected parish-level prison admission data for 1992 through 2014 from the BJS National Corrections Reporting Program (NCRP), accessed via Vera’s Incarceration Trends Dataset.

Juvenile justice facilities

Vera researchers compiled information for juvenile detention centers (i.e., “youth jails”) using data from city and parish websites. There are five secure care residential facilities (i.e., “youth prisons”) for males in the custody of the Louisiana Office of Juvenile Justice (OJJ). Females in OJJ custody are housed at Ware Youth Center, which operates under a contract with OJJ. There are 18 non-secure residential facilities for youth who have been adjudicated. These residential facilities comprise group homes, transitional living programs, emergency shelters, and family homes. Vera compiled information for these facilities through various OJJ reports, including Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA) Annual Reports, Contract Facility Audit Reports, Monitoring Effectiveness of Community-Based Services, and Annual Report of Youth Served.

Vera compiled juvenile facility capacity information from PREA reports and through email and phone calls to facilities. Vera verified all facility information through a list of licensed facilities from the Louisiana Department of Children and Family Services, which holds licensing authority over Louisiana juvenile facilities.

Arrests

Arrest data comes from the FBI Uniform Crime Report (2018) accessed via Vera’s Arrest Trends. Vera researchers calculated arrest rates using population data from the U.S. Census Bureau’s 2020 Decennial Census, which provides city-level demographic data, and the Census Bureau’s County Characteristics Resident Population Estimates (July 1, 2019), which provides parish-level demographic data.

Spending

Vera collected data on parish- and municipal-government spending from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Annual Survey of Public Employment & Payroll. Vera collected 2021 data when it was available and 2017 data when 2021 data was not available. (Vera adjusted the data to 2021 dollars using Consumer Price Index for all Urban Consumers data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics of the United States Department of Labor.) Payroll amounts represent gross payroll for the one-month period of March in the survey year. Gross payroll includes all salaries, wages, fees, commissions, bonuses, or awards. Vera researchers multiplied total payroll amounts by 12 to determine payroll for a one-year period. Payroll expenses comprise the majority, but not all, of government expenses and excludes costs such as supplies, materials, and contracted services. However, the payroll provides a representation of the allocation of budget resources across government functions (e.g., human services, parks, police, corrections, etc.).

Demographic Data

Demographic data to compute parish per-capita incarceration rates comes from Vera’s Incarceration Trends Project (ITP). The demographic data used in ITP comes from the National Cancer Institute’s (NCI) U.S. County Population Data, 1969-2020. The source of NCI’s data is the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Bridged-Race Population Estimates, 1990-2020. Vera used population data for 2020 to compute incarceration rates for the period since 2020.

Vera calculated incarceration rates using parish population data from the U.S. census, and these rates are expressed per 10,000 parish residents. Although incarceration rates are conventionally expressed per 100,000, Vera computed parish rates per 10,000 to make these statistics more legible in the 50 parishes that have fewer than 100,000 residents.

Geographic Data

Vera collected data for the footprints of Louisiana’s historical plantations from an 1853 map of Louisiana by John La Tourrette. Vera researchers downloaded the digital image as a TIFF file and adjusted the image levels, contrast, and tone to aid in the clear identification of plots of land. The researchers then pulled the image into QGIS’s Georeferencer and identified 29 ground control points (GCPs). The researchers took the control points from a geojson file of Louisiana’s state outline. Vera then applied a transformation model—using the Polynomial 2 transformation type and the Nearest Neighbor resampling method—to the points in order to warp the image to fit the EPSG:4269 coordinate reference system (CRS). The researchers then created a new vector layer with the geometry type set to polygon, with the specified CRS set to EPSG:4269, and created polygons for each plantation on the La Tourrette map. The researchers added a unique identifier as an attribute to each polygon and included the landowner as another attribute when noted (and legible). Researchers double checked the plots against the georeferenced map and validated all geometries.

Vera derived the Orleans Parish buildings from a shapefile of New Orleans building footprints held by Bobst Library, New York University. Vera referenced the buildings in this file against a presentation of the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office showing facility use in 2005, 2010, and 2012, and an ACLU map of post-Katrina facility damage. Many of the buildings no longer in use by the parish (e.g. Community Corrections Center, Orleans Parish Prison) are still standing, and were therefore still in the building footprint shapefile.

State, parish, and census tract geographies come from census.gov. The detailed outline of Orleans Parish comes from the Stanford National Transportation Atlas Database.