In July, 2016, thousands of demonstrators gathered in Baton Rouge to protest the death of Alton Sterling, a Black man who was shot by a police officer after being pinned to the ground outside a convenience store, where he had been selling compact disks. Although the protests were largely peaceful, officers in full riot gear dispersed the crowds and made more than a hundred and fifty arrests. A coalition of advocates, including the A.C.L.U. of Louisiana, filed a lawsuit accusing the Baton Rouge Police Department of infringing on the protesters’ First Amendment rights. A year later, Andrea Armstrong, a law professor at Loyola University New Orleans, who had served as a legal observer during some of the protests, co-authored a report cataloguing degrading conditions at East Baton Rouge Parish Prison, a local jail where the demonstrators were detained. Protesters were crammed into filthy, overcrowded holding cells and denied water and toilet paper. Some were pepper-sprayed. Others were strip-searched in front of strangers. In multiple instances, injured protesters received no medical attention. […]