Louisiana, which locks up a larger share of its population than any other state except Mississippi, has a longstanding problem with its jail and prison inmates: It likes them so much that it has trouble letting them go, even when they have completed their judicially prescribed sentences. According to a report that the U.S. Justice Department published in January, more than a quarter of Louisiana inmates released from January through April 2022 were incarcerated after they should have been freed. Within that group, the median length of "overdetention" was about a month, but nearly a third of the prisoners were illegally held for at least two months and a quarter were detained for an extra 90 days or more.
A decision that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit issued this week shines a light on the combination of incompetence, indifference, and outright malice that has created this constitutionally intolerable situation. The case involves a former prisoner, Ellis Ray Hicks, who was "detained for sixty days after the expiration of his prison sentence." Hicks sued several employees of Louisiana's Department of Public Safety and Corrections (DPSC), arguing that they had violated his 14th Amendment rights by depriving him of his liberty without due process. It is "clear as day," a three-judge 5th Circuit panel unanimously ruled, that "the government cannot hold an inmate without the legal authority to do so."
