Death, Illness, and Notification in Louisiana Prisons

There are two directions a death or a serious illness can travel through a prison wall, and a family usually only thinks about it when it is already happening.

One direction is from the outside in. Someone in the family is dying or has died, and you need the prison to tell your incarcerated person, and you are wondering whether he can be there for it. The other direction is from the inside out. Your person is the one who is sick, or who has died in custody, and you are trying to find out what happened and what you are allowed to do. This article walks both directions for Louisiana, run by the Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections (DPSC).

I am going to be straight with you about Louisiana up front, because it saves you a false hope. As a matter of department policy, funeral trips for state offenders are conducted by video visitation, not by sending the person to the funeral in person. Physical funeral trips are the rare exception and require high-level approval. That is hard, and I am not going to dress it up. What you can do is make sure your person is notified properly and help them take part by video, and that is much of what this article is about.

When the Death or Illness Is on the Outside

If someone in the family is gravely ill or has died and you want your incarcerated person notified, the channel is the facility, usually through the chaplain or the offender's classification officer. Call the institution, explain the emergency, and be ready to provide verification, such as the funeral home's information or a death certificate for a death, or a hospital or physician confirmation for a serious illness.

Notification is the part that tends to work. Whether your person can leave the prison is a separate and much harder question, and in Louisiana the answer is usually that they will take part by video rather than in person.

Funeral participation in Louisiana is by video

I told you this at the top, and I want to be clear so you can plan. Under Louisiana DPSC policy, funeral trips for state offenders are conducted via video visitation, with any exception requiring prior approval from the Chief of Operations. So in most cases there is no in-person funeral trip to expect. Separately, Louisiana law does allow escorted leave for certain purposes, including visits with dying family members and funerals of family members, but it is under security escort, it is discretionary, and for many people, including those with certain violent or habitual-offender sentences, the law restricts release except under escort and only in narrow circumstances. The realistic expectation for most families is video participation.

This is the place where I would normally tell you the long version of my own story, about being promised a furlough escort to my mother's funeral that never came because a warden got moved and an acting warden reversed it. The short version still matters here: an approval that exists on paper is not a person standing at a graveside, and you should never build a family's grief around the hope that your incarcerated person will be physically present. In Louisiana, where the default is video, that lesson is built into the system. Plan the service around the family who can be there, and arrange for your person to take part by video.

How to set up the video participation. Ask the chaplain or the classification officer as soon as you know the date and time of the service. Coordinate with the funeral home about whether a video connection can be set up at the service, and ask the facility what it needs on its end. Do this early, because it takes coordination on both sides.

When the Illness or Death Is on the Inside

The other direction is harder, because you have less control and the information comes slower. But Louisiana law gives families two specific protections worth knowing.

The ICU notification and visitation protection. Louisiana law provides that if an incarcerated person sustains serious bodily injury requiring admission to an intensive care unit or a medical facility, the warden or other governing authority shall attempt to notify the inmate's immediate family within eight hours of the medical decision to transport the person to the facility. And the law goes further: a member of the immediate family shall be granted visitation, daily, for the duration of the person's admission to the ICU or medical facility, subject to the security procedures of the prison and the hospital. This is a real, statutory right, so if your person is taken to an ICU, ask the warden's office about it directly.

Pushing for medical information. Outside the ICU situation, medical privacy rules limit what staff will share unless the incarcerated person has authorized release of information to you, so encourage your person, while able, to sign a release naming you.

Louisiana medical parole and medical treatment furlough. Louisiana has a medical release mechanism in its statutes at R.S. 15:574.20, decided by the Committee on Parole. There are two pieces. Medical parole is for an offender the department determines to be either permanently disabled, meaning unable to engage in substantial gainful activity due to an impairment expected to result in death or to be permanently irreversible, or terminally ill, defined as a life expectancy of less than one year. Medical treatment furlough is a related mechanism that uses off-site medical facilities for an eligible offender's treatment. First-degree and second-degree murder and people awaiting execution are excluded from medical parole. Importantly for families, the process can be started by a referral, and Louisiana has moved toward allowing a referral from the offender, an attorney, a family member, or a treating physician, so you can help get the ball rolling. The Committee weighs the medical condition against public safety, and a person released on medical parole is supervised for the remainder of the sentence and can be returned to custody if their condition improves. The practical lesson is the familiar one: document the diagnosis and prognosis, get the referral in early, and consider an attorney, because the process is slow and a terminal illness does not wait.

If your person dies in custody. The Department notifies the family using the emergency contact your person has on record, which is exactly why that contact must be correct now. In Louisiana, the parish coroner also has a duty to make every reasonable effort to notify the next of kin in cases under the coroner's jurisdiction, which includes a death in custody. Make sure the listed contact is reachable and will tell the rest of the family.

Investigation, autopsy, and the parish coroner. Louisiana uses a parish coroner system. A death in custody falls under the coroner's jurisdiction, and the coroner investigates. The coroner may order an autopsy at his discretion and must order one where there is a reasonable probability that a crime contributed to the death. The coroner issues the death certificate stating the cause and manner of death, and may hold the body as long as he deems necessary for the investigation, so the family does not automatically receive the body immediately.

Getting answers, and claiming the body. Louisiana gives families some useful rights here. The coroner is required to provide one copy of the autopsy report at no charge to the next of kin, and a fact of death letter, a written statement attesting to the death that serves as proof of death for claims and benefits, is a public record available to close family. The next of kin claims the remains, generally by working with a funeral home that coordinates release once the coroner's investigation allows. Make your intention to claim your person known promptly, and be clear about who the legal next of kin is, because disputes between family members slow everything down. If the family cannot afford a funeral, ask the funeral home and the parish about burial assistance for indigent decedents.

What Families Can Do Before a Crisis

Most of the pain in these situations comes from decisions that were never made in calm times. A few things you can do now, while no one is dying:

Make sure your person has the correct emergency contact and next of kin recorded with the Department, and keep it current. This determines who the prison calls, including the eight-hour ICU notification.

Have your person sign a release of information naming the family members who should be allowed to speak with medical staff. Without it, privacy rules will keep you in the dark outside the ICU situation.

Understand that funeral participation in Louisiana is normally by video, and plan for it. Ask the chaplain in advance how a video connection to a service is arranged.

If your person has a terminal or grave condition, do not wait. Get a referral for medical parole under R.S. 15:574.20 started, document the diagnosis, and consider an attorney.

Keep the funeral home's contact information ready, both to verify an outside death so your person can be notified, and to claim your person if they die inside.

State Resources

Louisiana Department of Public Safety and Corrections: contact the institution directly; use the DPSC website and offender locator for facility, chaplain, and classification contacts.

Louisiana Board of Pardons and Committee on Parole: for medical parole and medical treatment furlough under R.S. 15:574.20.

Parish Coroner: for cause of death, autopsy, next-of-kin notification, the death certificate, and release of remains in the parish where the death occurred.

Louisiana Department of Health, Vital Records Registry: for certified copies of the death certificate.

Louisiana 211: dial 2-1-1 for grief support, funeral assistance resources, and counseling referrals.