The American Civil Liberties Union has sued the state of Louisiana for records on a “secretive state panel” that decided which prisoners should be released from state prisons during the COVID-19 pandemic.
“In April, as public health experts warned that prisons would become powder kegs for COVID-19, the Louisiana Department of Corrections created a Furlough Review Panel with the stated purpose of reducing the prison population in order to protect public health,” the ACLUC said in a news release.
The panel was supposed to consider 1,100 people imprisoned for low-level offenses and who were within six months of their release date, the ACLU said.
“But three months later, reporting by The Advocate found that the panel examined fewer than 600 of those cases and approved 100 for release, and only 63 were expected to be released,” the ACLU said.
“The numbers confirm that this secretive panel was a sham – and now state officials are adding insult to injury by stonewalling our attempts to find out why,” Alanah Odoms Hebert, ACLU of Louisiana executive director, said in a statement.
In May, the ACLU filed a public records request for information about the “process and criteria of the review process" as well as meeting agendas and panel members.
“The Louisiana Department of Corrections has asserted that the COVID-19 Furlough Review Panel is exempt from Louisiana’s Open Meetings Law and produced only one document in response,” the ACLU said.
Ken Pastorick, spokesman for the Louisiana Department of Public Safety & Corrections, told the Louisiana Record that the department is ‘fully committed to providing documents responsive” the ACLU’s request.
“The Department has worked well with the ACLU in the past,” he said. “However, we are disappointed that they chose to file a lawsuit in this matter at this point, considering they were told the documents would be available on or before August 21, 2020, and that we are in the midst of responding to the world’s worst pandemic in a century.”
The prisoner reviews are closed to the public because they involve “the viewing and discussion of records not subject to disclosure under (Louisiana Revised Statutes) 15:574.12,” he said.
“For months, Louisiana officials have ignored the warnings of public health experts and allowed rampant outbreaks to ravage our prison system,” the ACLU said. “These were taxpayer dollars at work, and the people of Louisiana deserve to know why the panel denied, by fiat and behind closed doors, the temporary release of demonstrably low-risk, vulnerable people during a pandemic.”