Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections
Investigative Findings and Next Steps
On January 25, 2023, following an extensive investigation, the U.S. Department of Justice’s
(DOJ) Civil Rights Division and the three U.S. Attorney’s Offices for the State of Louisiana
notified the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections (LDOC) that it had
reasonable cause to believe that LDOC incarcerates thousands of individuals each year beyond
their legal release date, in violation of incarcerated persons’ constitutional rights.
In summary, the investigation found:
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LDOC denies individuals’ due process rights to timely release from incarceration by
detaining them weeks and often months past their release dates. Between January
and April 2022, 26.8% of all people released from LDOC custody were overdetained. In
that four-month period alone, the cost of overdetention to LDOC was at least $850,000.

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LDOC fails to implement adequate policies and procedures to prevent systemic
overdetention. LDOC does not have a uniform system for receiving or delivering
necessary sentencing documents and it maintains a time-consuming process for
calculating release dates, which also lacks an accountability process to ensure
sentencing computations are done correctly.

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LDOC is deliberately indifferent to the systemic overdetention of people in its custody.
LDOC has been on notice of this issue for more than a decade and attempts to improve
that process thus far have been inadequate.

Now that the investigation into LDOC is complete, our goal is to work with LDOC to resolve the
identified constitutional violations and implement remedial measures.

Please note, that although the DOJ does not have the authority to provide legal assistance to
individuals who may have experienced overdetention by LDOC, we still encourage anyone
with questions, ideas for reform, or comments, to contact the DOJ team:

Community.LouisianaDOC@usdoj.gov
or
833-492-0097 (toll-free)