If your family has been impacted by the crime wave rushing through the major cities in Louisiana, there’s a bill filed for this year’s legislative session which might well be meaningful for you, and this week Louisiana’s Attorney General Jeff Landry came out in support of it.

The bill is HB 321, by Rep. Debbie Villio, and it’s a transparency vehicle by which the public gets a more wide-open look into what’s happening in the criminal justice system. From a press release Landry’s office issued following a media avail about the bill…

“The people of Louisiana have a right to know what is happening in our court system, whether the system is working, and how those trusted to run the system are delivering justice and protecting us from violent crime,” said Attorney General Landry. “This legislation, authored by Representative Debbie Villio, will begin to immediately address this crisis in New Orleans, Shreveport, and Baton Rouge.”

“This program will provide access to criminal court records and case information for victims, the families of defendants, citizens, and the press at no cost to them,” added Attorney General Landry. “Looking beyond this legislation, we hope to create a registered victim notification system that will utilize modern technologies to notify individuals of upcoming court proceedings related to their cases.”

Under the measure, the clerks will provide the Louisiana Department of Justice with a secure connection to its criminal court records and databases. Once that connection has been established, the LADOJ will host an online portal for citizens to view criminal court records in their totality – at no-cost to the user.

“You cannot maintain the rule of law, or dispense justice, when we are all wandering around lost in the dark,” concluded Attorney General Landry. “This plan will expose who in the system should be held accountable for the failures; when DA’s fail to prosecute, when judges fail to act, when police are handcuffed instead of the criminals.”

And there’s also video from the press conference…

Essentially, this is a shot across the bow of what have become lawless cities in the state, and in particular Baton Rouge, New Orleans and Shreveport. Have somebody in your family become a victim of a violent crime and you’ll find that the criminal justice system is Byzantine and stupid, and you’re victimized over and over again as the criminals seem to have a leg up in gaming that system while it really just wants you to go away.

Eventually, the whole thing will break down and people will take the law into their own hands. The Soros DA crowd doesn’t seem to understand that, but it’s pretty clearly coming. You can’t run a city like New Orleans, where there have been an astonishing 2,070 car thefts in the first three months of the year, without the people being made victims of crime deciding they’re going to get revenge if the cops and the lawyers won’t give them justice.

What this bill is likely to reveal is how far away we really are in those cities, but without an understanding of the problem it’s hard to make a solution.

So transparency might not solve crime. But it might well turn up the heat on a system which is lazy and stupid and doesn’t work for the people it’s supposed to. And in that way Villio’s bill is worth consideration in the coming session.