DOJ: Louisiana indifferent to keeping inmates past release date

WASHINGTON >> The Justice Department has found that Louisiana's long-standing practice of detaining more than one-quarter of inmates beyond their court-ordered release dates violates the Constitution and accused state officials of ignoring repeated calls to overhaul the unjust system.

The Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections “is deliberately indifferent to the systemic overdetention of people in its custody,” according to a report on a yearlong investigation, released Wednesday, that examined incarceration patterns of inmates held in state facilities and jails run by parishes, the state equivalent of county governments.

From January 2022 to April 2022, 27% of the people who were legally entitled to be released from state custody, some for minor crimes or first-time offenses, were held past their release dates. About 24% of those improperly detained had been held 90 days or longer past their release days, the Justice Department found. Louisiana officials, who cooperated with federal investigators, are discussing a possible agreement with the Justice Department to overhaul the system. But the department, citing evidence uncovered by lawyers representing incarcerated people, concluded that the state has known about the problem for at least a decade and has done little to address it.

“There is an obligation both to incarcerated persons and the taxpayers not to keep someone incarcerated for longer than they should be,” Brandon B. Brown, a U.S. attorney for the Western District of Louisiana, said in a statement accompanying the report. “Timely release is not only a legal obligation, but arguably of equal importance, a moral obligation.”

Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, who leads the department's civil rights division, said that Louisiana's system also contributed to chronic racial disparities in the state's criminal justice system.

“In Louisiana, Black people represent 65% of the adult correctional population, while only representing 33% of the overall state population,” she said.

A spokesperson for the official who runs the system, James M. Le Blanc, said the state corrections department was reviewing the report and was continuing to work with the Justice Department.