Louisiana Parish Jail Full — Already
The new Livingston Parish LA jail may be full within a few months, which would mean parish government would again have to find money to send prisoners to other facilities, officials said. The Advocate has a full report.
The long-term answer appears to be adding on to the jail that opened Jan. 31, Livingston Parish Sheriff’s Office officials said. While approaching full capacity in its new jail, Livingston Parish also has inmates being housed in out-of-parish jails, Warden Jim Brown said.
The Sheriff’s Office does not have all the 150 state Department of Corrections prisoners it needs to house in order to pay for the added personnel required to run the new parish jail, Brown said. When those parish prisoners and state prisoners come to the new jail, it will leave little room for the rapid influx of new parish prisoners. And within two to three months, parish government may have to start paying to send prisoners to out-of-parish facilities again, the warden said.
That news didn’t sit well with Parish President Mike Grimmer. Grimmer and the Parish Council would have to find money in a storm-decimated budget to pay the $24.39 a day it takes to house each prisoner in another parish, he said. “I don’t think that’s why we built a new jail,” Grimmer said. “The goal was to keep from paying out-of-parish prisoner expenses.” Grimmer said sending inmates out of the parish is not in the budget because the parish didn’t expect to have that expense once it built the $18 million jail … Sheriff Willie Graves said he told Grimmer months ago that the new jail would quickly run into a space problem and suggested that a new wing be added.