Katrina Exposes Orleans Parish Prison’s Flaws

With overcrowded cells and numerous reports of severe prisoner abuse and neglect, Orleans Parish Prison (OPP) has a bad reputation. During its chaotic three-day evacuation amidst floods caused by Hurricane Katrina, deep problems within the prison, and the New Orleans justice system, were revealed.

OPP, which is the equivalent of a county jail, is one of the largest of its kind in the nation, even though New Orleans is far from one of the most populous US cities. It holds 6,000–8,000 people at any given time in its ten buildings.

“The stories [from Orleans Parish Prison inmates] are so unbelievable that people look at them and think, ‘This can’t possibly be true,’” says Human Rights Watch researcher Corrine Carrie.

Ms. Carrie has spent much time in New Orleans, Louisiana since hurricane Katrina, interviewing prisoners and guards throughout the prison system. She says that across the board, they are all telling the same stories of abuse and neglect, not just after the hurricane, but in the prison system in general.

Stories from inside

Former OPP guard Shantia Barnes said that over the course of her three years working there, she often witnessed physical and psychological abuse of prisoners, including guards denying them food, turning lights on and off inappropriately, and beatings.

“When [prisoners] put in grievances or put in request forms to see ranking officials, sometimes that never happens, [even when they] have a serious case,” she says. “Honestly it all depends on who the inmate is. If they’re real problemsome then they never get heard.”

Ms. Barnes was shocked by the conditions in OPP after Katrina, and resigned from her job on the third day after the storm struck when her superiors told the guards that “they were only coming [to rescue] the inmates and that was it, and that we [guards] were on our own.”

Barely meeting requirements

New Orleans has some of the least prisoner-friendly laws of any US city, says Rachel Jones, a trial lawyer at the Louisiana Capital Assistance Center. One can be detained for up to 45 days for a misdemeanor before seeing a judge or a lawyer, even if the charges are completely unfounded, she says. “They do the bare minimum of what the [US] Supreme Court requires.”

Another rampant problem she sees within the system is arrests for the most minor crimes. She cites one man who was arrested for reading tarot cards in a public square without a permit, and another who was arrested for “aggravated bike riding,” i.e. riding with only one hand on the handlebars.

“When you arrest someone you get to spend the rest of the night filling out paperwork, so there’s a big incentive on arresting,” says Ms. Jones. In addition, there are not enough serious criminals to keep the massive OPP filled, so the city’s homeless and poor are often targeted. “This hurricane has just revealed how many of those people are in the system at a given time.”

Ben Cohen, a New Orleans capital defense lawyer who has been doing pro bono work on behalf of impoverished pre-trial detainees, highlights a problem that he calls a “system of indentured servitude,” where petty-offenders who want release are encouraged to plead guilty in exchange for time served. They are often unaware that they’ll be saddled with court-costs and probation fees of $40 per month for up to five years, or a total of $2,400—no small potatoes for a minimum-wage earner.

“It creates a cycle of incarceration where poor people are routinely sent back to jail for no other offense, except that they couldn’t pay their fines and fees.” Ultimately, the fines and fees are what Cohen describes as the “crack cocaine” of the criminal justice system: the judges, court reporters, and defense lawyers for the poor need the fees imposed or to get paid, but its an “easy high” that undermines the integrity of the process. It is a system, Cohen says, that “lets the judges, prosecutors and defense attorneys off easy, all on the back of poor people who carry the burden of an under-funded system.”

Failing to meet standards

In March 2004, a joint report on the state of legal defense for the poor in Louisiana, funded by the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers and the National Legal Aid and Defender Association, found that the system “fails to meet 9 of 10 national indigent [poor people] defense standards” and concluded that “if you’re poor in Louisiana, you have no real access to justice.”

Roeshawn Addison from New Orleans is one such person. He has been in and out of OPP numerous times for misdemeanors. He calls it “the worst place I ever go.” He says he has often been crammed into two-person-sized receiving cells with four other people, and has had to fight for blankets and mattresses, or at a minimum make a special request to the guards for these basis necessities.

In August, Mr. Addison was sentenced to ten days in OPP for trespassing and disturbing the peace. He was due to be released on the morning of Monday, August 29, the day Katrina struck. Not only was he not released, he says, but he was bounced around to different facilities over the course of the lengthy evacuation process, and he was not released until a full 31 days later.

Mr. Addison claims that the guards at OPP abandoned prisoners immediately following Hurricane Katrina. Juveniles, misdemeanor offenders, and convicted felons were all mixed together. He and other prisoners had no electricity, food or fresh water for several days; meanwhile, the floodwaters, which he described as “nasty, nasty”—full of urine and excrement—rose at first to knee-level, and eventually so high that all the prisoners in his first-floor cell had to climb on the top bed bunks for safety. On the third day, they were moved outside to the bridge, where they had to wait out in the sun, still with no fresh water. Eventually, guards tossed hotdogs to them.

Denials of abuse

Orleans Parish Criminal Sheriff Marlin Gusman has denied accusations of prisoner neglect and abuse, according to spokesperson Renee Lapeyrolerie. Ms. Lapeyrolerie admits that a number of people were indeed kept long passed their release dates because of Katrina, but says the courts tried to take care of their cases first. “It has taken some time, let me tell you...[but] Sherriff Gusman accounts for evacuating all the 6,000-plus prisoners [after Katrina] and safely evacuating them.”

Although she herself was not present at OPP during the evacuation, Ms. Lapeyrolerie asserts that the prison “didn’t keep food from anybody” and that there was more than enough food stored at the facility to feed all the inmates. One problem, she says, is that it took time to communicate the state of the situation to the prisoners, since the buildings were flooded and the PA system was down because there was no electricity.

The evacuation of OPP was perhaps the largest prison evacuation in U.S. history. While OPP was prepared to withstand the hurricane itself, says Ms. Lapeyrolerie, it was totally unprepared for the levee breaks which flooded the buildings up to seven feet deep. It took three 24-hour days of evacuations to load prisoners onto boats and busses. They had to call the state Department of Public Safety and Corrections to get additional boats and SWAT team personnel.

Human Rights Watch claims that several hundred prisoners who were imprisoned before the storm are still unaccounted for. Ms. Lapeyrolerie says Sheriff Gusman “categorically denies it” and that everyone has been accounted for. But later in the phone interview she revealed there may actually have been some escapees, just not from the maximum security building.