author: Nicole J. LeBoeuf

From the Times-Picayune:

The prison, made up of 10 separate lockups, lost electricity and backup generators as it was inundated by floodwater. Stuck without food or water, inmates broke windows, burned blankets and rammed holes in buildings. Thirteen escaped before the State Department of Corrections sent guards to restore order and assist in a challenging three-day evacuation in which the prisoners were fished out by boat.

The report, released by the ACLU's National Prison Project, also addresses the current situation faced by the inmates, who were scattered among 38 Louisiana prisons and jails after the evacuation. Many of those prisoners remain incarcerated far from New Orleans due to the painstakingly slow recovery of the city's criminal justice system, states the report, entitled "Abandoned and Abused - Orleans Parish Prisoners in the Wake of Hurricane Katrina."

"Nearly every day, attorneys discover another prisoner whose case has slipped through the cracks," the report states. "These prisoners are doing 'Katrina time,' as it has come to be known."

Part of me boils with rage to read that. But there's another part of me that's like a kettle left too long on the fire: it's gotten all boiled out and now it's seriously cracked. And that part of me absolutely aches to use the phrase "I was doing Katrina time" in a first-person urban fantasy vignette.

(It also wants to make use of the phrase, "That man didn't touch the water," to describe someone who had a suspiciously disproportionately easy time during the storm and its aftermath. Mad propz to Deputy Ducre for that one.)

Who was the author who was said to write evocative phrases down on little slips of paper and put those slips of paper in a container he called his "demon box"? Yeah. One for the demon box.