Column: Louisiana should invest in justice reform
05.14.07
A column in Saturday’s Shreveport Times calls for serious reforms to Louisiana’s criminal justice system in the wake of the
200th DNA exoneration
nationwide. Emily Maw, the director of Innocence Project New Orleans, writes with Heather Hall that the state needs to direct its focus to indigent defense and to providing access to DNA testing for inmates claiming innocence. Louisiana has the highest incarceration rate per capita in the United States, and nine people have been exonerated in that state by DNA evidence.
Perhaps it is not surprising — Louisiana puts more people in prison per capita than any other state in the United States, has neglected the broken public defender system for decades and has demonstrated a complete lack of initiative to address the root causes of wrongful conviction.
Read the full column here
. (Shreveport Times, 5/12/07)
Read more
about the nine people exonerated by DNA testing in Louisiana.
How many exonerations have there been in your state?
View a map here
.
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