Louisiana's longtime prison chief suddenly resigns • Louisiana Illuminator

One of the nation's longest-serving prison administrators will step down from his post as head of the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections next week.

James “Jimmy” LeBlanc served as the state's prison superintendent for 16 years, at a time when Louisiana consistently had the highest incarceration rate in the world. In total, he worked in the state's correctional facilities for 51 years, beginning his career in 1973 at the Louisiana Correctional Institute for Women in St. Gabriel.

In a resignation letter filed Friday, LeBlanc, 75, said he was stepping down to focus on his health. On paper, he will return to his job as warden at Elayn Hunt Correctional Center, but LeBlanc will take an immediate leave of absence once he begins that position, he wrote.

LeBlanc is popular with both local law enforcement and inmate advocates. Even some former inmates at Dixon Correctional Institute, where he worked as warden for 12 years, described him as approachable.

“He is known by department employees as a kind and compassionate man with an open-door policy and by those in custody or under department supervision as an advocate for rehabilitation opportunities and a champion of reintegration programs,” Natalie LaBorde, general counsel for the state Department of Corrections, said in a written statement.

LeBlanc led the state prison system under the last four governors: Kathleen Blanco, Bobby Jindal, John Bel Edwards and Jeff Landry. He served under Democrats and Republicans with a broad and even conflicting range of interests.

When Jindal often refused to show mercy to prisoners during his second term as a presidential candidate, LeBlanc helped him implement this “tough on crime” approach. But then LeBlanc did a U-turn and led the effort to reduce Louisiana's incarceration rate for Edwards, the Democrat who succeeded Jindal as governor.

After decades of running prisons, LeBlanc and Edwards pursued a strategy that included shortening sentences, releasing more prisoners early, and investing in rehabilitation programs.

While Landry has been in office for the past eight months, LeBlanc has kept a low profile, and was conspicuously absent from the state Capitol in February when Landry and lawmakers extended many of the sentences that LeBlanc had fought to reduce several years earlier.

Landry, who has made fighting crime his top priority, has also kept his distance from LeBlanc in public. He declined to officially appoint LeBlanc to his cabinet in the spring, although he kept him in the post of prison chief.

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