BATON ROUGE, La. (LSU Manship School News Service) – A House bill requiring the Department of Public Safety & Corrections to publish prison data on its website advanced 59-32 Monday with no debate.
House Bill 525, authored by Rep. Barbara Carpenter, D-Baton Rouge, would require the Corrections Department to upload to its website accessible data pertaining to deaths that occurred within prison populations, state prison demographics and trends, and interactive dashboards on prisoner release.
Also included in the mandated data requirements is the number of individuals housed in pre-trial detention and with the United States Immigration and Customs Enforcement.
The bill calls for data to be updated on an annual basis and uploaded on the department’s website no later than 30 days after the end of each month. No personal information protected under state and federal law would be released…