We join our friends and partners at the ACLU of Louisiana to call for an end to Louisiana's unjust pretrial incarceration system.
Right now, if you were arrested in Louisiana, you can sit in jail for weeks, or even months, without a criminal charge. Under current law, you can be held up to 4 months before the prosecutor decides to bring formal charges. Meanwhile, families are separated, people lose jobs, innocent people sit jailed, and millions of taxpayer dollars are spent in jail costs.
Louisiana doesn't mandate representation until arraignment, so most people do not even have lawyers before they are charged with a crime. They are unable to fight their incarceration because there is not yet a case to litigate. Worse, many people in this situation are never charged at all - but by that time the damage is done. This pretrial period is entirely controlled by the district attorney.
As the ACLU of Louisiana put it in their recent Justice Can't Wait report, this is an egregious miscarriage of justice that traps people in legal limbo for weeks and even months, all without charge or trial.
HB 46 would save thousands of people in Louisiana from being held in jail for weeks, or even months, without criminal charge. It would protect Louisianans' constitutional rights and improve the function of the justice system by limiting the amount of time the prosecution can jail a person without a criminal charge. The bill shortens the period to five days for most charges, 30 days for more serious offenses, and officially ensures the right to counsel at preliminary hearings.
It would be a critical step forward in addressing Louisiana's incarceration crisis.
