Election Day was special

Voters in Lafourche Parish have approved a sales tax that will allow plans for construction of a new jail to proceed, to the relief of Sheriff Craig Webre and the officers who work there day in and day out.

It is said that no good news comes out of jails generally, and this is as true in Thibodaux as anywhere else.

We pay attention when someone gets hurt, when an inmate commits suicide, or when allegations of improper or inhumane treatment are brought to the attention of higher authorities.

We also tend to not be very sympathetic about the plight of jails or prison inmates.

It is only when someone in our own family or a close friend ends up behind bars, maybe for failure to pay a fine or because of a DWI offense, that we pay attention.

It is a common thing to hear people say that child molesters are dealt street justice behind bars and for them to say this is perfectly acceptable.

But street justice in a jail should never be acceptable.

It demeans us as a people, and tolerance of it further endangers those “innocent” people we know and love who end up detained, even if just for a few hours or a day.

After spending several days monitoring the Lafourche jail, I easily saw how conditions there endangered correctional officers.

This is a job in which there is little glory. We idolize police officers that work on the streets, about whom many television shows and movies have been made.

But we don’t think about the people who every day, for as long as 12 hours, are locked up except for breaks along with their charges, facing not only danger of physical assault but disease, depression and other bad things.

As they noted when speaking to me, the officers at the Lafourche jail will continue working under dangerous conditions for some time to come, at least until the new jail is built and placed into operation.

Prior failure of Sheriff Webre and other officials seeking a new jail to sell the idea to voters, the officers said, was not seen by them as a disapproval of the job they do.

But one might hope that passage of the jail tax is some recognition that these men and women, so unsung, so unrecognized, finally have at least a glancing acknowledgement from the public they serve of how important the job really is.

Craig Webre is not the first sheriff to lock horns with politicians over how big a jail should be. Years ago Terrebonne Parish Sheriff Jerry Larpenter wrangled with Parish Council members over the same issue.

The council wanted a jail half the size of the one that now stands, which was finally approved.

Larpenter insisted that in the years to come more space would be needed and that it was better to get all that done and out of the way. The Terrebonne Council listened, the jail was built, and Larpenter’s predictions were proven correct.

Now it appears the public – or what small percentage of the public that voted – has accepted Webre’s argument that Lafourche needs a jail that is not only better but also bigger.

Only time will tell.

But the voters have gotten the project past its first big hurdle.

On Sunday, the day after the vote, officers went to work as usual at the Lafourche jail. They walked impossibly narrow corridors where they risk being grabbed through bars on any given day.

They served food to their charges, prepared them for transport and otherwise tended to their duties as if it was any other day.

But it wasn’t just any other day.

It was the day after an election was held that in some small way may determine their futures as much as those of the detained.

And it was a day upon which the people of Lafourche Parish could, finally, look themselves in the eye and say that an important issue, one of the most important there besides erosion and jobs, had been resolved.