Caddo Parish Sheriff wants to keep"good" inmates locked up for free labor

quote:

---

A sheriff in Louisiana has been railing against the state’s new prisoner release program, saying many of those “good” inmates need to stay behind bars for the free labor they provide.

Last week, Caddo Parish Sheriff Steve Prator blasted the state’s Justice Reinvestment Package, a series of bills passed in June that could reduce Louisiana’s prison population by 10 percent and save more than $260 million over the next decade by slowly releasing nonviolent offenders. The legislation is set to go into effect on Nov. 1 and would authorize the early release of 1,400 prisoners across 21 parishes in the state.

Just 35 prisoners would be immediately released in Caddo Parish, but that seems to be too many for Prator, who said the state needs them to “wash cars.”

“In addition to the bad ones ... they’re releasing some good ones that we use every day to wash cars, to change oil in the cars, to cook in the kitchen, to do all that where we save money,” he continued. “Well, they’re going to let them out ? the ones that we use in work release programs.”

---