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Needed: A tech upgrade and an end to overdetention in the Louisiana Department of Corrections
For years now, Louisiana officials have known that hundreds, perhaps thousands, of people serving sentences in jails and prisons are held past their release dates. A 2017 audit showed that people were detained weeks, months, or even years past when they should have been free. And courts have been clear that it is unlawful. Yet it continues to happen. Last week, NOLA.com reported that: “Every week over the last decade, prison staff found at least one person who had been kept in jail or prison longer than their sentence required, court records show.” [Richard A. Webster and Emily Lane / NOLA.com and the Times-Picayune]
In September 2018, Victoria Law wrote for The Appeal about the problem of “overdetention” in Lousiana. When release dates were postponed, the careful preparations some people made for returning home were for naught. In one case, 50-year-old Ellis Ray Hicks had been in close contact with his aunt leading up to his release date. She was in her late 60s and needed to have open-heart surgery but had to have a caregiver home with her for her recovery. Since her husband had cancer, she scheduled the surgery for after Hicks’s release. When she visited four days before his schedule release to ask what time she should be there to pick him up, they learned that his release date had been changed, from January to July. No one could explain why. Hicks’s multiple queries led to multiple new release dates, none of them the original one. He was eventually released four months after originally scheduled. [Victoria Law / The Appeal]
Nothing seems to have changed since September. NOLA.com’s reporting last week looked closely at multiple examples of people detained beyond their sentence. In some cases, people sentenced essentially to time served, who should have been released the day they were sentenced, were instead forced to wait in jail or prison for weeks as agencies processed their paperwork. Johnny Traweek, for instance, became a victim of the lag in communication between the Orleans Parish sheriff’s office and the state’s Department of Corrections. Traweek pleaded guilty to second-degree burglary, after seven months in jail pretrial, expecting to go home that day. Instead he sat in jail for weeks while the sheriff’s office got the paperwork to state corrections. [Richard A. Webster and Emily Lane / NOLA.com and the Times-Picayune]
When his lawyer, Stan Moroz of Orleans Public Defenders, asked why he was still in custody, a sheriff’s office employee responded: “He can’t get released until DOC sends him a release. The whole process takes about 2 weeks. He has to wait!!!!” The reason for the lengthy “process”? As the Times-Picayune editorial board highlighted, “the sheriff’s office drives inmates’ paperwork to the Elayn Hunt Correctional Center in St. Gabriel once a week. Let that sink in for a minute. They DRIVE the paperwork to St. Gabriel instead of emailing or faxing it.” [Richard A. Webster and Emily Lane / NOLA.com and the Times-Picayune]
The problem is so bad that Moroz keeps track of how many Orleans Public Defenders clients are detained, or likely to be detained, past their release date. Last year, between January and November, public defenders identified 46 clients who may have been incarcerated longer than they should have been under their sentences. [Richard A. Webster and Emily Lane / NOLA.com and the Times-Picayune]
Yesterday, the Times-Picayune editorial board pinned the blame squarely on the state Department of Corrections and the Orleans Parish sheriff’s office. The Department of Corrections’ response to criticisms about how slow it is in releasing people was: It’s hard to do math.” Sentencing calculation can be complicated, but the state corrections department is completely unequipped for the task. In the case of Kenneth Owens, sentenced to 21 years in 1989, instead of earning 30 days toward his release for every 30 days served as required, the department instead calculated that he earned only 15 days for every 30, a mistake that meant he spent three extra years in prison. The corrections department settled his lawsuit in 2016 for $300,000. [Richard A. Webster and Emily Lane / NOLA.com and the Times-Picayune] Corrections representatives blamed Louisiana’s 2017 justice reforms for many of the errors, pointing to the difficulty of calculating earned time credits. But, as the editorial board pointed out, “this is their job.” Times-Picayune Editorial Board]
In most cases, the errors only come to light when people notice errors and can raise questions about them. As Law noted, “There’s no system in place, either on the local or state levels, for incarcerated people themselves to fix these errors—or to get in touch with someone who can help. … those who have intellectual disabilities, mental health concerns, or cannot write a letter are left to sit behind bars…” Civil rights attorney William Most, who represents five people who allege that they were detained beyond their sentences, estimates that there are thousands of people in Louisiana in prison beyond their release dates. The impact is devastating for the unlawfully imprisoned individuals and their families, who remain in limbo. It makes meaningful rehabilitation and preparation for re-entry impossible. And it costs the state millions to incarcerate people who should not be in prison and then pay settlements. [Victoria Law / The Appeal]
Just as the problem is obvious, there are obvious solutions. One is to upgrade the corrections department’s data system, CAJUN, which dates back to the ’80s. An earlier effort fell apart, after the department spent $3.6 million on it. Another is to hire trained, competent staff to perform the reams of sentence calculations for which the corrections department is responsible. And finally, the Orleans Parish sheriff’s office can move into the 21st century and, as other sheriff’s offices do, send sentencing records to the state corrections department electronically, rather than on a weekly drive. [Times-Picayune Editorial Board]
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