It was made legal for Louisiana residents over the age of 18 to conceal and carry a weapon without a permit. At the same time it was made that 17 year olds can be tried and sentenced as adults.
Since October 2024, there have been changes in Louisiana law that have introduced harsher sentencing requirements for minors and previously in July, relaxed certain regulations making it easier for people to carry firearms without a license.
While intended to increase the ability of people to act in their own self-defense and ensure proper punishment for criminals, some experts worry that the effects of these laws will have other kinds of consequences.
Former public defender and Louisiana director of the Vera Institute of Justice, and Loyola law professor William Snowden said he believes the one effect the bills will have is that it will increase the prison population in Louisiana.
“They will increase the ability of the state to punish people, and it will not have that much of an effect on promoting public safety, which is something we all should be concerned about,” Snowden said.
Snowden credits the recent drop in violent crime in New Orleans to the reforms passed in 2017, which others said actually led to the increased crime in the past several years.
“In 2017, there was this thing called the Justice Reinvestment task force that created a big package of bills that had three goals,” he said. “The first goal was really to decrease our prison population. The second goal was to take those savings and invest those resources in survivors of crime, resources for survivors of crime. And then third was to reduce our recidivism rates from 2017 onward, we saw a decrease in crime,” Snowden said.
Snowden said there was a myth being perpetuated that the 2017 violent crime reforms actually led to an increase in crime, however, areas with no reforms also saw an increase in violent crime.
Last spring, there was a special session in the Louisiana legislature called in order to reform certain aspects of the criminal legal system.
“So the decrease in violent crime in New Orleans and elsewhere in the state is a direct result of those bills that were passed in 2017,” Snowden said. “What’s really concerning is the spring 2024 special session on crime is going to reverse almost all of those successes.”
“The special session was more focused on increasing the state’s ability to punish people,”
The special session led to an increase in sentencing ranges and a decrease in opportunities for parole.
“There was nothing dedicated towards investing resources into communities’ abilities to thrive, all of those bills that were passed were really focused on making it easier to punish people for committing crimes,” Snowden said.
There was an effort to raise the age of charging kids under 18 as kids, but that was recently changed.
“What’s concerning about that is all the research when it comes to brain development makes it very clear that young people’s brains aren’t anywhere close to being developed by the age of 17 or 18,” Snowden said. “With young men, it can be until they’re 25 that their brain isn’t fully developed.”
In regards specifically to the laws now allowing open and concealed carry without a license, the New Orleans Police Department attended the legislative session and was one of the loudest voices against these laws and requested special exclusions for certain areas of New Orleans, such as the French Quarter where those laws would have made policing the areas during times like Mardi Gras more difficult.
Recently, the city of New Orleans and other community organizations hosted a gun buyback program in which people traded in their weapons for Playstation 5s.
“Specifically with Playstations being the kind of compensation that’s directly targeted at young people. I think that does nothing but promote public safety,” Snowden said.
In the past year, both open carry and concealed carry were made legal without a license in Louisiana.
“In the state of Louisiana, you have to have a license to get married, you have a license,” Snowden said. “Have to have a license to fish. It makes sense that you should have to have a license to conceal and carry a firearm.”
