Facing staffing shortages and an overcrowded jail, Orleans Parish Sheriff Susan Hutson asked the New Orleans City Council Monday (Oct. 28) to allocate $88.3 million for her agency’s 2025 budget – a $33 million increase from the budget the council approved for 2024 and nearly $24 million more than what New Orleans Mayor LaToya Cantrell has offered. 

At 1,529 detainees as of Sunday (Oct. 27), the Orleans Justice Center has the highest  population it has seen in nearly seven years. The current population is also about 20% higher  than a legal cap of 1,250, which the City Council set in early 2020

The Orleans Justice Center has been well below that cap for most of the nearly five years since it was set. But recent increases in average bond amounts, among other factors, have meant more detainees are jailed for longer periods of time before trial. Since the beginning of the year, the number of detainees has risen by about 300. 

A Sheriff’s Office press release published before Monday’s budget hearing said the spike in the jail’s population without a significant increase in funding has “stretched” the Justice Center and Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office staff “to their limits.” 

Hutson told City Council members that the $30 million increase in the proposed budget is to make up for “decades” of underfunding. 

Hutson said that the increased jail population has affected deputies’ ability to efficiently escort residents to court, to receive medical care and other services.

Hutson said staffing is at 55% – enough to manage roughly 800 residents. She said the strained ratio of staff to residents is hindering the agency from reaching compliance with a long-running federal consent decree. In May, a team of federal monitors, appointed by the judge overseeing the consent decree, noted a wave of inmate-on-inmate assaults inside the jail. 

That month Hutson released a plan to come into compliance with issues that monitors highlighted. The consent judgment requires deputies to be stationed in specific places in the jail, leaving less officers available to assist with facilitating educational programming and getting residents to medical services. 

“The reality is that we’ve been underfunded for decades and our current allocation is simply not up to the demands of running a constitutional jail,” Hutson told City Council members on Monday. 

Hutson and other officials said the lack of funding is hindering the agency from recruiting and retaining staff, as the starting salary for deputies is $37,440, compared to $42,449 for New Orleans Police Department recruits, whose salaries increase to roughly $60,000 after their first year on the job. At the meeting, OPSO employees pleaded with the council for higher salaries in order to make ends meet. 

“I shouldn’t have to think about taking on a second job to feed my children when I already have a career and serve my community with pride,” Sgt. Ariel Mercadel, a single mother of three children who cares for a fourth, said. 

Hutson said she wished to increase the base hourly wage for deputies from $18.45 to $24 per hour – the national average, she said. 

If Hutson’s budget is approved, a large portion of the proposed increase will go toward salary increases for current staff and recruitment efforts to fill vacant positions, maintenance and supplies for the jail’s growing population, as well as improvements in technology for a new mental health facility currently under construction — known as Phase III

“They’re required to be there at all times. That takes up the number that can be elsewhere,” Hutson said. “We need those deputies to be able to do all the things that the consent judgment requires.” 

Pledge to make detainee phone calls free not addressed

Hutson did not address another item that officials in her office had indicated  would be a 2025 budget priority earlier this year: making phone calls free for detainees at the jail. 

During her successful 2021 campaign for sheriff, Hutson criticized the high fees – more than 20 cents per minute – that jail residents had to pay to make phone calls, saying she would work to provide free phone services. She has come close to meeting that goal — signing a new telecommunications contract that lowers the cost to 14 cents per minute and offering about 15 minutes of free audio call time per detainee per day and 20 minutes of free video call time per week. 

Originally set to begin in September, the new rates — and the free audio and video calls — are now scheduled to take effect at the end of next month, a Sheriff’s Office official told Verite News on Tuesday.

But nearly three years into her tenure, she has not managed to make phone calls completely free. 

“The cost to our budget to have free calls is around $2 million, which is for lost revenue and the cost of the calls.” Hutson said via a text message from an OPSO representative. “I would love that, but need to drill down on the numbers.” 

OPSO’s budget proposal included $1.1 million in proposed revenue from phone fees in 2025. According to the contract with Smart Communications, OPSO receives 6 cents per minute for every phone call. 

In August, the Federal Communications Commission announced new rules on prison and jail phones, limiting the rate for calls in jails with 1,000 or more residents to 6 cents per minute. The new regulation goes into effect at the beginning of next year.

But because the contract was signed in May, nearly two months before the FCC’s July 18 vote to adopt new limits, and requires renegotiation to adjust the rates, the Sheriff’s Office will have a one-year grace period to comply with the rule. 

This story has been updated to reflect a delay in implementing new, less expensive jail call rates at the Orleans Justice Center.

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Before joining Verite, Bobbi-Jeanne Misick reported on people behind bars in immigration detention centers and prisons in the Gulf South as a senior reporter for the Gulf States Newsroom, a collaboration...