Lisa Andres was supposed to walk free from Louisiana state custody months before she actually did. Instead, she says, the state kept her locked up for 101 extra days.
Jaren Brignac‘s case was shorter, but no less unlawful in his eyes: nine days past his release date, still behind bars. Both are now plaintiffs in a new lawsuit that argues Louisiana’s Department of Public Safety & Corrections never actually fixed the overdetention problem it claims to have solved.
The lawsuit, filed Friday in the Middle District Court of Louisiana, names DOC Secretary Gary Westcott as the primary defendant and argues the agency’s internal processes are still failing people on a routine basis.
According to the filing, the department “employs a meandering bureaucratic process that delays release by days, weeks, and even months.” That’s a direct challenge to the official narrative pushed by the state under Gov. Jeff Landry, whose administration has maintained for years that new technology solved the release-date calculation issues that once plagued the system.
Attorney General Liz Murrill, who handles civil litigation on the state’s behalf, isn’t backing down from that narrative. She called the lawsuit’s claims overblown and out of context, framing the legal action as more about money than reform.
“These lawsuits are nothing more than an attempt at a money grab,” Murrill said in a statement. “The activists behind these suits do not want progress and actively obstruct it.” She also pointed out that release-date math is inherently complicated, since people don’t officially enter state custody until after sentencing. The DOC itself declined to comment, citing the ongoing litigation.
The numbers cited in the lawsuit tell a different story than the one the state has been telling. Between August 2024 and the end of 2025, the filing claims roughly 1,200 people were held in Louisiana prisons past their legal release dates. The suit is being handled by the Promise of Justice Initiative, a New Orleans-based advocacy organization, working alongside several other law firms. Attorneys are asking the court to certify the case as a class action, which would open the door for additional overdetention claims to join the suit.
This isn’t the state’s first rodeo with these allegations, either. Louisiana has faced scrutiny over overdetention since at least 2012, with the issue surfacing repeatedly in the state’s own internal audits and in federal court findings. It’s already produced a string of civil suits and drawn a federal investigation over the years.
Officials have typically pinned the blame on slow paperwork processing between sheriff’s offices, court clerks, and the DOC, and pointed to fixes like a new digital submission portal and automated release-date software, rolled out as recently as this past February, as proof the problem was being handled.
But according to Friday’s lawsuit, none of that technology actually solves the underlying issue, because nothing requires the department or its staff to act on a release once someone becomes eligible. The filing also claims the state’s handling of parole revocation paperwork is similarly sluggish, adding another layer to the delays.
Louisiana has been down this legal road before: last year, a federal judge allowed two earlier, similar lawsuits, naming former DOC secretary Jimmy LeBlanc, to proceed as class actions. The state is currently appealing that decision.
