Lafourche weighing jail options

The Lafourche Parish Detention Center’s much-anticipated needs assessment report is complete.

The Five-Star Committee responsible for determining the design and cost of a new parish prison facility now begins the arduous task of considering the compiled data.

According to Committee Chairman Rick Bouterie, the group has time to make any necessary adjustments to the information before presenting the Lafourche Parish Council its final recommendations in November.

The Five-Star Committee’s main task – sifting the parish’s current funding sources for funds to build a new facility or repair the existing detention center – remains intact.

The parish government spends $1 million annually to maintain the detention center and provide medical care and housing to inmates. The sheriff’s office spends nearly $4 million yearly to operate and staff the jail.

The Lafourche Parish Council, at the urging of Councilman Phillip Gouaux, gave the committee one year to review the parish’s current financial status, seeking areas to cut or move funds for the prison project. The committee began its research armed with reports compiled by the disbanded Blue Ribbon Committee and Nicholls State University’s economics and finance departments.

Bouterie said to simplify the research process, the committee split into two subgroups. The first group delved into the parish finances and the other tackled the needs assessment to operate a jail.

But together, the committee came to a consensus to hire Jim Rowenhurst, a consultant from the National Institution of Corrections, to design a comprehensive plan for the reconstruction of a new jail in Lafourche Parish.

“I think it would be a mistake for us to just build for today,” Sheriff Craig Webre said. “We need to think about the jail 20 to 30 years from now. The science in planning a jail is to project the demographics that will be based on future need.”

The parish council asked Rowenhurst to address four questions, according to Gouaux: How many inmates will need to be accommodated in the future? What kind of inmates will need to be housed? How big will a new jail need to be? And ultimately, how much will a new jail cost?

Rowenhurst wrote in his report that Lafourche Parish officials have been dealing with detention facility space problems for several years. Authorities are frequently forced to relocate inmates to prison facilities outside of the parish – a costly measure for the parish.

According to Maj. Marty Dufrene, the parish’s correctional facility warden, the number of inmates currently housed outside of Lafourche are near the 2008 figure.

“We are not even out of 2009 and the numbers are close to the 2008 figures,” he said. “Every year, it increased and it will continue to increase until we can have adequate space to house inmates.”

Rowenhurst’s figures indicate that housing out-of-parish prisoners cost the Lafourche government $500,000 last year – up dramatically from 2004’s cost of $310,000.

The parish jail’s outdated design and failing infrastructure have also cost the parish significantly, he said.

“It’s not new news to us that the jail is falling apart,” warden Dufrene said. “It’s old and under-sized for what we need today. That’s the whole point in (seeking) the study.”

Webre said the detention center reached its capacity years ago. It was built in 1976 to house 76 inmates. Today, the facility has been reconfigured to handle more than triple the load – 243 inmates.

The Lafourche Parish Jail houses offenders arrested by the state police, Thibodaux Police, port commission, Louisiana Department of Wildlife & Fisheries and authorities from other cities and towns in the parish, according to the sheriff.

While analyzing the jail, Rowenhurst collected 10 years of historical data on the detention center. Based on past trends, he said future inmate populations could be predicted 20 years into the future.

Highlights from Rowenhurst’s analysis indicate:

• The number of prisoners booked into the detention center has nearly doubled since 1999. That year, 3,937 prisoners were admitted to the facility; in 2008, the figure rose to 7,027.

• Prisoners are also serving longer detention stays – 51,181 on average in 1999 up to 99,580 in 2008.

• The facility’s average daily inmate population (ADP) has risen from 140 prisoners in 1999 to 273 in 2008.

• The peak number of inmates the Lafourche Parish jail can hold is 349. According to the Louisiana Fire Marshal Code, however, the detention center’s cap is 244.

• The number of inmates being housed out of the parish is up from 774 in 2004 to 1,127 in 2008.

The researcher said, based on past figures, the trend of increasing numbers at the parish jail is not likely to slow down in the future. To accommodate the projected number of inmates, he said the parish will need a new jail.

Dufrene said the numbers quoted in Rowenhurst’s research are realistic for Lafourche Parish.

“We have been looking at projections like this for years,” he said. “If we had the bed space for the inmates, the (projected) numbers would probably look that way now. Our inmate numbers are suppressed by about 25 percent, meaning that Lafourche can’t make all the necessary arrests because we don’t have the space to put the inmates once they are arrested.”

Those suspected of misdemeanor or non-violent crimes are often issued a summons and assigned a court date, he said, to ensure bed space is reserved for the violent offenders.

Bouterie has asked that each subgroup formulate a report that will be submitted to the parish council along with Rowenhurst’s needs assessment report.

The committee’s finance subgroup will meet Monday at 6 p.m. at the Lockport Substation.

The next Five-Star Committee meeting is set for Oct. 5 at the Lafourche Parish Government Building in Mathews.