The Detention Center
Claiborne Parish Detention Center
- Operated byClaiborne Parish Sheriff's Office
- Jail address1415 Highway 520, Homer, LA 71040; 318-927-4201
- WardenMelanie Moss (answers to the sheriff)
- Who is held"houses male offenders 17 years of age or older"; "open Dormitory Style facility"
- WomenThe Facilities page names no facility for women and does not say where women are held
- PhonesAlly Telecom Group: $0.20 per minute domestic, $0.25 Mexico/Canada, $0.35 international
- Video visits and messagingNCIC: video visits $0.30 per minute; messages $0.25 each; picture/video messages $0.35 each
- CommissaryNo commissary information or prices published
- What was triedSheriff's home, Facilities and From the Sheriff pages. No parish police jury site appeared in search results.
Source: Claiborne Parish Sheriff - Facilities · checked 2026-09-18
Transparency rating
1/10Closed- ✓The jail is named
- ✗Who is in custody — not published
- ✗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 builtNot found
- Original costNot found
- Paid for byNot found
- BedsNot found
Since then
- Not found
The Sheriff
Sheriff Sam Dowies
- Runs the jailYes - the sheriff's Facilities page describes the Claiborne Parish Detention Center
- 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; the parish governing authority maintains the building and provides the jail physician (R.S. 15:702, 15:703)
- Named onThe sheriff's own home page ("Sheriff Sam Dowies"); no date of election or term found
- Public recordsThe sheriff publishes a public records request page
- Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
- Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
- Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail
Source: Claiborne Parish Sheriff - Home · 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.
- The sheriff runs his own domain, claibornesheriff.org, based in Homer, Louisiana.
- Fees is no on a strict reading: phone ($0.20/min domestic) and video visit ($0.30/min) rates are published, but no commissary prices were found.
- No roster, beds, population, budget, PREA material, housing contract, bond guidance, in-custody death or inspection report was found on the sheriff's pages.
- Homer is recorded as the seat from the sheriff's home page, which places the office in Homer; the page does not use the words 'parish seat'.
- Search results included commercial inmate-lookup sites; none were used.
- Parish governing authority not found: no parish government site appeared in search results, so the form of government and members are not recorded.
These three offices decide who sits in a cell in Claiborne 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