News & Commentary

Louisiana’s justice reinvestment package was a historic step forward, and it helped me be reunited with my family. Now lawmakers should build on this momentum and reform the Habitual Offender Statute — so that my extreme sentence is one of the last.

Two years after passage of Louisiana’s bipartisan justice reinvestment package, these smart, sensible reforms are already working to make our communities stronger and safer.

The ACLU's Smart Justice Campaign released a 50-state blueprint for how to achieve two goals: cutting our prison population by 50 percent while also reducing its racial disparities.

On Tuesday, Louisiana voters scored a resounding victory for justice by approving Constitutional Amendment 2 and abolishing the law that allowed less-than-unanimous juries to convict people to life without parole.

When prosecutors prioritize winning convictions over advancing justice and ensuring fair trials, they risk convicting the innocent. Time and time again in Louisiana, innocent lives have been destroyed by wrongful convictions, while the prosecutors responsible have evaded accountability.

By voting “yes” on Amendment 2 in November, Louisianans can finally right the wrong done more than a century ago and prevent people like Travis Hayes from being convicted without being proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.

After spending years as the prison capital of the world, a new report indicates that Louisiana has finally shed this shameful title thanks to the historic package of criminal justice reforms passed last year. According to the Prison Policy Initiative, Louisiana’s incarceration rate is now the second highest in the nation, below that of Oklahoma.

The 2018 legislative session kicked off last week, and there’s a lot at stake – especially for our criminal justice system. 

The ACLU of Louisiana today condemned statements by Caddo Parish Sheriff Steve Prator, in which he argued that “good” people are needed in jail to perform prison labor. Sheriff Prator stated that it is a “necessary evil” to keep the “good ones that we use every day to wash cars, to change the oil in our cars [and] cook in the kitchen.”