The Detention Center
Allen Parish Detention Center
- Operated byAllen Parish Sheriff's Office
- Name usedThe roster page is headed "Allen Parish Detention Center Inmate Roster"; the jail page calls it the Allen Parish Jail
- LocationAttached to the rear of the Allen Parish Courthouse (jail page)
- Sheriff's office address7340 Hwy 26 W, PO Box 278, Oberlin, LA 70655; phone 337-639-4353
- Beds41
- Prisoners held elsewhereThe jail page says the sheriff contracts other facilities in other parishes to house approximately 45 additional inmates; no rates or partner parishes named
- RosterCurrent-inmate and recent-release lists linked from the sheriff's own roster page
- What was triedSheriff's home, jail and roster pages (read). No parish police jury page was returned by search or opened.
Source: Allen Parish Sheriff's Office — Jail · checked 2026-09-18
Transparency rating
2/10Closed- ✓The jail is named
- ✓Who is in custody
- ✗Beds and daily population — not published
- ✗What it costs taxpayers — not published
- ✗Deaths in custody — not published
- ✗PREA audits — not published
- ✗Independent inspection — not published
- ✗Who else it holds, and for how much — not published
- ✗How to post bond — not published
- ✗Phone, video and commissary rates — not published
The Building
You paid for it. Here is what the record says it cost.
- Year built1966 (sheriff's jail page: the current facility was put into service in 1966, attached to the rear of the Allen Parish Courthouse)
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- Beds41 (sheriff's jail page: "able to house 41 prisoners or offenders")
Since then
- Not found (the jail page says the original parish jail was established in 1913 and replaced by the 1966 facility)
The Sheriff
Sheriff Doug Hebert
- Runs the jailYes — the Allen Parish Sheriff's Office publishes the jail page and the detention center roster
- How the office is filledElected parish sheriff
- Statutory basisLa. R.S. 15:704 makes each sheriff the keeper of the public jail of his parish; under R.S. 15:702 and 15:703 the parish governing authority maintains the jail building and provides the jail physician
- Name as publishedThe sheriff's home page carries a message signed "Sheriff Doug Hebert"; no date appears on the page
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Allen Parish Sheriff's Office — home page · checked 2026-09-18
The Judges
Louisiana district judges are elected in partisan elections to six-year terms. They are state judicial officers, not parish officials. Who sets bail at first appearance varies by parish — a district judge on rotation, a magistrate or commissioner, or in some parishes a justice of the peace — and Louisiana's bail statutes do not require that first appearance to happen in open court.
- The parish's bond schedule
- Share of the jail population held pretrial
- Median time from booking to first appearance
Source: the state judiciary · checked 2026-09-18
The Parish Governing Authority
They maintain the jail building. The sheriff runs it.
- What they controlThe physical maintenance of the parish jail and the jail physician (La. R.S. 15:702, 15:703).
- What they don'tCustody of the jail. Under La. R.S. 15:704 the elected sheriff is “the keeper of the public jail of his parish.”
- The governing bodyNo governing-body page was found on the parish's own site
Notes on the record
- Louisiana has no general parish-jail inspection law. The Department of Public Safety and Corrections monitors compliance with its Basic Jail Guidelines at least annually, but only for jails that house state inmates for the state per diem; no public repository of those compliance reports was located.
- Contracts is recorded no: the jail page says the sheriff sends about 45 inmates to facilities in other parishes, but names no partner and no rate.
- Capacity is recorded no: 41 beds are published, but no daily population.
- Commercial inmate-lookup sites returned by search were ignored.
- Parish seat from CCCarto's Louisiana parish-seat list (https://www.cccarto.com/countyseats/louisiana/), checked 18 September 2026.
- Not found — no page of the Allen Parish governing authority was opened, so its form and members are not recorded.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Allen Parish and what it costs the people who live here. Nationally, almost 77% of the people who died in local jails in 2019 had not been convicted of anything, and suicide was the leading single cause of those deaths (Bureau of Justice Statistics, Mortality in Local Jails, 2000–2019).
How much is your sheriff — and your judge — costing you?
Your VOTE is POWERFUL.
The sheriff who runs this jail is elected. So is the parish governing body that pays for it.
Names verified 2026-09-18 · dollars and outcomes still being gathered