Louisiana’s long-serving prisons chief suddenly steps down

Jimmy LeBlanc (Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections)

One of the country’s longest-serving prison system leaders will leave his position running the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections next week.

James “Jimmy” LeBlanc spent 16 years overseeing the state’s prisons in an era when Louisiana consistently had the highest rate of incarceration in the world. In total, he has worked in the state’s correctional facilities for 51 years, starting his career in 1973 at the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women in St. Gabriel.

In a resignation letter submitted Friday, LeBlanc, who is 75 years old, said he was stepping down to focus on his health. On paper, he will return to a job as the warden at Elayn Hunt Correctional Center, but LeBlanc will take an immediate leave of absence once moving into that role, he wrote.

LeBlanc is liked by both local law enforcement officials and advocates for people who are incarcerated. Even a few former inmates of the Dixon Correctional Institute, where he worked as a warden for 12 years, have described him as approachable.

“He is known by Department staff as a kind and compassionate man with an open door policy and by those in the Department’s custody or under supervision as a proponent of rehabilitative opportunities and a champion of reentry programming,” Natalie LaBorde, general counsel for the state corrections department, said in a written statement.

LeBlanc has run the state prison system for the past four governors: Kathleen Blanco, Bobby Jindal, John Bel Edwards and Jeff Landry. He served under Democrats and Republicans with a wide and even conflicting range of agendas.

With an eye toward running for president, Jindal was often reluctant to show mercy on prisoners in his second term, and LeBlanc helped carry out that “tough on crime” approach. But in an about-face, LeBlanc then led efforts to reduce Louisiana’s incarceration rate for Edwards, the Democrat who followed Jindal as governor.

After decades running prisons, LeBlanc invoked a strategy with Edwards that included reducing the length of criminal sentences, releasing more incarcerated people early, and investing in rehabilitation programs.

With Landry in office over the past eight months, LeBlanc has kept a low profile. He was conspicuously absent from the State Capitol in February when Landry and legislators lengthened many of the criminal sentences LeBlanc had fought to reduce a few years earlier.

Landry, who made fighting crime his top priority, also kept his public distance from LeBlanc. He declined to formally appoint LeBlanc to his cabinet position in the spring, despite keeping him on in the prisons’ chief job.

Over the years, LeBlanc has also been criticized for stocking the prison system and its vendors with close friends and relatives .