What are a person’s limitations when it comes to obtaining their freedom? Only those who have experienced being oppressed and trapped in an unjust situation would truly understand the bigger picture, seeing clearly through the subliminal picture that is constantly being painted.
Almost two weeks ago, 10 men escaped from the Orleans Justice Center jail in Orleans Parish. It captured citywide — even national — attention, with social media capturing each step of their stories, which have been followed and debated, even cheered by some.
But the spectacle cut differently for those with an intimate knowledge of the system.
In New Orleans, where incarceration touches nearly every block, jail population counts are more than just data points — they represent families fractured, futures derailed, and communities under pressure.
For families already living in separation, the chase represented a deeper, quieter story: of loved ones lost not just to escape, but to years of incarceration, isolation, and a justice system that often feels anything but just.
Data tells only part of the story
In April, the city’s jail held an average of 1,424 people per day, according to the Mayor’s Office of Criminal Justice Coordination — a slight increase from March, but a significant 15% rise compared to the same time last year.
New Orlean court records reflect arrests, charges, and trial dates, but families of the accused know that these things are only a fragment of the matter. For them, jail stays include accounts of loved ones overcharged, held on unaffordable bonds, and not uncommonly, actual innocence.
Incarceration in New Orleans becomes deeply personal. It’s a sibling, a partner, a parent. It’s a family member who isn’t home. And while the headlines may move on, thousands remain locked away — and thousands more wait for their return, serving time on the outside.
For those on the outside, jail is also expensive, for those who accept the collect calls from the jail and sometimes buy commissary to supplement terrible jail food.
That burden, however, is not borne equally. Black residents of Orleans Parish are detained at more than four times the rate of white residents, and they’re admitted nearly four times as often. These disparities stretch far beyond statistics — they ripple through homes, disrupt classrooms, and undercut economic stability, dismantling communities one jail sentence at a time.
Though Black men make up 26% of the city’s population, they made up 88% of the Orleans Parish jail population in 2024, according to city of New Orleans data. Nationally and locally, at every step of the justice system, Black men are disproportionately affected.
Descended from a ‘jail empire’
The city’s jail population reached an historic peak of 7,542 inmates in 2004, under then-Sheriff Charles Foti, who expanded the jail system into what critics dubbed a “jail empire.” It was lucrative: the state paid the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office per diem fees to house inmates, creating a financial incentive to keep local beds full.
This expansion coincided with a decision by the state to halt admissions to the overcrowded Louisiana State Penitentiary at Angola. With no place to send newly sentenced individuals, local jails like Orleans Parish Prison (OPP) were left to absorb the overflow.
Maybe this long history created a mindset within the city that Black men can be warehoused without much concern on their behalf.
There was an attempt at reform a few decades ago. After Hurricane Katrina, Foti’s entire jail campus was damaged from flood waters. But as the sheriff sought permits to rebuild, protestors demanded one jail building that could house all of the city’s inmates. Early on, that seemed possible. Then, during the pandemic, the jail population reached a new low of 720 people.
But now the city seems to be back to arresting its way out of its problems. Tiers meant to hold 60 started to house 67. On the first floor, inmate receiving-pods for newly booked people were turned into long-term housing.
Today, Louisiana once again stands on the edge of a correctional crossroads. Experts warn that recent criminal justice proposals from Gov. Jeff Landry could nearly double the state’s prison population within six years. The past offers a cautionary tale: when policy shifts slam prison doors shut, it’s often the city jails — and the families of those detained there — that bear the brunt.
Violence and poor plumbing
While law enforcement continues the search for those who escaped, their flight raises a deeper question — not just how to prevent future escapes, but how to fix a system so broken that escape seems like the only option.
Behind concrete walls and steel bars of the Orleans Justice Center, a crisis unfolds daily—hidden from the public eye but mentally affecting those trapped within.
The city jail now faces widespread plumbing leaks and clogged toilets that have led to long spells without water in some parts of the jail. This month, since the escapes, hot water has disappeared in jail showers. Pill call has long been inconsistent, creating problems for those with chronic conditions, said a 30-year-old man who spoke with The Lens. “Sometimes we don’t even get our medicine,” he said.
The man said that one of the pipes burst inside of the prison walls. During repairs the water was shut off for almost a week. “We had to walk through the flood water that was on the tier. “We was forced to eat in our cells and the toilets was full of urine and feces.”
After the escape, the jail’s e-messaging went offline for a few weeks, as did the apps to order commissary or put money on an inmate’s books.
But the escapes didn’t start the jail’s problems. Within the data kept by the monitors for the federal consent decree, darker issues emerge: unchecked use of force and inhumane conditions.
Documents reveal a pattern of violent altercations, some involving excessive force. Within the jail building, alerts and alarms are frequently triggered—each one signaling a potentially inappropriate use-of-force incident. Worse yet, the same staff members are repeatedly involved in questionable incidents with the same inmates, raising serious concerns about systemic negligence.
The 30-year-old man said that things were wild inside the jail after the escape – but not because of inmates. “They were so mad, they came on the tier shooting dudes in the back with the gun that shoot out the cans of tear gas,” he said.
The consistent level of facility violence pushes family members to scrap and save to pay for phone calls, just to hear loved ones’ voices and know that they are okay for that day.
Now, with the escapes, those same family members are being arrested for aiding and abetting escapees — with bonds set at $1 million.
Tiers filled with people with unchecked trauma
The life stories of the escapees are also not surprising to New Orleanians, especially in the urban communities where officers have long targeted residents. People in those neighborhoods know the emotional toll of watching someone navigate a system that, for many, seems more like a trap than a path to justice.
Out of the 10 men that broke free, two of them remain at large. We don’t know all the stories. But from what we do know, both experienced childhoods marked by trauma and violence.
As a young child, Antoine Massey witnessed his father shot execution-style by a gunman who then put the gun to the child’s head too, his aunt said in an Instagram video.
Groves grew up hearing how Lens Davis, a corrupt cop, ordered someone to kill his grandmother, Kim Groves, who had filed a complaint against him. She was killed down the street from the family house a mere three years before he was born. No doubt, growing up with that knowledge can leave a person feeling betrayed, angry, and disconnected from a system that is supposed to provide protection.
These escapes were more than an act, they were a symptom. They signal the breaking point in a system long frayed by injustice, where confinement too often stands in for accountability, and punishment replaces true public safety.
The stories of those who fled are not just tales of fugitives, but reflections of a fractured city, one where freedom is unevenly distributed and trauma and incarceration spreads far beyond cell walls. As two men remain at large, the question lingers: what drives someone to see escape as the only way forward? Until we reckon with that answer, we are not just managing a jail, we are preserving a cycle. And in that cycle, everyone is serving time.
Bernard Smith is The Lens’ criminal-justice reporter.