In December, The Times reported that about 200 inmates are held beyond their legal release dates on any given month in Louisiana, amounting to 2,000 to 2,500 of the 12,000 to 16,000 prisoners freed each year.
The average length of additional time was around 44 days in 2019, according to internal state corrections data obtained by lawyers for inmates. Until recently, the department’s public hotline warned families that the wait could be as long as 90 days.
In most other states and cities, prisoners and parolees marked for immediate release are typically processed within hours — not days — although those times can vary, particularly if officials must make arrangements required to release registered sex offenders. But in Louisiana, the problem known as “overdetention” is endemic, often occurring without explanation, apology or compensation — an overlooked crisis in a state that imprisons a higher percentage of its residents than any other in most years.
The practice is also wasteful. It costs Louisiana taxpayers at least $2.8 million a year in housing costs alone, according to the Justice Department.
A coalition of prisoners’ rights groups has sued the state on behalf of prisoners who have been held past their release dates. Those suits are continuing on a separate track.
“We have known for a long time that the Louisiana D.O.C. is deliberately indifferent to the systemic overdetention of people in its custody,” said Mercedes Montagnes, the executive director of the Promise of Justice Initiative, a nonprofit in New Orleans that has sued the state. “It’s egregious.”
Casey Denson, who is representing Johnny Traweek, a former prisoner in Orleans Parish who served 20 days past his release date, said the Justice Department action makes it more likely Louisiana will change its practices.
“It is clear that the state is unwilling, and unable, to fix it on its own,” she said.
