Orleans Sheriff'S Department

The duty of the Orleans Parish Sheriff's department is to maintain the parish prison system. The department was up to the task until the end of August when Katrina hit the city with full force and destroyed what used to be a well run prison operation, and tuned it into a mass of confusion. The Sheriff's department is run differently in Louisania, due to the Parish system, then most other states in the country. For example, the Orleans Parish Sheriff works independently of other parishes, abiding by different laws and regulations.

Furthermore, the Orleans Parish's Sheriffs Department is divided into two separate Departments. One being the Office of the Orleans Parish Civil Sheriff, headed by Paul R. Balteau, Jr. The primary job of the Orleans Civil Sheriff is The Office of the Civil Sheriff is to be the official auctioneer for Civil Court ordered sales in Orleans Parish. The other department is the Orleans Parish Criminal Sheriff office, or the OPCSO is now helping with search and rescue, as well as continuing to oversees the Parish prison system, which post Katrina has the target for mush scrutiny.

All of the facilities in Orleans Parish are called prisons. This does not mean that that the all function as a prison. The definition of a prison is, an institution usually under state control for confinement of persons serving sentences for serious crimes. However, many "prisons" in the Orleans Parish operate as a jail. The definition of a jail is, a place of confinement for persons held in lawful custody; specifically: such a place under the jurisdiction of a local government (as a county) for the confinement of persons awaiting trial or those convicted of minor crimes. The best example, would be the Templeman III prison that acts more like a jail than a prison. This is important to understand, the individuals that are held in a prison are generally more dangerous and committed a more serious crime than those individuals that are held in a jail.

In the Orleans Parish there are ten detention facilities, all of which are headed by a Chief or Colonel. The facilities and their head are as follows, Chief Gary Bordelon, Templeman III;; Chief Rudy Belisle, Templeman II; Colonel Roy Austin and Colonel John Lecour, Old Parish Prison; Colonel Joseph Howard, Templeman I; Colonel Mary Baldwin Kennedy, Federal Division/Community Correctional Center; Colonel William Short, House of Detention; Colonel Earl Weaver, South White Street Juvenile Alternative Facility, to name a few.

Days after Katrina hit there were several allegations put onto the Orleans Sheriff's Department. From the news all the way to human rights organizations, all of which sited different human rights violations that ran on cable as well as local news stations. The question to be asked is what the allegations were, was there something else that the Sheriff's and their Deputies could have done to saved more lives? Are the allegations true, many are based on prisoner accounts. In the future what can be done to save more lives, what could change to make the prisons in the Orleans Parish ready for another disaster such as Katrina?

Prison authorities said that it took three days to evacuate over six thousand inmates from the lockup after the storm hit August 29th. The prisoners are now being held at 38 state and local lockups around Louisiana. The evacuation started days before the storm hit, now there are thousands of inmates scattered across the state, with no paperwork to identify them and a shortage of deputies and legal personnel to deal with the mass numbers. The numbers of arrested continue to grow. Due to the heavy looting and violence the NOPD is continuing to make arrests. In only one month since Katrina struck the parish there were around 1,100 people arrested, all of which need attention and a trial. The bail hearings, which began at "Camp Amtrak" recently, are the first step toward reviving one of the nation's busiest criminal justice systems. However, these criminals need someplace to live before the hearings, the Sheriff's are making due with what they have.

At "Camp Amtrak," a converted Grey Hound bus station, inmates are booked at what used to be a ticket counter. (Appendix 1) They are then held in chain-link pens behind the station, under a canopy where the buses once pulled up. Each cell has a portable toilet, like those at construction sites. Inmates make due on packaged military meals, and the occasional peanut butter and jell sandwich, while sleeping on the pavement. Many of the inmates that are held here have been arrested on minor charges, petty theft, or public intoxication for example. Many are forced to do "community service" to fulfill their sentences. Each day, buses haul most of them to a state prison near Baton Rouge, where they either make their bail or wait for a court date. Burl Cain, the warden at the Angola state prison who is in charge at the temporary jail, said that when officials arrived for their first look at the station in early September, they had to chase away looters trying to crack into the Greyhound and Amtrak safes. The 1,100 people from the metropolitan area who have passed through the jail include nearly 450 arrested in New Orleans for minor offenses and about 200 for serious crimes.

Since the disaster officials have had to reconstruct more than 6,000 logged and charged inmates. All of the inmates, which are now scattered among 39 other state prisons are guilty of both minor and major crimes. There does not appear to be much of a problem for the other prisons taking the extra prisoners of the devastated prisons in Orleans. Although it is likely that there are problems at the receiving prisons that have a come from adding over 6,000 displaced criminals to their facilities. Lawyers are literally having to go in and meet with these people one by one to figure out when they got arrested, why they were in jail, whether they have been convicted or whether they were waiting for trial, whether it was a misdemeanor or a felony.

Much of the Orleans Parish Criminal Sheriff's office records were destroyed by the flooding, however, some of the equipment has been received and technicians are working to fix the computers and read the files. Eventually the technicians will start matching the information they can recover from those computers to the information that the lawyers have been getting by going in and interviewing the inmates one by one, combining the knowledge of both parties will likely prove to be successful. Experts have estimated that almost half of the individuals still imprisoned do not need to be. They might have already served their sentence, or does not need to even be incarcerated anymore. It is crucial that the inmate information be dealt with as soon as