Louisiana State Police reports that 18.13% of its 2025 traffic citations involved people residing outside Louisiana. Texas and Mississippi are the largest named non-Louisiana categories in its citation demographics. That gives this frequently asked question a recent official answer—with a qualification: the report’s license-state chart includes unknown records, and its citation totals differ slightly between pages.
The 2025 Stop Search Annual Report covers January 1 through December 31, 2025. It analyzes LSP enforcement, including the troopers and Department of Public Safety officers described in the report. It is not a count of every ticket issued by municipal police, sheriffs, cameras, and courts throughout Louisiana.
Texas and Mississippi lead the named non-Louisiana categories
The citation-demographics page labels its geographic chart Driver’s License. The comparable 2024 report labels it Driver’s License State. These are the displayed percentages for the five categories below, preserved with their actual labels.
| License-state category | 2024 share | 2025 share |
|---|---|---|
| Louisiana (LA) | 79.52% | 81.87% |
| Texas (TX) | 7.67% | 7.31% |
| Mississippi (MS) | 3.27% | 2.76% |
| Florida (FL) | 1.49% | 1.16% |
| Unknown (UNK) | 1.38% | 1.26% |
Texas and Mississippi together account for 10.07% of the displayed 2025 citation population, compared with 10.94% in 2024. Their combined share fell by 0.87 percentage points. A smaller share is not proof that fewer Texas or Mississippi travelers were cited in absolute terms; the overall reported citation population changed between years.
The 2025 top-ten chart also identifies Georgia and Arkansas at 0.73% each, Alabama at 0.62%, California at 0.50%, and Tennessee at 0.25%. States absent from the top ten should not be treated as having zero citations.
Why the reported 18.13% needs an unknown-record qualification
The 2025 executive summary describes 18.13% as involving people who reside outside Louisiana. That figure equals 100% minus the license chart’s 81.87% Louisiana share. But the same chart separately shows 1.26% as UNK. An unknown state is not evidence that someone resides outside Louisiana.
Subtracting both the Louisiana and unknown categories from 100% leaves 16.87% for the other chart categories. That is a calculation from the displayed, rounded license-state figures. It is not an independently verified count of nonresident motorists. License-issuing state and current residence are different fields, and the published chart does not reconcile their use.
The 2024 summary has the same issue: its stated 20.48% outside-Louisiana share equals 100% minus 79.52% Louisiana, while the chart includes 1.38% unknown. Removing that displayed unknown category leaves 19.10% for other codes. This review retains the agency’s reported percentages and makes the unknown category visible instead of classifying those motorists ourselves.
The two-year change is a share, not a targeting rate
The summaries’ reported outside-Louisiana share decreases from 20.48% in 2024 to 18.13% in 2025, a difference of 2.35 percentage points. The Louisiana license category increases by the same number of percentage points. These describe the composition of reported citation records.
They do not measure the probability that an out-of-state driver will receive a citation. To compare that probability fairly, researchers would need a defensible measure of how much residents and nonresidents drove in the relevant places and periods, along with comparable enforcement and violation data. The percentage of citations is not the percentage of travelers stopped.
What can be said about the number of tickets
The 2024 report consistently lists 122,882 traffic stops resulting in citations. For 2025, the executive summary lists 179,372, while the total-stops slide and citation-demographics chart show 179,374. The two-record difference is small, but the publication does not explain it.
Both reports describe the citation measure as traffic stops resulting in a citation. It should not be presented as a count of unique people, every separate charge, or every payment collected. Multiplying a rounded state percentage by one of the conflicting totals would produce an estimate, not a separately verified exact count of out-of-state tickets. We therefore use the published shares without inventing exact state totals.
The reporting requirement and its limits
R.S. 32:398.10 requires an annual statistical report that includes state of residence. The published LSP documents make useful recent figures available. Their existence does not make the dataset a complete record of all Louisiana law-enforcement agencies or resolve the report’s unknown-state classification.
A precise statewide nonresident count would require consistent agency coverage, distinct citation identifiers, and a clear choice between residence and license state. The current reports support a narrower finding: Louisiana is the dominant recorded state category, with Texas and Mississippi leading the named non-Louisiana categories in LSP’s 2025 citation chart.
For a traveler who already received a Louisiana ticket
Your state’s share of citations does not decide the outcome of your case. Keep the ticket, identify the charge and court, and act before its response date. Our team can review the Louisiana citation and help identify the next step. If the court date has passed, use our case-status guide to begin checking what the court recorded.
Sources checked October 2, 2026. Chart percentages were checked against the visible PDF pages. Combined shares and percentage-point differences are our calculations from the rounded published figures. Unknown records, the residence/license distinction, and the inconsistent 2025 citation total remain disclosed.