2020 Gumbo Final - Book - Page 42
Change is
Coming
Story: Anna Jones
Photo: Emily Cannon
Design: Chloe Bryars
S
40
“I don’t think it should be a partisan issue.
It’s about human dignity.”
ociology and political science senior Emily
Cannon discovered her passion for prison
reform early in her high school career. Going
to a large public high school in New Orleans,
she recalled it was common for classmates to
disappear for a few months, only to come back
with stories about their jail time.
“My friends started to get arrested for
status offenses, misdemeanors here and
there,” Cannon said. “We all get involved in
debauchery when we’re kids, but you can
tell there are certain people more likely to be
impacted.”
Cannon researched mass incarceration and
was shocked to find out Louisiana was ranked
No. 1 in the world for incarceration rates at the
time.The U.S. has long reigned as the country
with the highest imprisonment rates. Out of
the 50 states, Louisiana spent many years
as the prison capital of the world. Oklahoma
surpassed Louisiana in 2018, but The Pelican
State’s incarceration rates remain the second
highest in the world, according to the Prison
Policy Initiative.
Cannon was unsure how to engage with
her newfound passion until she enrolled
at the University and started interning for
the Innocence Project, a non-profit legal
organization dedicated to exonerating wrongly
convicted prisoners. She was inspired to put
her passion for prison reform into action by
founding the Tiger Prison Project, a student
organization dedicated to educating students
and sparking change in Louisiana’s prison
system.
The club will explore how one’s race can affect
the likelihood of being arrested and sentenced
and have an effect on how one is treated in
prison. Cannon believes it is no coincidence
Louisiana and Oklahoma share both southern
roots and inflated incarceration rates.“Given
the existing research, you can see a direct
line between slavery and mass incarceration,”
Cannon said. “We’ve created an apparatus of
punishment. We all know someone who’s been
in prison or is currently sitting in one.”
After recent criminal justice reforms that
increased parole eligibility, abolished juvenile
life sentences and revisited mandatory
sentencing issues, Louisiana’s total prison
population has dropped by 7.6 %. Still,
Louisiana’s incarceration rates rest well
above the national average, affecting not only
prisoners and their families, but also the state’s
taxpayers.
Sociology senior and Tiger Prison Project
vice president, Gabrielle Milford, echoed the
parallels between prison systems and slavery.
“We’ve created a new form of slavery,” Milford
said. “Like how we just recently got the right
to vote for [felons]. It creates all this separation
between [felons] and the rest of society.”
Meetings for the Tiger Prison Project take place
in 109 Coates Hall on various Wednesdays
throughout the school year. They will often
feature special guest speakers. To remain
an active member, students have to attend a
certain number of service events and pay $15 in
dues each semester. The Tiger Prison Project’s
first meeting on Wednesday featured special
guest speaker Andrew Hundley, an LSU alumni
and former juvenile lifer who was released on
parole in 2016.
Hundley is also the executive director of the
Parole Project, a non-profit dedicated to reintegrating juvenile lifers and prisoners who
served over 20 years back into modernized
society. The Tiger Prison Project will be
partnering with Hundley and the Parole
Project, along with several other like-minded
organizations in the Baton Rouge area, for
service projects and learning opportunities.