Riley completes inaugural coaching staff
June 21, 2016
Summer hoops boosts local basketball
June 21, 2016
Lafourche Parish began the next step in building a new 525-prisoner parish jail over the weekend.
Construction on the jail started on Saturday with a groundbreaking ceremony at the new jail’s location on Veterans Boulevard in Thibodaux, across the street from the current jail. Lafourche Sheriff Craig Webre said the building is scheduled to be completed by the end of 2017.
“Our goal is on Jan. 1, 2018, to have everyone in this facility,” the sheriff said.
The facility will come as a vast improvement on Lafourche’s housing for inmates. The current jail, built in 1968 and expanded in 1977, is a 244-bed space that has faced issues of overcrowding and deteriorating conditions. One section of the facility dealt with a failing air-conditioner as recently as last week.
The new jail will have capacity for 525 inmates and feature new methods for inmate processing and supervision. Webre said the facility will have a case-management method when processing inmates, which will help pinpoint substance abuse or mental health issues. The jail will also feature a “direct supervision” model, in which supervisors will have visual and physical contact with inmates. Webre said he hopes the new features will improve Lafourche’s rehabilitative capabilities at the jail.
“This is not just a jail. We did not envision this facility as simply a means to locking and warehousing people. Some of those people cycle in and out so often that they are seemingly serving a life sentence 30 days at a time,” the sheriff said. “Instead, we appreciate the unique opportunity we have to end that cycle of self-destructive behavior and to help return people to society as better, well-rounded individuals.”
The parish is paying for the project through a 0.2-percent sales tax to pay for bonds over 30 years. According to Webre, estimates for the jail’s final price tag are between $33-35 million, with the parish currently erring on the higher end of that cost.
Burnell Tolbert, president of the Lafourche Parish Branch of the NAACP, said he and his brother performed welding work on the current jail during the 1970s. Tolbert was originally on the committee for the new jail, but had to appoint an alternate in his place due to other obligations. He was present at the groundbreaking, and said he has faith in the sheriff’s efforts to improve rehabilitative services for inmates. According to Tolbert, that shift in the approach to incarceration is needed in jails throughout the Bayou Region.
“You go in, and you just lock me up, and I’m just an inmate. And I don’t get any kind of treatment whatsoever or anything to help me be a better citizen when I get back in society. I’m the same person, I haven’t changed anything, so I may go back to doing something similar to what I did before, something worse,” he said.
Maj. Renee Brinkley, head of the sheriff’s office corrections department, said if officers implement individualized programs for inmates at the new location, Lafourche could reap the rewards of a safer, more productive society down the road.
“It’s got to be impactful. I think as time goes on, we’ll start to feel it five years from when the jail was built, 10 years,” she said. “I think the more and more we go, the more and more it’ll be impactful.” •
