Lauren Anderson, a public defender and attorney supervisor for Municipal Court, is furious as she looks over a list of their names. “It doesn’t make any sense,” she says. “We’re not making the city any safer. We’re only hurting these people, and we just keep doing it over and over. It’s infuriating.”
Louisiana will soon join most states in the nation in helping pay for legal assistance for some of its most vulnerable residents
“It’s human decency, that after someone has served their time – if it was you, me or anyone else – we would want to be released,” Jackson said.
A 55-year-old man suffering from paranoid schizophrenia was illegally imprisoned 95 days past his official release date.
“We know that there is an issue here and we want to solve it,” said department spokesman Ken Pastorick.
“That would make homelessness one of the greatest threats to your life, more than anything else,” Miller said. “It would make it the most deadly social condition in the city of New Orleans.”
Forty-six states provide funding to help their most vulnerable citizens secure free legal assistance in civil matters. Louisiana provides nothing.
The end result is a decades-old problem that damages lives and costs taxpayers millions of dollars.
For people who can’t afford to pay for a bed at a private hospital, long-term mental health care is virtually non-existent
Rashaad Piper was one of 4 young men who attacked a pair of tourists in the French Quarter last year
Ten days before the assault, Dejuan Paul was sent to the hospital after hearing voices in his head that told him to kill
Eight hours after Donna Nathan bought the first and only gun she ever owned, police found her body next to an oak tree in Audubon Park
In New York, homeless deaths jumped 30 percent in 2017 compared to 2016
It had been two days since Cara Nurmi was reported missing and there was still no sign of her. BB St. Roman feared the worst
Two weeks into his newfound freedom, Ladd seemed in a daze as he sat next to his daughter, trying to make sense of his five-year odyssey
Hickman, who friends say was in his early 50s, was struck and killed the afternoon of June 13 by a Burlington Northern Sante Fe train at St. Louis Street and the Mississippi River.
At Friday's hearing, Judge Herman told the courtroom she needed to take into account the state's recent criminal justice reforms
Mayes, whose license was suspended in 1997, says driving to work was a terrifying, daily experience, with every police car representing the threat of being pulled over, handcuffed and thrown in jail.
"She said she had just gotten out of jail a day or two ago. That's where she was all those months. She said, 'I'm clean and sober. My body had a chance to clean itself up. I feel good about life,'" said Brooks. "We just hugged and embraced."
The leading cause of death among these 44 men and women was drug overdoses and substance abuse, accounting for half of the cases in which the coroner made a final determination.
The average age of death for these 44 people was 47 years old, decades less than the average U.S. life expectancy of 78 years. The oldest person among the homeless deaths was 63, and the youngest 28.
Shania said by all rights she shouldn't be alive, that she had a lot of close calls, a lot of guns pressed against her head during a time when she spent most of her days robbing people and selling drugs.
"He has these fits of rage where he gets real angry. But we know underneath all of that he's hurting because of his mother and his father's situation," Delone said in an October interview inside Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola, where he was serving a life sentence for armed robbery.
Ladd, 31, was arrested for possession of half an ounce of marijuana in 2011 and sentenced to 20 years in prison.
I didn't have a childhood growing up. I was on an adult line," Sharika said of her early years. "I'm watching sex go on in this room. I'm watching gambling go on in this room. I'm watching dogs fight each other in this room.”
