Louisiana

08/06/2012
Pregnant and Parenting Teens

Get Tested Or Get Out: School Forces Pregnancy Tests on Girls, Kicks out Students Who Refuse or are Pregnant

By Tiseme Zegeye, ACLU Women's Rights Project at 12:33pm

In a Louisiana public school, female students who are suspected of being pregnant are told that they must take a pregnancy test. Under school policy...

Read More»
09/04/2012
Access to Counsel

Hitting Two Birds with One Stone: Strategies for Addressing the Indigent Defense Crisis and Overincarceration

By Vanita Gupta, Center for Justice & Steve Hanlon, Partner, Holland & Knight at 1:07pm

Earlier this year, the Orleans Parish Defenders Office (OPD), which represents more than 80 percent of criminal defendants in Orleans Parish and handled 30,000 cases in 2011, faced a particularly severe fiscal crisis.

Read More»
10/22/2012
Breaking the Addiction to Incarceration

Breaking the Addiction to Incarceration: Weekly Highlights

By Alex Stamm, ACLU Center for Justice at 10:43am

Today, the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. With over 2.3 million men and women living behind bars, our imprisonment rate is the highest it’s ever been in U.S. history. And yet, our criminal justice system has failed on every count: public safety, fairness and cost-effectiveness. Across the country, the criminal justice reform conversation is heating up. Each week, we feature our some of the most exciting and relevant news in overincarceration discourse that we’ve spotted from the previous week. Check back weekly for our top picks.

Read More»
08/31/2012
Breaking the Addiction to Incarceration

Breaking the Addiction to Incarceration: Weekly Highlights

By Alex Stamm, ACLU Center for Justice at 2:05pm

Today, the U.S. has the highest incarceration rate of any country in the world. With over 2.3 million men and women living behind bars, our imprisonment rate is the highest it’s ever been in U.S. history.

Read More»
07/26/2012
Police Brutality

Long-Awaited Improvements Coming to New Orleans Police Department

By Marjorie Esman, ACLU of Louisiana at 2:56pm

Earlier this week, the City of New Orleans and the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) entered a consent decree to revamp the New Orleans Police Department (NOPD). A consent decree” is essentially a contract monitored by a judge to ensure that the terms of the agreement are met. This is the broadest such agreement in the DOJ's history, covering all aspects of the NOPD from recruitment and training to officer discipline. It will, literally, remake the NOPD and, we hope, remake the city of New Orleans.

Read More»
Statistics image