The fact that New Orleans is the epicenter of Louisiana’s crisis of mass incarceration is hardly news. What continues to surprise, however, is how The Advocate has neglected to address this issue in its coverage of the upcoming elections. Candidates' tough-on-crime platforms, if left unchallenged, will only perpetuate the politics, policies and practices of New Orleans elected officials driving a significant portion of our local and statewide incarceration growth, as they have for the past 50 years.

Yet this election cycle, candidates across the political spectrum for mayor and City Council have doubled down on promoting such tough-on-crime positions. The facts show that despite the attention given to the back-and-forth of the city’s murder rate in the last two years, the greater pattern of the city has been an overall decline in homicides. According to the Bureau of Justice Statistics, the 2016 murder rate of 44 people per 100,000 residents is significantly lower than the 2004 rate of 57 per 100,000 or the 1995 rate of 75 per 100,000. In addition, we need to remember that calls to expand the NOPD through community policing is not a progressive option either, just a reformulation of "broken windows" policing which has been widely discredited by leading social scientists.

At a time when the NOPD already has the highest share of our city’s budget at 15 percent while only 3.8 percent is dedicated to public works, and together economic development, workforce improvement, and neighborhood housing improvement constitute less than 2 percent of the city’s spending, we must question why so many of our political candidates want to prioritize intensified policing in a moment when economic precariousness, housing insecurity and inadequate flood protection are the primary threats to our public safety and security.

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Furthermore, with racist law-and-order politics emanating from the Trump administration and sectors of our own state government, we need our local officials to stand strong against any attacks on the social justice victories we have won in our local criminal justice system. We deserve to have politicians who will maintain the gains of the NOPD consent decree and who will uphold our city’s policy of prohibiting local law enforcement cooperation with ICE deportation agents. Instead of extending an open invitation to Attorney General Jeff Landry who has proven to be anti-immigrant and anti-LGBTQ rights, we deserve politicians who will fight the criminalization of communities of color, immigrants, queer and trans people, and expand sanctuary for all.

This election season is an opportunity to unequivocally break with the tough-on-crime politics that have dominated our city for too long and to instead invest in jobs, health care and education to materialize true security and justice.

Lydia Pelot-Hobbs

activist and scholar

New Orleans