Louisiana Voice

When you have such far-flung facilities as LaSalle Corrections, you apparently need transportation to get from one place to another quickly.

Never mind a judge’s CITING LaSalle for its lack of training for its employees.

And never mind that same judge’s finding that LaSalle falsified documents in abuse cases.

Forget about the “pattern, practice, and custom of unconstitutional conduct toward inmates with serious medical need” or the practice of performing unauthorized HYSTERECTOMIES on Latino detainees.

LaSalle’s FAILURE to pay benefits to 122 contract employees at its Tullos facility? No problem.

LaSalle’s part in the GOUGING of detainees with exorbitant taxi fairs upon their release? Fake news, of course.

And LaSalle’s efforts to protect its investment, even to the point of DEPRIVING the ex-wife of one of the company’s principals of her stock in the company? Well, that’s a personal matter.

What really matters, when all is said and done, is this company, with an estimated worth of $300 million and growing, needs a way to get its officers to its 19 facilities scattered from Georgia to Arizona.

To that end, while employees go untrained, while benefits go unpaid, while training documentation is falsified, LaSalle has obtained a 14-year-old, eight-seat Cessna jet that formerly belonged to a politically-active northeast Louisiana company.

The age of an aircraft isn’t nearly as important as the hours it has flown and though no sales price was available, an online check of that year and model Cessna shows that it TYPICALLY SELLS for about $3 million.

The plane previously was owned by Kennedy Rice Dryers, Inc., of Mer Rouge, Louisiana in Morehouse Parish. Coincidentally, Kennedy Rice Dryers and its officers and LaSalle and its officers made generous campaign contributions to many of the same political candidates over the past two decades.

It’s certainly refreshing to know that:

• LaSalle-run prisons are thriving so that corporate execs found that they need a jet to get to their facilities (though it would be interesting to see just how often they actually visit any of their 19 facilities).
• LaSalle execs travel in comfort, style, and convenience while LaSalle refuses to comply with federal mandates for transportation of prisoners upon their release.