SHREVEPORT, La. (KTAL/KMSS) – Sheriff Steve Prator said the Caddo Correctional Center is in a “dire” situation due to overcrowding on Tuesday afternoon.
“We’re over the emergency limit, so we have a horrible situation,” says Prator.
The meeting was held at the Caddo Parish Sheriff’s Re-Entry Center, not far from CCC, which was built to hold 1,070 inmates. Despite that, the current population is more than 1,500. About 1,000 are awaiting trial in Caddo District Court.
“I get called ‘Do we let this person in?’ and I’m not going to tell somebody, ‘no, we’re not booking them,’ because we’re going to book them,” says Prator.
According to Prator, some of the inmates are without beds. Many are sleeping on the floor, next to the toilet in some cases.
He says over the past decade, there have been fewer arrests but more pre-trials. Inmates can wait for their trial for years.
“We got people that have been here six, five, four, three years awaiting trial, plus the regular ones, over 250 that have been in jail awaiting trial.”‘
Prator says overcrowding costs Caddo Parish about 30 million dollars annually to hold these pre-trial inmates.
Shreveport City Councilman John Nickelson was also at Tuesday’s meeting and said solutions must happen fast.
“If we don’t fix the overcrowding problem at Caddo Correctional, we can’t detain serious criminals pre-trial. So the consequence of not getting this done is the people who are dangerous and should be in jail awaiting trial are not going to be in jail,” says Nickelson.
According to Prator, more public defenders could help alleviate the problem.
“We’re going to see about having less prisoners that have to be transported to the court. We’ll see about getting bondage straight out of Shreveport instead of us having to fool with the bonds on some of them.”
The Shreveport Police Department will also help with the overcrowding by keeping some prisoners in the city jail.
“We’re booking them in our jail, send the affidavit over to Caddo for the judges, review, sign and set a bond. The bondsman can actually make the bond out of Caddo, but the prisoners themselves never get transferred. They will be released from SPD,” says Chief Wayne Smith.
