Compliance director endorses new addition to Orleans Parish jail
9th January 2017 · 0 Comments
By Fritz Esker
Contributing Writer
On January 3, Gary D. Maynard, compliance director of the Orleans Parish jail, submitted a plan to improve the facility that included a recommendation for the city to build an 89-bed addition for mentally ill inmates.
The Phase III addition would house adult male and female acute/sub-acute prisoners separately. Youth detainees would be moved out of the Orleans Justice Center and into the New Orleans Youth Study Center after an expansion there is completed in 2018. Currently, 10 to 20 juveniles are being kept in a separate part of the jail with a 60-inmate capacity. This means 40 to 50 beds are being unused. With the addition, some Orleans Parish inmates currently housed outside of the parish could return.
The plans have left a bitter taste in the mouths of many social justice organizations. Opponents feel that the new building with more beds means that the OPSO plans to raise New Orleans’ already high incarceration rate. Louisiana ranks first among the 50 states in incarceration, according to a 2014 U.S. Department of Justice report.
“(The) decision…flies in the face of New Orleans residents have demanded, and what our leaders have publicly committed to doing. For many years, New Orleans residents have voiced a clear and unwavering commitment to reducing the incarceration rate in New Orleans,” said Adina Marx-Arpadi, Orleans Parish Prison Reform Coalition (OPPRC) coordinator. “Mental health officials, criminal justice specialists, and New Orleans residents clearly and overwhelmingly oppose construction of a new jail building and any increase in the jail population.”
Lisa Graybill, deputy legal director for the Southern Poverty Law Center, echoed Marx-Arpadi’s statement.
“He’s not listening to experts who are telling him how to do this more effectively, more quickly, and more cheaply,” said Graybill. “Sheriff Gusman is getting great community input and he needs to listen to it.”
Cost is also an issue. Graybill said that retrofitting the jail to better care for mentally ill inmates would be more cost- effective and provide more immediate relief. Maynard’s plan did not include a total cost or sources of funding for the expansion.
“We (Louisiana) are in big, big trouble financially,” Graybill said, alluding to the over $300 million budget deficit in Louisiana.
In Maynard’s report, he acknowledged retrofitting would be cheaper, but dismissed that idea with the following statement: “…the final resulting facilities would be less desirable, both in the functional end result, as well as the significant loss of bed space. As a result, even more inmates would need to be housed out of parish. Furthermore, during the construction phase, the renovation would cause a strain on the daily operation inside OJC.”
The City of New Orleans has final authority and approval over expenditures in the plan. Marx-Arpadi expressed hope that Mayor Mitch Landrieu and the New Orleans City Council would refuse to fund the planned jail expansion.
Local watchdog groups have concerns about more than just incarceration rates and the care of mentally ill prisoners. Overall care for the prisoners and violence amongst inmates is also an issue.
“We remain very concerned about the high levels of violence at the jail and about the lack of trained staff and supervisors to care for the persons in OPSO custody,” said Emily Washington, attorney with the Roderick & Solange MacArthur Justice Center. “We think it has to be a top priority for Director Maynard to aggressively and expeditiously recruit leadership from outside of the sheriff’s office to come and assist him in the necessary reforms. This job is too big for one person to do alone and OPSO currently lacks the internal expertise.”
Maynard’s report said data analysis would help reduce violence in the jail. He compiled a full listing of all jail assaults in the last 18 months. Data points on time, location, and demographic information for assailants and victims, the nature of the assault, and other issues have been gathered. In the report, he said the data is currently being analyzed, and staff and operational adjustments will be made accordingly. The report said full analysis will be completed before March 1 of this year.
Multiple requests to the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office for comment were not returned by press time.
This article originally published in the January 9, 2017 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
