Using money raised through warrant recall fees, city-parish officials are hoping to reopen Baton Rouge’s city jail as a 24-hour misdemeanor detention facility for two-week stints later this year. The Metro Council will introduce an ordinance Wednesday approving the plan, with a public hearing to be set for its Oct. 14 meeting.
The proposal would allow law enforcement officials to use $500,000 to keep the 150-seat jail beneath City Court open continuously for five separate two-week periods for misdemeanor enforcement, says Mark Dumaine, first assistant district attorney in the 19th Judicial District. The jail currently operates during business hours only.
The money comes from warrant recall fees assessed in Baton Rouge, which amount to $25 in the City Court and $50 in East Baton Rouge District Court, as authorized by Act 308 of the 2014 Legislature, which allows the courts to collect the fee to fund a misdemeanor jail. The money would also cover misdemeanor warrant roundups.
City Constable Reginald Brown has repeatedly said it would cost about $2.2 million annually to operate the jail 24/7. Dumaine says it costs the City Constable’s Office and the East Baton Rouge Parish Sheriff’s Office each about $50,000 to open the misdemeanor jail for a two-week period.
“We need a 24/7 facility. Nobody questions that,” Dumaine says. “It’s just how do you pay for it.”
When the city jail is closed, all suspects arrested on a misdemeanor are booked into East Baton Rouge Parish Prison. Most accused of a misdemeanor crime, however, are simply given a summons with a court date, which many do not heed. Brown says about 165,000 outstanding warrants between City Court and District Court are clogging the system, and that some offenders have between 10 to 20 warrants.
Opening the misdemeanor jail not only gives authorities a place besides the already-full Parish Prison to put those arrested on misdemeanors and warrant roundups. Each time officials announce a temporary opening of the city jail, people arrive in droves to the courts to pay their fines and clear up their warrants, Dumaine says.
For example, when officials opened up the jail for a two-week trial run in July and August 2011, more than 5,100 warrants were cleared at both the City and District courts, which brought in more than $191,000 in court collections for those two weeks, he says. During that same time span, authorities arrested slightly less than 350 people on misdemeanors. Of those arrested, 80% bonded out within 36 hours, giving them a financial incentive to attend their court date where previously they had no incentive. Those who did not post bond were transferred to Parish Prison.
A study conducted by LSU sociology professors Ed Shihadeh and Anthony Reed in 2013 showed that during the three trial runs of opening the jail, violent and property crime decreased by about 20% throughout the city during those weeks and a months-long reduction in crime. Dumaine points to this study as evidence the misdemeanor jail works because of lawful compliance and a decrease in crime.
—Ryan Broussard
