Louisiana’s law punishing inmates for intentionally hurting themselves is the target of a new federal lawsuit.
Prominent civil rights attorney William Most is challenging the law, which makes it a felony for an inmate to self-mutilate. He filed the lawsuit on behalf of his 44-year-old client, Joshua Folks.
Most wrote that Folks “suffers from a mental illness that causes him to engage in compulsive self-harm. The lawsuit states that Folks has lived with bipolar disorder and paranoid schizophrenia since his late teens.
According to the lawsuit, Folks was held at St Mary Parish Jail for arrests in January and March 2021.
After self-harming while in jail, Folks was charged with self-mutilation of a prisoner and taken to Angola, according to the lawsuit. Folks was held in Angola for 17 months, according to the lawsuit.
Most wrote that Folks injured himself at least three more times while in Angola.
Folks had been charged with a felony once before – after an arrest in 2018. Both charges were dismissed, Most wrote, “but nonetheless impacted his criminal case by prolonging the criminal proceedings and incentivising a plea agreement. Specifically, Mr Folks pleaded guilty to other lesser charges as part of an agreement that secured the dismissal of this potential felony charge.”
“There is no more obvious case of disability discrimination than when a person is punished for the fact of their disability. That is what happened here. Mr Folks has an obvious and well-documented disability that causes him to engage in compulsive self-harm. Instead of accommodating him, Louisiana state officials ignored his needs – and punished him for having them. The criminal law, Mr Folks’ treatment in prison and his isolation in Angola are all part of the same picture: the state is trying to punish or hide people like Mr Folks. But federal law does not allow that,” Most wrote in the lawsuit.
The lawsuit explains that the crime of self-mutilation by an inmate has its roots in a scheme used by some inmates who hoped that an injury would help them avoid prison labour.
“The way it got into the Louisiana penal code is disturbing, to say the least. In the 1950s, prisoners at Angola slashed their Achilles tendons to prevent prison officials from forcing them to work, as a kind of protest against inhumane and exploitative conditions. Because the prison was so dependent on prison labour, the protest was successful and the administration agreed to some important reforms. But the state also took steps to prevent prisoners from exercising this kind of power in the future: “In 1966, the Louisiana legislature amended the criminal code to make it a felony for an inmate to inflict self-injury ‘if such injury results in permanent or temporary incapacity to perform work or duties’ in the prison,” Most wrote.
According to the lawsuit, the legislature broadened the scope of the law by removing the requirement that the injury prevent the inmate from working.
The lawsuit goes on to allege that prison staff either ignored or failed to properly treat Folks’ condition.
Attorney Most has asked a federal judge to declare that the law violates the federal Americans with Disabilities Act and is unconstitutional. Most is also asking the judge to stop the state from charging Folks with the crime and to award damages to Folks.