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Louisiana Corrections again cited for holding inmates past release dates, advocates say its's enough
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BATON ROUGE - For the fifth year in a row, the Department of Corrections has been called out for keeping inmates in custody beyond their release dates.
The Louisiana Legislative Auditor's office released a report about the Department of Corrections that says the department has been keeping inmates in custody too long for over a decade. The items detailed in the report are not new, with complaints dating back to 2012.
Reverend Alexis Anderson said she knows a lot about the court system and tried to help families navigate the lengthy and confusing processes. She spent Tuesday afternoon talking to families impacted by the justice system.
"We contact families often because they don't know who else to contact," Anderson said. "Families want to know how do [they] even know when someone's supposed to get out?"
Following a lawsuit filed five years ago, the corrections system acknowledged that the process for calculating a release date was complicated.
"You can't give anyone that time back," Anderson said.
In a report from 2024, the Department of Justice determined that since 2012, more than a quarter of people set for release from D.O.C.'s custody were held beyond their release date.
"They did little or nothing to fix the problem," Attorney William Most said. "DOC is stealing days and weeks and months."
Attorney William Most has filed multiple lawsuits against the Department of Corrections.
In response to the state auditor's report, the D.O.C. stated that they didn't have enough employees at the time of the audit to double-check when inmates should be released.
The D.O.C. has said that keeping inmates longer costs Louisiana an extra $2.8 million in housing costs each year.
Since the audit, D.O.C. says they've updated their software to ensure inmates are released at the right time.
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