GHRC Prison Labor Report Cited in Reuters Article on Prison Conditions in Louisiana
Louisiana's over-incarceration is part of a deeply rooted pattern
A recent U.S. Justice Department report on a decade-old practice in Louisiana of deliberately keeping people in jail for months, sometimes years, past their release date reads as though officials are actively working to reclaim the mantle of “world's prison capital.”
Louisiana had the highest incarceration rates in the country over the last decade, by fairly wide margins. The state’s population is roughly 62% white and 33% Black, but those numbers nearly flip behind bars, where 34% of inmates are white and 64% Black – almost double Black people’s representation in the general population.
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Roughly 800,000 incarcerated people work in prisons nationwide, and they produce more than $2 billion a year in goods and upwards of $9 billion in services — most of which benefits state officials and government budgets, according to a 2022 report by the University of Chicago Law School and the ACLU.
Read more at Reuters