Louisiana’s prison system routinely holds inmates for weeks or months after they were scheduled to be released from prison after serving their sentences, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a lawsuit filed Friday.
The lawsuit against the state follows a multi-year investigation into a pattern of “systemic over-incarceration” that violates inmates’ rights and costs taxpayers millions of dollars each year.
According to the DOJ, since at least 2012, more than a quarter of inmates scheduled to be released from Louisiana prisons were held beyond their release dates.
Louisiana prisons often hold inmates long after they have completed their sentences, after they were supposed to be released, the DOJ said. (AP)
The Ministry of Justice last year, Louisiana warned officials that it could file a lawsuit against the state if it fails to fix the problems. Attorneys for the department argue that the state has made “marginal efforts” to address the problems, noting that such attempts at resolution are “inadequate” and show a “deliberate indifference” to inmates’ constitutional rights.
“The right to individual liberty includes the right to be timely released from custody after the expiration of the period specified by the court,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke said in a statement.
“Detaining people indefinitely … not only infringes on individual freedoms, but also undermines public confidence in the fair and equitable application of our laws,” the statement continued.
More than a quarter of inmates scheduled to be released from Louisiana prisons since at least 2012 have been held beyond their release date, according to the Justice Department. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry and the state’s attorney general, Liz Murrill, both Republicans, attributed the problem to “failed criminal justice reforms” pushed by “the previous administration.”
“Over the past year, we have taken significant action to keep Louisianans safe and ensure that those who commit the crime do the time,” Landry and Murrill said in a joint statement to The Associated Press. “The State of Louisiana is committed to upholding the constitutional rights of the citizens of Louisiana.”
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Louisiana Governor Jeff Landry speaks at the CPAC Texas 2022 conference at the Hilton Anatole. (Radin/Pacific Press/LightRocket via Getty Images)
The two state officials also claimed that the lawsuit was a last-ditch effort by President Biden, who leaves office next month, and argued that President-elect Trump is incoming administration would not have pursued the case further.
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Advocates have repeatedly questioned conditions in Louisiana’s prison system, which includes Angola, the country’s largest maximum-security prison, where inmates hand-pick vegetables on an 18,000-acre property. The site was once the Angola Plantations, a slave plantation owned by Isaac Franklin and named after Angola, the country of origin of many of the enslaved people who worked there.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
