Louisiana prisons keep inmates beyond release dates in violation of 14th Amendment, contends DOJ

The Louisiana Department of Public Safety & Corrections violates the Constitution’s 14th Amendment in routinely keeping prisoners incarcerated beyond their release date, the Justice Department announced Wednesday.

The DOJ concluded that overdetention neglects the right to equal protection established by the amendment and that the Louisiana agency is indifferent to the policy failures.

The legal precedent established by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals holds that any detention of over 30 days past a scheduled release date qualifies as a denial of due process rights, according to a DOJ report.

The Louisiana prison system has had notice of its overdetention issues since at least 2012, with legislative investigations in 2017 and 2019 further highlighting the problems. 

From January to April 2022, the DOJ found that 1,108 of the 4,135 people released from LDOC incarceration were released late, a total of 26.8%. Nearly half of that group, 544 people in total, were held past the due process threshold of 30 days.

Of the larger group of 1,108, 31% were held for over 60 days, and 24% were held for over 90 days overdue. 

These overdetentions cost LDOC thousands in fees paid to local parish facilities, an estimated $850,000. Although the sample size is small, if that rate of payment kept up, Louisiana taxpayers would be footing a yearly bill of over $2.5 million for unconstitutional overdetention.

“There is an obligation both to incarcerated persons and the taxpayers not to keep someone incarcerated for longer than they should be. This can be costly from a physical and mental standpoint for the incarcerated individual and a waste of money for the taxpayer. Timely release is not only a legal obligation, but arguably of equal importance, a moral obligation,” U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Louisiana Brandon Brown said in the DOJ announcement.

U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Louisiana Duane Evans noted that “Louisiana is wasting money on incarcerating people beyond their release dates and incurring legal expenses in defending lawsuits filed by the overdetained.”

LDOC policies identified as problems by the DOJ include the lack of uniformity in and delivery timeline for receiving sentencing documents, antiquated data management, convoluted formulas for calculating release dates, and a failure to track overdetention data.

LDOC officials are now on a deadline to change their policies. If the issues are not corrected, the federal government could initiate a lawsuit under the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act to force the changes.

“We are obligated to advise you that 49 days after issuance of this notice, the Attorney General may initiate a lawsuit under CRIPA to correct the alleged policies and procedures we have identified, if LDOC officials have not satisfactorily addressed them. The Attorney General may also move to intervene in related private lawsuits 15 days after issuance of this letter,” the DOJ wrote in a notice to Louisiana Gov. John Bel Edwards Wednesday.

Remedial policies sought by the DOJ include implementing a third-party criminal information-sharing system, adding automated event trackers to sentence calculations, and improving interagency coordination.