The hidden engine behind the state's well-oiled prison machine is cold, hard cash. A majority of Louisiana inmates are housed in for-profit facilities, which must be supplied with a constant influx of human beings or a $182 million industry will go bankrupt.
One in 86 adult Louisianians is doing time, nearly double the national average. Among black men from New Orleans, one in 14 is behind bars; one in seven is either in prison, on parole or on probation. Crime rates in Louisiana are relatively high, but that does not begin to explain the state's No. 1 ranking, year after year, in the percentage of residents it locks up.
http://www.nola.com/crime/index.ssf/2012/05/louisiana_is_the_worlds_prison.html
I asked someone about it and they basically said: "Yeah Louisiana is racist and they need slave labor so it's all African-Americans." Isn't that nice?