By Naomi Martin
NOLA.com
NEW ORLEANS — Due to woeful understaffing at the Orleans Parish Sheriff’s Office, entire floors of Orleans Parish Prison facilities at times have no guards to oversee dozens of prisoners, two top Sheriff’s Office officials testified on Monday.
Such chronic understaffing contributes to widespread neglect of mentally ill inmates and to high rates of rape and assault -- problems that can only be fixed by an overhaul ordered by a federal consent decree, U.S. District Judge Lance Africk ruled in June. Africk is overseeing the implementation of the decree, which is supposed to bring the beleaguered jail up to constitutional standards.
The Sheriff’s Office has a very high personnel turnover rate due to difficult working conditions and extremely low salaries, Chief Deputy Gerald Ursin testified. Entry-level jail deputies earn $9.69 an hour, or $21,000 a year. He said the Sheriff’s Office loses about one-third of its deputies each year.
Full story: Orleans Parish Prison understaffing at core of problems consent decree aims to solve, court is told