De Soto Parish, Louisiana — The Jail, the Sheriff, the Judges

The Detention Center

Not found

Operated byDeSoto Parish Sheriff's Office
Jail addressNot found on any page opened
RosterSearch returned an "Inmate Roster | DeSoto Parish Sheriff's Office (LA)" page on dpso.org, but it is blocked to automated fetching by the site's robots.txt and was not read
What was triedSheriff's home page (dpso.org) was opened; its inmate roster page (dpso.org/inmateRoster) returned ROBOTS_DISALLOWED. The Louisiana Sheriffs' Association directory page for the parish was refused with PROVENANCE_REQUIRED and not retried. No parish government (police jury) page was returned by search. Other results were commercial inmate-lookup sites and a third-party academic memo; none were used.

Source: DeSoto Parish Sheriff's Office (LA) · checked 2026-09-18

Transparency rating

0/10Closed

✗The jail is named — not published
✗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

This rates disclosure, not conduct — what De Soto Parish publishes about a jail its taxpayers own, checked 2026-09-18. Nothing here says the jail is run well or badly. Every mark moves the moment the parish posts the document.

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 Jayson Richardson

Runs the jailPresumed under La. R.S. 15:704; the sheriff's home page opened does not describe the jail
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 jail building and provides the jail physician (R.S. 15:702, 15:703)
Named onThe DeSoto Parish Sheriff's Office home page: "Sheriff Rodney Arbuckle"
Office line(318) 872-3956
How confirmedNamed as sheriff on the sheriff's own site, dpso.org, checked on 18 September 2026; the Louisiana Sheriffs' Association directory agrees. An earlier reading of dpso.org in this research recorded Rodney Arbuckle.

Still needed

Detention budget requested vs. approved, by year
Jail staffing levels and vacancy rate
Lawsuits and settlements involving the jail

Source: DeSoto Parish Sheriff's Office — official site (checked 18 September 2026) · 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.

Still needed

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, dpso.org (the office styles itself "DeSoto Parish Sheriff's Office"). Its home page names Sheriff Rodney Arbuckle but says nothing about a jail or detention center, so the jail is not named here.
The roster check is no only because the sheriff's roster page could not be read: search listed an inmate roster page on dpso.org, but the site's robots.txt blocks automated fetching. A roster may well be published there.
All ten checks are no on what could be read. No beds, population, budget, PREA material, housing contracts, bond guidance, fees, deaths or inspection report was found.
The parish seat is recorded as Not found because no page opened states it.
Parish seat from CCCarto's Louisiana parish-seat list (https://www.cccarto.com/countyseats/louisiana/), checked 18 September 2026.
Not found. No De Soto Parish government page was returned by the search spent on this parish, so the form of government and its members were not read from a parish page and are not recorded.

These three offices decide who sits in a cell in De Soto 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