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The Louisiana prison system routinely holds inmates weeks or months after they should have been released from custody after serving their sentences, the U.S. Department of Justice said in a lawsuit filed Friday.
The lawsuit against the state comes after a years-long investigation into a pattern of “systematic over-incarceration” that violates prisoners’ rights and costs taxpayers millions of dollars a year.
Since at least 2012, more than a quarter of inmates scheduled to be released from Louisiana prisons have been held beyond their release date, according to the DOJ.
Louisiana prisons often hold inmates long after they should have been released after serving their sentences, the DOJ says. (AP)
The Ministry of Justice warned Louisiana officials last year that he might file a lawsuit against the state if he didn’t fix the problems. Lawyers for the ministry claim that the state has made “marginal efforts” to address the problems, pointing out that such attempts at solutions were “inadequate” and showed “deliberate indifference” to the constitutional rights of prisoners.
“[T]The right to personal liberty includes the right to be released from prison on time after a court-ordered term has expired,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke said in a statement.
“Indefinitely imprisoning people … not only infringes on individual liberty, but also erodes public confidence in the fair and just application of our laws,” the statement added.
More than a quarter of inmates scheduled to be released from Louisiana prisons since at least 2012 have been held past their release dates, the Justice Department said. (Kevin Dietsch/Getty Images)
Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry and Attorney General Liz Murrill, both Republicans, attributed the problem to “failed criminal justice reforms” pushed by the “past administration.”
“This past year, we took significant action to protect the citizens of Louisiana and ensure that those who commit crimes also serve their time,” Landry and Murrill said in a joint statement to The Associated Press. “The State of Louisiana is committed to preserving 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)
Two government officials also said the lawsuit was a last-ditch effort by President Biden, who leaves office next month, to argue that Trump’s incoming administration would not pursue the case.
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Advocates have repeatedly challenged conditions in Louisiana’s prison system, which includes Angola, the nation’s largest maximum-security prison, where inmates harvest vegetables by hand on an 18,000-acre plot. The site was once 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.
