Monitors tasked with overseeing the New Orleans jail and tracking its compliance with the long-running federal consent decree said staff falsified suicide-watch documentation, rubber-stamped investigations to justify uses of force, and that the facility is dangerously understaffed.
Sheriff Marlin Gusman said vulnerable inmates are not being placed with violent offenders.
The hearing is a step toward figuring out who should pay to improve jail conditions.
Monday's hearing was supposed to be the first step to determine who would pay for jail reforms.
Now that a judge has ruled that jail conditions are unconstitutional, the question is how to pay for it.
Surrounded by deputies, Orleans Parish Sherriff Marlin Gusman announced today that he is closing the Orleans Parish Prison House of Detention facility on Perdido Street. He said the move is based in part on “the mounting criticisms” and the “inspections by the federal people.”
