The prison capital of the world: 40,000 citizens currently serve time (meaning 1 in 86 adults is serving time or has served longer than a year sentence), prisoners are moved and used for profit, and the incarceration rates are higher than that of China, Iran, and Germany.

Louisiana, the fifth most violent state in the country, has a prison problem.

In a large portion of prisons, either privately owned or privately funded, prisoners are worth more to the sheriffs and other elected officials overseeing them. Each prisoner is worth around $25 a day. This money is provided by the taxpaying citizens of Louisiana. Money that benefits elected officials specifically. Prisoners are then shuttled around and traded like playing cards between prisons... you know, so everyone gets an equal opportunity to make money.

When a system like this is constructed and in place for so long, opposition loses its' footing quickly. Cindy Chang, former reporter for The Times-Picayune exposed Louisiana as the prison capital of the world in 2012 and there has been little exploration into the issue documented since then.

Louisiana prison problems do not end there. While the pockets of elected sheriff's and deputies are stuffed with prison profit money, prisoners sit day-in and day-out with little to do other than stare at the walls or play basketball for a few hours. Education opportunities and skill-learning classes are rarely available to inmates and are sometimes only offered at one facility, out of reach for most behind Louisiana bars.

The for-profit prison system in Louisiana creates dependency; dependency on people going to prison and remaining there. The focus on money making has become blatantly obvious in the past twenty years as the Louisiana prison population has doubled with sentences sometimes going over the national median sentence for the same crime. All this has occurred, and yet the crime rates in Louisiana have shown no significant decrease. How can prison populations be doubling but crime remains the same?

When you are able to lock people up, profit from their time behind bars, offer them no way to improve themselves or learn how to live outside of prison, and then release them back into society after a ridiculously long prison sentence a prison-dependency is developed. Inmates in Louisiana are more likely to be arrested again in the next five years than in any other state. Louisiana benefits from their own failings to their citizens.

Salarrious "Scooter" Jones, a 21-year-old former high school football star, recently received a 15 year sentence for violating his temporary parole to go to Arkansas to enroll in college and play football. After already serving time for previous felony armed robbery charges and then being released, Scooter will now not leave prison until he is nearing forty.

Scooter, having already experienced Louisiana prison time, chose to better himself when he was released. Though he violated his parole by leaving the state, he was on a path for success. His time behind bars served as nothing more than motivation for him to improve himself, his game, and his chance at a good life.

Now, thanks to the Louisiana prison system, Scooter is more valuable to his state as an inmate than he is as a free man.

The Monroe community, as shocked by Scooter's sentence as he was, stands in unity against the court's decision to take a young man, willing to put in hard work and succeed the old-fashioned way, behind bars and offer him no way to prepare himself for his return to society, all while making money from his time there.

A system that not only perpetuates criminal dependency, but profits greatly from it is not a system that we, as citizens of Louisiana and as humans seeking a better life for others around us, should let stand. Without a real prison reform where we implement actual programs that are available and beneficial to prisoners for their post-prison lives, the endless cycle of crime will not end and people will continue to suffer at the hands of a money hungry system that needs crime to survive.

Let Scooter Jones' face stand for the thousands of other faces that are serving long and unfair sentences in order to maintain payroll for elected officials in Louisiana.