Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry proposes $82 million increase for prisons

Published: February 24, 2026

By: Izzy Wollfarth, LSU Manship School News Service

BATON ROUGE–In 2016, Louisiana faced a $2 billion budget gap, and lawmakers decided they could no longer afford to lock so many people up.

But in 2024, after a nationwide crime spike during the COVID pandemic, Gov. Jeff Landry reversed many of the changes, pushing through laws to keep offenders in jail longer, sending more juveniles to adult prisons and limiting the possibility of parole.

Now costs are rising again, fueled by an increase in the state’s prison population and the price of housing offenders in local facilities.

Landry has proposed a new state budget and penciled in an $82 million increase to cover local offender housing, administrative costs to oversee parole and probation and prisons, and housing for immigrant detainees.

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